New Studies & taking things personally
Good morning. Good morning. Hope you've had a good weekend. Now remember, whatever happened, it's gone. We've got today to focus on, and that's all that matters.
Speaker 1:You can make the next action a good one or one that's probably gonna take you down the wrong path. Few few things. I said I would weirdly. Few things. Christmas challenge starts a week today.
Speaker 1:So if you listen to us as a silver member, monthly, you get 25% off. Annual, you get 50% off. And if you're the gold member for free, you don't have to do anything, we will let you know the information end of the week. Five weeks of training hard. You know, you got five workouts every day.
Speaker 1:Sorry. Five workouts every week. One 06:30AM in the morning, all recorded, of course. So use this week and hours of preparation week. Know, definitely go and do some workouts this week.
Speaker 1:Get your steps in. You know, if you haven't been tracking, you can go into and redo the questionnaire started from today. So today's your day one again, and you'll have the check-in on Monday next week. Know, start thinking about making the most of the challenge because every challenge we do is unique. It's another it's a different type of theme all the time, and the theme we're going into is discipline.
Speaker 1:Do we need discipline? What is discipline? How can we look at our actions, motivation, self drive, all this stuff? So hopefully by the time you go into Christmas this year, you're gonna be feeling different. You're gonna learn a lot, feeling stronger than you ever felt before, hopefully.
Speaker 1:And if you do earn fat loss, then you pick fat loss in the app. A lot of you, hopefully, will go to maintenance and think about power and strength and going into these types of challenges with fat loss knows the main goal. And that's a change. That's a big change because every single thing we do revolves around fat loss. Some of you still got fat lose.
Speaker 1:You know, some of you got thirty, forty pounds to lose. That's fine. But sometimes you need to take a break and actually go to maintenance and give out a go and train hard and enjoy that. Know when we can go back into a fat loss phase in January. Right?
Speaker 1:So give it a go, have a think about it. Two studies to talk about today as well. One study is about like the reality check comments on Instagram. So a previous study looked at if you only spend seven minutes a day on Instagram it would negatively impact your mental health especially for women, because you think I wish I looked as good as them all that stuff. But there was another study that looked at if people saw comments like yeah, but you know this is her in a perfect light then yeah, but you know this is a job, know, kind of more like those reality check comments showed that it actually made some people feel better, than before they went on the app that time.
Speaker 1:But the important thing is is you hardly get reality check comments on Instagram. It is a slot machine. You don't know what you're gonna see. Most of the time you're gonna feel worse about yourself going on going on social media. You're never gonna compare yourself fairly on social media because you always think you are way worse than what you're comparing to.
Speaker 1:That's just how we are. And if you do start feeling if you are you need to do like a a full on life audit. Like, start thinking about this. Like, okay. I'm not feeling too happy these days.
Speaker 1:I'm feeling down, feeling anxious, you know, like, you know, let's have a look at let's have look at the facts of my life. How many times am I going on Instagram a day? How many times am I going watching the news a day? Am I doing walks? Am I going on I'm gonna get my steps done?
Speaker 1:Am I getting actually going out in the light in the day even if it's raining and stuff, make sure you go out in the light in the day because it's gonna get dark at 5PM. Some of you will never might not go outside at all these days. You know, you have to start looking at these things and we know comparison is not great. So if you do use social media, have a clean, have a cleanse, unfollow people to make you feel bad even if they're inspiring. You know, just unfollow them if they make you feel bad about yourself.
Speaker 1:And you know, you look at people who are inspirational and they're inspirational through their actions and stuff, but there's a lot of people out there, it's just Instagram is a bragging place. So it's a tough place to be because everyone's always bragging about what they've achieved and what they're doing, you know, all this stuff and it makes you feel bad because there's so many accomplishments you see per day when day to day we don't get those massive accomplishments, you know. So that's the study about that which is quite interesting I found, but I think the risk of going on Instagram a lot is much bigger than you know, hopefully just following reality check accounts because those accounts now you utilize different engagement, right. Another study to talk about is the does heavy diet of junk food. We know it's not great physical to have a new diet all from junk food, but does it impact your mental health?
Speaker 1:So they looked at ultra processed foods, right? Ultra processed foods, a term coined by the NOVA food classification system in 2009 are defined as industrial formulations of processed food substances like oils, fat, sugar, starch, protein isolates that contain little or no whole food and typically include flavorings, colorings, and emulsifiers. Think packaged snacks, chips, or crisps, breakfast cereals, fries, bacon, and cake. Right? So what do they look at?
