3.
A few years into my personal training career I begin working with a client who was excited to make some big changes. Sarah was 34 years old and was tired of not feeling good about the way she looked. Her story was a common one: Three kids, a hectic schedule, and very little “me time” had taken a toll on her once-attractive body.
During our exercise sessions we would talk a lot about how she felt about herself and about the feelings she wished she had. It was heart breaking to hear Sarah speak about the chore of looking at herself in the mirror. She often said things like, “I don’t think I actually look like that…who I see in the mirror is so old and tired. I hate it.”
Sarah, like many clients I worked with, realized that her physical appearance and lack of physical fitness were taking a psychological and social toll that compounded her problems. Feeling “fat” made her self-conscious to get involved in activities that were physically demanding. Going for a bike ride with other parents in her neighborhood was a stressful thought. She would be “the worst one” out there would feel so embarrassed if she couldn’t keep up.
Sarah also shied away from doing social things that required her to get dressed up. She didn’t feel comfortable wearing fitted clothing and often found herself declining social invitations as a result.
Events like her husband’s Christmas work party were the worst. She was expected to be there and there was a “dress code” that was socially acceptable. Sarah would go, but the entire process was so stressful and she felt uncomfortable the whole time.
I felt like everyone there was just thinking about how much weight I had gained over the years. It was embarrassing.
Sarah’s weight was also causing issues in her marriage. She had become very sensitive to anything her husband said about her appearance, finding it impossible to believe that his compliments such as “You look so pretty today!” carried any truth.
He’s just saying that to make me feel good. I appreciate that he does it, but it’s hard to accept the compliment when I know it’s not true. I know it makes him feel bad in the end because his positive comments usually just upset me. I wish I could believe him.
Being overweight was a burden that spilled over into all parts of her life and that is why Sarah had come to see me. She had decided it was time for a change and I was going to help her do it!
Sarah and I started training together twice per week. Every Tuesday and Thursday morning she would meet me at the gym at 7am for an hour of exercise. We had good chemistry and had a fun time during our training sessions.
At first even the simplest exercises were a real challenge for Sarah. We’d practice squatting, bending, twisting, and pushing – all movements that she hadn’t done in a long time. There was a lot of sweat, a lot of muscle pain, and the odd expletive directed at me (in jest I think).
It was amazing to see Sarah’s improvement over the course of our first 8 weeks working together. She was stronger, more mobile, and was feeling great. I was so excited for her and was thrilled to be part of this life-changing process.
There was just one problem: Sarah’s weight barely budged after all her hard work. She was discouraged. I was embarrassed (wasn’t I supposed to be the expert?). Both of us were frustrated.
“Shouldn’t I be seeing some improvements by now? Am I doing something wrong?” Sarah asked.
Unfortunately I didn’t have a good answer for her.
It was this discouraging experience with Sarah, and many other similar experiences, that served as my wake-up call. I couldn’t deal with her disappointment and I certainly didn’t want to repeat the discouragement I felt in letting her down.
I was supposed to be the fitness expert but I felt like a phony. I wanted to help Sarah change her life but I wasn’t able to deliver.
I became a personal trainer because I loved exercising. I chose it as a full-time career because I knew that I could parlay my exercise enthusiasm to help others who were struggling with their fitness.
At least that’s what I had thought.
Sarah was one of many clients who I couldn’t help. I tried, and they sure tried, but it was much harder to help someone change their body than I ever expected.
After about 10 years of helping clients achieve very mediocre results, a lot of my enthusiasm about health and fitness had started to wane. Despite all my experience and education, most of my clients were like Sarah – They were getting in better shape, but the goal of losing significant weight wasn’t be attained.
Subjectively, the training I did with my clients was working. Many did feel much better physically and many could see that the shape of their body had changed, but the objective goal of moving the needle on the scale wasn’t happening.
I responded to their disappointment by studying harder. I read books, searched advice from other trainers, and attended all sorts of seminars in hopes of finding a solution. There were many “answers” to be had…
“You need to create cutting-edge fitness plans”
“You must motivate your clients to work harder”
“Just pass along this useful nutrition advice”
I tried all sorts of approaches but only saw mixed results. Rarely did my clients achieve their weight-loss goals, and when they did, rarely did it last.
