Mindset Is The Most Important Factor In Improving Fitness And Healthy Habits

Welcome to the D shift podcast, where we provide inspiration, motivation and education to help you transition from the challenges of divorce to discover the freedom and ability to live life on your own terms. Are you ready? Let's get the shift started. Hello, and welcome to another episode of The D Shift podcast and I am so glad you're here. We are going to focus on another part of self care that I think is super important and something that a lot of times we put on the backburner. So I have an expert on fitness on the program today, Sartre Jean-Gilles, who is from Canada say same as I am. As a matter of fact, we were just discovering maybe like 100 miles down the road, not even 100 miles down the road from where I grew up. So I'm sorry, welcome to the program. We're so excited to have you here. And you are an online personal fitness coach. So tell us a little bit about your area of expertise and who you work with and why this is so important for you.

Thank you so much for having me, Marty. surcharging, I'm an online fitness coach, like you say, I work with as a personal trainer Kinesiologist and fitness behavior change coach, that's my main offer, which I love to help people with since earlier this year. So yes, I help people online, I do personal training. So if they need, you know, general training through the zoom, I help them with that. I also help them if they have some a chronic condition, for example, because as a kinesiologist, we can help people with over 25 different chronic conditions. And so if they need a specialized type of training, I always implore them, my clients, you know, help connect me with your personal trainer sorry, with your, with your, with your physical therapists, and they can then you know, coordinate or I'll send them information and, and we can have a more specialized type of exercise and rehab routine for for the clients. And then with the fitness behavior change. That's a new certification that I got in April. And that's really helping people to change their mindset as it pertains to fitness, exercise, and nutrition and other healthy habits like sleep. You know, in Canada, we have the 24 Hour Movement Guidelines through and so it's really important that we look at everything holistically, not just how many times are you exercising? Or like vigorously or, or bouts of exercise? But what are you doing in terms of activities of daily living? What are you doing in terms of sleep hygiene, and whatnot, so that, you know, I incorporate that in my behavior change program, 12 week program for people to really unlock, you know, what's going on, in terms of their mental and spiritual and I mean, and emotional really, and, and how can they, you know, how can they incorporate a healthier set of habits in their lives.

And I think that is so important. I work I work as a behavioral health coach, to part time, part time, and one of the things that we really focus on is you have to change your mindset, you have to change how you think about things. And that's why that's why New Year's resolutions which you know, by now, because we're going to be this is going to come out in February. So by now in February, ah, most people are like, Yeah, remember, I talked about losing weight in January, but you know, I'm still having a burger every day and having a beer after work or glass of wine and all of a sudden, those goals don't work. So can you tell us a little bit about the difference between your behavioral behavioral coaching, can you tennis I can never say that word. Kinesiology, kinesiology and physical therapy because I think people get confused I do about what the different aspects of each one of those are. So can you highlight that a little bit for us? Okay.