Speaker 1:They looked at mild depression, number of mentally unhealthy days, and a number of anxious days. So the study found people who reported the highest level of ultra processed food consumption, 80% or more of the diet daily energy intake as a law was significantly more likely to report mild depression. Right? But the median of people, eating ultra processed foods in general is fifty seven percent of people's diets ultra processed foods. That's the median.
Speaker 1:Okay. So what's first here? Is it that people feel mildly depressed and go for ultra processed foods, those foods we love as a way to soothe themselves? Or is it that they're eating a lot of junk food eighty percent of the time, causing them to feel worse about themselves leading to mild depression? You know, which one is it?
Speaker 1:And that's something to think about always it a circle? Does one feed another and keep going? Could be that. The scientists also found as well that people who consumed the most ultra processed foods reported significantly more mental mentally unhealthy days and significantly more anxious days than people who consumed the least. They were also less likely to report zero mental mentally unhealthy or anxious days.
Speaker 1:This study is not the best. Okay? It's not the best. But what it does show is that there is a strong link and it could be go working either way that if you are if your diet is 80% junk food, okay, the chances are your lifestyle is in no steps. Your lifestyle, you're not training.
Speaker 1:You don't care. You're just eating junk food, going day to day. And is it possible and and the other and the flip side did not walk in it and it's like, what would be good to find out is, okay, these people had 80% junk food in the diet, adding in 8,000 steps a day, what happens? Does the continuation of eating junk food knowing it's junk food cause the maldepression? Or will the steps negate it and make them feel a bit better?
Speaker 1:Dropping junk food down to 50% of the daily intake massively reduced, people reporting mild depression by over 65%. So the median range of people say you're saying 50% of junk food a day, 50% of your calories are from junk food, only eleven percent of those said that they were having mild depression, compared to eighty one percent of people eat eat eating 80% or more. So there's links here, right? And I think what this study probably looking at is activity levels and it's not obviously they're very specific. So if you're eating a diet that's, you know, 60% junk food, Right?
Speaker 1:But you're walking, you're doing workouts. It's not gonna have a direct on its own isolated negative effect on your mental health. It's the story you tell yourself about the food as well. Right? So the story you tell yourself about the junk food could cause a big problem.
Speaker 1:Now, would these people with a different story about junk food, and I don't like kind of junk food, ultra processed foods have a different view on themselves then as well. You know, if they were like, well, most of the population eat over half of their calories from ultra foods, and you're eating a bit more than them. But actually, you eat half and you walk and you trained, you know, you'd feel good. You could you could lose weight, you could feel good. Okay, it's not too far away from where I'm at.
Speaker 1:Because they think they have to eliminate that entire diet from all the food they actually eat and it go, well, if I want to change my life, I have to stop eating all the foods I'm eating and flip to that. That must be mentally straining. Right? But the good news is is that doesn't seem there's a direct cause of eating 50 to 60% of your, calories from ultra processed foods causing a, worsening of your mental health. I think it's a combination of all lifestyle factors.
Speaker 1:So any of you thinking, oh, going into Christmas period, I've loved meal prep and wholesome foods. Obviously, we wanna be eating wholesome foods most of the time, but don't panic if you are starting to go into the ultra processed foods, category, especially if you're eating convenience foods and stuff like that. Right? And it's all about the story about the food you're eating. That's about everything though.
Speaker 1:The story about whatever happens. You know? And I think, don't really you know, I did a post on the bulletin board about last week, and we do, study research not study. Survey. Sorry.
Speaker 1:We do a survey with you guys figure out where we can improve, you know, tell us the truth. Knowing that anonymous feedback forms tend to get more truth than usual. And truth should be the main thing. Everyone should be able to accept a fact and not have to react to it. You know, this take this can take time.
Speaker 1:Reading things you don't want to read can cause a reaction. It can cause you to wanna react to it because you don't like what it is and then you can attach what you what's being said with the with the person that's saying it and you can make them one in the same and it's not true. So if I deliver a bad message to you and you don't like that message, you might think that message is bad. That sucks. I don't agree with it.
Speaker 1:Therefore, Scott is a knob, and I don't believe in him. Okay? And we need to be able to separate the fact from the person delivering it and being able to then look at situations such as we didn't turn up for a workout, didn't communicate there. That's not on. That's on us.