I started to doubt everything I had been learning about weight-loss. To me, the fitness equation had always looked like this:
Regular Exercise + Healthy Eating = Fitness
But this equation wasn’t working. What am I missing?
Ironically, as more and more doubts crept into my head, I simultaneously started achieving more and more recognition for my work in the fitness industry.
I began receiving invitations to present at various corporate functions as an “expert” in healthy living. I also took jobs instructing other personal trainers - I was supposed to impart my “wisdom” about how to be a success.
The biggest acclaim came when I was nominated for and won the award as “Canada’s Top Fitness Professional” in 2013. This was such an honour and was I was very flattered to even be considered for such a prestigious award. It was gratifying to know that others recognized and appreciated the work I was doing to promote fitness and healthy living.
All of this career success felt great in one sense, but it also left me feeling like even more of a phony. I didn’t have the answers that people were looking for, and I felt very dishonest preaching principles that I knew didn’t work as well as I described.
This was my lowest point as a personal trainer and I started to wonder if I should begin looking for another career path.
Despite my internal career struggles, I put on a happy face and tried to serve my clients as best I could.
There were still many things I still loved about being a personal trainer: I enjoyed getting to know my clients, seeing their excitement when they mastered a new exercise, and helping them move pain-free. But there was one thing I particularly dreaded about my job and that was the weigh-in day.
At a conference I heard a fitness expert preach to a group of personal trainers:
If you’re not assessing, then you’re just guessing.
His point was that as personal trainers we needed to regularly measure our clients’ progress, otherwise it would be impossible to know if they were actually improving.
I took this advice to heart and began assessing my clients every few weeks. One of the assessments was a simple weigh-in and this was always the one I (and likely my clients) feared the most.
You see, other assessments have some “wiggle room” – Holding a “better” plank is a matter of interpretation, and being able to do a few more pushups can be influenced by numerous factors on any given day. Those types of fitness assessment aren’t black and white.
Stepping on the scale however, can seem very black and white. It also happens to be the unit of measure that most people use to determine their progress. Improvements in other areas of fitness (e.g. strength, cardiovascular endurance, body shape, etc.) are often secondary thoughts – People want to know what they weigh and how much weight they have lost.
After weeks of intense workouts my clients had every right to expect to see their weight drop. They were paying good money to work with me and I was supposed to be really good at my job. Let’s see the results!
Early on I expected to see big changes for every client on weigh-in day, but I soon realized that wasn’t happening. A pound was lost here and there but rarely were there any monumental changes.
Uh-oh. How do I keep explaining these disappointing results?
Perhaps the worst part of weigh-in days was seeing the expression on a client’s face when he or she didn’t lose any weight at all. It was crushing and I felt as though I needed to soften the blow:
It’s not all about the numbers on the scale. You’re in much better shape than you were last time we measured.
That was a common line I used to help a disappointed client see the bright side. There was certainly truth in that statement, but I knew it was a weak consolation prize.
Obviously there were many variables that would impact my client’s weight aside from the workouts we had done together. What was she eating? Was he exercising on his own? Did she drink enough water? Did he get enough sleep or take time to de-stress?
When we would talk about these other “homework” assignments I would usually get one of two responses:
Response #1: “I am doing all of those things”
These clients would tell me that they ate perfectly, exercised daily, and pretty much lived the ideal healthy life that I had prescribed.
These instances were tricky. If my client really was doing all of these healthy behaviours then weight-loss should be no problem. Something didn’t add up.
Often I would suggest we use a food or exercise journal “just to be sure” these items were really on-track. But, even with those tools in place there still seemed to be a gap between what my clients reported they were doing and what was actually being done.
Cognitive Dissonance is a psychological phenomenon that may explain what was happening.
Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time.
It can also occur when someone is confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas, or values that they hold to be true.
We all have certain beliefs about ourselves. If one of those beliefs says, “I eat well and exercise regularly” then it can be uncomfortable if we encounter evidence that suggests otherwise.
For example, when I asked a client about his diet, it would be difficult for him to quickly retrieve instances when he made unhealthy food choices – This would conflict with his self-concept of being a “healthy eater”.