Okay. So, personal training is you know, people who just have general fitness goals in terms of weight loss and fitness, endurance, and whatnot. Kinesiology is really the more academic side of things in terms of it's the study of human movement. So that entails the actually getting down to what is they know biomechanics? Because the body is a machine. You know, what are the you know? people's lives with the stick figure guys on the computer way back when Yeah. And then the physiology so that you know I got I got thrown in a dunk tank and they tested your buoyancy and with that you could tell with the, with the equations and your buoyancy score what how much fat you had in your body. So the physiology, so and then motor learning because there's a there's an aspect to how we learn to do different chains of movement and sociology of physical activity and stuff. So that's, that's what physical education became, in most universities. So can you see ology is just the more academic side of things. And, again, like I said, at the beginning, is that we help people with about 25, over 25 different types of chronic conditions. So we work alongside, you know, personal trainers can too, but the physical therapists would, I can honestly say that they would, they would be more comfortable working with a kinesiologist. That's what the personal trainers tend to take before they go into university. And so the Kinesiologist would work with the personal trainer as I have, or so with the, with the physical therapist, and have the design the wit and of course, the physical therapist is, is often designing most of the program anyways, but we're overseeing the rehab at the physical therapy clinics, in large part. And so that is kinesiology. And then fitness and the personal sort of physical, physical therapy, they are the ones giving the manual therapy. And they they can handle things like I'm not sure if you've ever done the ultrasound, plus things that I could do as a as a kin. But again, it's in a physio clinic centered supervision of a physiotherapist and different types of modalities to actually rehabilitate the the person's body to electrical stimulation and things of that nature manual therapy. So that's physical therapy, and then fitness behavior change to new thing I'm getting a lot of we're talking about it a lot in the Kinesiology space alongside a tangent is motivational interviewing. So fitness behavior change, as you know, it's, it's a way to help people to stack habits and on a on a gradual way, in a gradual way, you know, in my program, we start large, and then we can finish a lot more in a more refined way. So, like, just take pictures of your meals, it doesn't, at the beginning, you don't even have to, or you might not even ever have to count calories. And then maybe you can look at counting calories as an option. That's an option I do give to my clients towards the end if they want, but it's not necessary. I'm definitely thinking that, you know, a lot of my clients are, they might not be my steer clear of it. But they might only if even if they do it, they might do it for a few weeks only to learn the concept of counting calories, it's not something that everyday people need to do. And then we also do different types of coaching, tools, exercises to figure out what who they are what they are, it's the behavior change is really, what's important is finding out what the why is, why do you want to lose weight? Or why do you want to get or gain weight? Why do you want to get fitter? Why do you want to? You know, it's maybe you have kids? Maybe you have? So what are your values, let's say so that you can have what we call adherence? And once you can, once you have that, once we do those exercises, throughout my 12 week program, I'm finding that my clients have a lot more adherence that starts to click as to why I did a video yesterday about you know stopped compartmentalizing your, your life so much like you can't just you know, oh, I've got this deadline or whatever. And at work, I can't exercise Well, if you keep doing that, you're going to it's going to be detrimental to you at work anyway. So you might as well exercise sometimes, you know, we'll try and fit it in. So that's what fitness behavior change coaching is. And then I just said motivational interviewing. That's just that that's a strategy that people use that we've learned that I have a level of like a certain level of certification. And that is the way that you ask questions in a nutshell, open ended questions, and how do you really keep the conversation going to in order to elicit the the the, the, the answers out of the client, because the answers are always with him.

Right? Right. I love that. And I think that this like I'm with I'm completely with you on this because you know when I when I hear Your a lot of my clients are like, Well, I've been married for 10 years, 20 years, whatever it is, I don't feel really good about my body, I want to, you know, I know I'm gonna go back out into the dating world, maybe not right now, but maybe in a year. And so they're so focused on some magic weight number, like, typically what they were when they were 18, or they want to wear, they want to be able to fit in their wedding dress. Well, if you got married when you're 20, and you've had a few children, if you've gained weight and lost weight over the years, you know, your body shape changes over time, even. So you're not? Yes, there's going to be some people who are going to be exactly the same as they were when they were 18. The majority of most women, so can you talk a little bit? And I'm kind of throwing this one out at you. So I hope I hope this is okay. Can you talk about how to manage those kinds of expectations? If you're a woman 4050 6070 that's looking at making some of these changes. What's realistic, what's what's not setting yourself up for failure?

Excellent question. So yes, I've worked a lot in the past few months with women over 40 Some dealing or some, you know, different stages of divorce some of them. So yeah, most of my women, the women I've worked with, are like their parents pre menopausal, and up to menopausal. So for them, like there was one, the one of my clients, she was really concerned about her weight, and I told her, and then she, and then we did the BMI. Now, big Asterix, the BMI is not the be all and end all. Even the inventor of the BMI said this is not a health, I'm just doing math, he was just he was just a guy. And during the Enlightenment, the Belgian guy, and he just did math, you know, along with other things, you know, Renaissance man. And so he did it for the King, I think. And he it but the healthcare system, always, for some reason, arbitrarily said 25 Above that is overweight? Well, no. In some of my, in one of my binders, from the Canadian Society of exercise physiology, we have a we have a table, which shows BMI, but with waist circumference, because once I showed her that, and her BMI wasn't even high, and her waist circumference, like I told her like, we need to look at notch and not and it's not just waist circumference to let's be honest, it's also performance, how you're performing? Are you going out on your hikes? Are you doing your exercise? What is your blood work? What is your blood pressure? What is your resting heart rate? You know, those are all of those are many of the markers that we look at, in terms of health. And so you it's yes, you can't compare yourself to how you were at a different stage. And you need to be realistic with how you're going to onboard exercise. How are you going to gradually increase your exercise I've got you know, especially my you know, my clients, they're in middle age, and a lot of them are thankful one client finished, lost 50 pounds in 24 weeks, grateful that they were able to do it now in their early 40s. Before. So it's now is always the time, you know, the best time to plant the trees now. Yeah, the better time was 20 years ago. Yeah. So, but yeah, you just have to be realistic. And that is why you should definitely talk to a kinesiologist because we have a very tempered, very seasoned view of health. It's not just about looking good on the like Shape magazine cover right from us, we're not the type to advertise ourselves by showing us showing our abs, you know, really, right, because we're coming from university. And so we have a very realistic view and informed view of how you, you know, you should look at your regard your physical health.