Speaker 1:Fact is that's happened. We're putting processes and systems in same in in in in new systems in place. But at the same time, the person that complains about it, which is fine, shouldn't be seen in a bad light for complaining about a fact. Does that make sense? So we need to work on that.
Speaker 1:Everybody needs to work and I think it's quite a universal problem we all have. When things get when this thing especially when it's things you care about, you can get like an emotional reaction, and you go into reactive mode, and you become defensive. This is kind of the human condition. It happens all the time. Like if you did a project in work, and you put your time and effort into it for years, and then you have you do something, and this, you know, and then they come back, say, well, you know, blah blah blah.
Speaker 1:You didn't do it right. Why is this? I'm I'm angry about it. You can feel attacked because it's your work, and you we attach our work to ourselves as well to me. So we need to see it from both ways really, but let's move on from that.
Speaker 1:Let's make sure that the service continues to improve. We are allowed to speak openly a turtle. Please think that. Don't think that, you can't speak up. I always take feedback on board.
Speaker 1:And that's how that's the culture we wanna breed. And that's the culture you wanna breed in your day to day life. So one of the four agreements from the book, from the Toltec civilization, I think South American civilization. One of the four agreements is never to take things personally as a way to live. Because taking things personally all the time, you're gonna be in for a life of struggle and conflict.
Speaker 1:And what do we even mean by taking things personally? If someone says something I don't like, it's my image, my self image that's hurt. My self image is hurt by what's being said, therefore my self image is defensive or goes in attack mode. Right? But that's because my image creates an all important stance in the mind.
Speaker 1:For me, my self image is so important. Anything that attacks this self image that I've built up of yours is problematic. And I think this started it it does start there. And I and like this is this is not something that one person has said. This is something that's been said from Eastern Asian societies, the Buddhists, Taoism, stoicism over to the South Americas.
Speaker 1:This has been this taking things personally, don't do this and see things objectively, which is to take the self away from it. So when you don't take things personally, you're basically looking at everything objectively, take the self away. That's how you can live a life of minimal conflict, non react nonreactive, only responsive. And then you can see things objectively, very, very, very, very hard thing to do. But if there's any time and effort for you to go through today and think about something, is to look at things how the reaction causes the self defense mechanism of the self to activate, and then see how that activates emotions and all sorts of things that come from it.
Speaker 1:So today you can see like you know when you go on the scales and you see a number that you don't like, it's the self image you have that doesn't like the number because it says a story about the self image that it's not good enough, that it shouldn't be this weight, that then causes an emotional reaction and then it will keep going and build up. It takes time to time to settle down. Right? Someone says something to you today, can you not can we can we listen without ourself trying to object and come in and say the wrong and right without that, just listen and then can we respond objectively? And we can bring in our experience, that's what thinking is about.
Speaker 1:Of course we want to be thinking, of course we want to bring in the experience and the stuff we have, but can we do it in a manner that's not reactive but responsive? And you can try and do this for today and see how quick you are to react. And if you are reacting quickly all the time to everything, there's a few things going on. We spoke about in book club. It could be not getting enough sleep.
Speaker 1:It could be that your calories are too low. You're going to hangry state. Could be that your allostatic load which is the accumulative stress you are under is simmering at the top of the stress bucket too much. And if you are living with a simmering stress bucket, you are gonna be reactive and you have less of this kind of executive control, less of this time to think and bring in the thinking, bring in objectivity. And if you can't bring that in, then you're always reacting.
Speaker 1:Things need to change at the root level, not so much, oh, can I sorry, won't do it again? But what's the cause of you always being reacting? Why are you so quick to react all the time? And I think there's big clues in that when you start behaving that way of deeper underlying things to solve. So I think about that.
Speaker 1:But today is one week out, so please get your steps start tracking again if you haven't for a while. Get your one big thing done, whatever it is workout walk, I did platys. Full hour of platys hard. But I really enjoy platys and I really want to bring in thirty minute Pilate sessions, beginner sessions to get people all up to date with the beginner move with the with the moves, but taught slowly. So then you can go into the full sessions really just knowing what the key was.
Speaker 1:Boom. Boom. Boom. That's it. Get you one big thing in the app.
Speaker 1:Get your steps in. Put a smile on your face. Don't get sucked into the drama, and you'll have a still cool day of responding, not reacting. So I'll see you tomorrow.