The same goes for exercise. It is comfortable, and therefore more likely, to remember all the exercise we did do versus the workouts we skipped.
While I don’t think that my clients intentionally lied to me about their health choices, I confess that I do think they were only telling part of the story. This gap between perception and reality makes it very hard to achieve and sustain weight-loss results.
Response #2: “I couldn’t do that because…”
The other response I got from clients who weren’t losing weight was some sort of rationale as to why my expectations just weren’t possible. These clients were usually “too busy” to follow through with the actions we agreed were necessary for weight-loss, although other reasons did come up occasionally:
“I don’t like eating healthy food”
“I hate going to the gym”
“I can’t cook”
These clients suffer from a sort of Self-Fulfilling Prophecy that prevents them from adopting a healthier lifestyle.
A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that causes itself to become true due to positive feedback between belief and behavior.
Let’s look at an example:
Dwayne was another client of mine. He has a high-powered (and high-stress) job as Vice President at a technology company. His days are filled with meetings, deadlines, and work emergencies that require his attention. There is a lot of stress associated with his work and he has little time for exercise or preparing healthy meals.
When working with Dwayne he was adamant that they only time he could devote to his fitness came in the form of two workout sessions with me each week. He would often say things like, “There is no way I can squeeze in another workout tomorrow. Work is going to be crazy.”
I don’t doubt for a second that Dwayne has very busy days at work, but it was the way he viewed his situation that made it impossible to lose weight, not the actual busyness of his life.
Using statements like “There is no way…” when discussing exercise or other healthy behaviours became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Dwayne perceived it as impossible for him to adopt new ways of living and therefore he never changed.
I don’t really blame Dwayne either. Oftentimes the life patterns we develop become so entrenched that it is nearly impossible to see another way. If you believe that you are too busy to exercise, and if you believe this for long enough, then it will likely become true. Your life will be built in such a way that you have no room for exercise.
The same goes for healthy eating. If you believe that preparing healthy meals is beyond your culinary abilities then you will establish strong habits of eating unhealthy convenience foods.
It’s much like Henry Ford’s famous quote:
Whether you think you can, or you think you can't - You're right.
I don’t think my clients who fell into this category were making excuses. I believe they were convinced that certain variables in life were just stacked against them. Unfortunately, that belief makes it so, and achieving weight-loss becomes nearly impossible.
If you’ve ever worked a job that you didn’t like you can probably remember having a “case of the Monday’s”. It’s that feeling you get on Monday, knowing that the weekend is over and you have to do something that you don’t really enjoy.
Being a personal trainer started to give me a strong case of the Monday’s.
It didn’t feel good going to work every day, spending time with some really great clients, all the while knowing that most of them would never obtain the results they wanted. I knew that there were psychological factors that needed to be addressed, but I didn’t know how to approach these issues. I felt helpless.
Even worse was the fact that my livelihood depended on my clients sticking with me. I had financial incentives to keep selling them packages of training sessions even though I didn’t really think I could help them.
I wanted my sales pitch to sound like this:
“Janet, I really enjoy working with you and think you’re doing great in your workouts. You are getting stronger and are in much better shape than you were a few months ago.
I know you really want to lose weight but I can’t promise that’s going to happen. I hope you do (I really hope you do!) but there are factors out of my control that prevent me from promising you will lose any weight at all.
I’d love it if you’d keep training with me, but I just want to be honest about the results you are going to get.”
I actually think some of my clients would have stayed with me if I told them this (like I said, I had some really amazing clients!), but it just didn’t feel good to offer such a wishy-washy service.
I wanted to do things differently. I wanted to be a more effective coach, one who could honestly tell clients something like this:
“Janet, I know losing weight is difficult but we are going to do it together. I’ve got a plan that will work for you even though there are going to be challenges along the way. Stick with me and I promise you will reach your goal.”
I needed to change my approach as a personal trainer if I was ever going to be able to make a promise like this. I just didn’t know what I needed to change.
4. When have you felt like a “phony”? How did you reconcile that feeling or help yourself feel more authentic?
5. Can you see examples of Cognitive Dissonance and/or the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy at work in your life? What impact are they having?