Well, and the other thing too is and I can tell you, I I used to do this where I would have a particular event, and I wouldn't let's say I was going to a wedding. And I would know okay, I you know, I want to look good when I get you know, so I know I'm gonna drop 10 pounds, and I would literally do it in a month I would I would do the cabbage soup diet or some crazy thing, like who knows what, or only one meal a day and go to the gym five days a week and work out for an hour. And you know, if I lost that 10 pounds and I went to that event, but then after the event, when I went back to my old eating and I took myself up at restriction I just gained back 10 pounds. I came back maybe 15 And it was constantly and it was but gradually trending upward. So What is that? Is that a? Is that just me? Or is that a real thing?

So, one thing is when people do crash diets a lot, often they they are cutting the carbs. Right? Right. And so when you cut the carbs, it's a carbohydrate. So there's water involved carbohydrate. So when your body needs to, when your body stores sugar, glucose in the form of glycogen, so it's like tightly packed in the, in the muscles in the liver, you can store about five to 10 pounds of sugar in your body. Wow, for those more verse type exercises, right, the more short term exercises, that's what it's for. So you're going to easily like, if you go on the keto diet, you're going to easily melt off five to 10 pounds, if you've been eating rice and potatoes and bread, right, we're going to just the first week, and that's going to come back on so it's not necessarily fat. And then of course, if you're not strength training, and, and I really want the, the ladies to listen, because a lot of them often say I don't want to get big. And so it's not gonna get big, you know, trust me, you're not gonna get big. If you lift weights, you're gonna get shapely, honestly, because you're gonna put on just that little bit of muscle. And when you put on that little bit of muscle, rather than not putting on that muscle over time, then your basal metabolic rate can stay or even increase, but people are not string training twice a week. Right? Like, where you string training twice a week.

I do strength training. Now I have done for several years. Yeah,

yeah. Okay. But yeah, so if if there's an increase in that in body fat over time, it's probably because we're not doing enough to keep the lean tissue in the body. Because that's the metabolically active tissue, that's the tissue that you that will burn fat when you're sitting down, right. So don't be afraid of strength training. Even quite heavy a couple times a week, it doesn't, you just have to do each muscle group for two rounds. major muscle groups, so focus on the major lifts, the squat, the lunch, the deadlift, the overhead, press, the chest press, you know, the pull up or pull lat pulldown, where you're using more than one joint. So you can save time, and your mood working on the big muscles, the secondary joints, like like the tricep extending, you're gonna do it with a press anyway. So you don't need to do a tricep extension. It's like the smallest muscle you can work. So work on the big movements, and you know what to do to after.

But you know what I love? I love I'm so glad you said that. So thank you. Thank you. And for, for us older women. Well, that strength training is super good for to prevent osteoporosis and to help bone density and all that kind of good stuff to write. So can I ask you a question? I I'm really, I'm really interested in this. I've been reading a lot about using yoga, especially your own body weight, like a lot of the exercises now like even some of the what is that high intensity interval training stuff is just using your own body weight as the weight is that as effective as actually lifting and things like that?

Yes. So yes, absolutely. Because now you're going it stimulates the body in a different slightly different way. Like when you're doing a lat pull, like a pull up, you see my chin up bar there, and then reaching out gymnastic rings. I'm a big proponent of bodyweight. I actually say on one of my posts that the most important piece of equipment is the floor. Like get yourself a thick rubber mat, like I do, like I have here. Okay, as you can see, yeah. So that's the most important thing. Now, like as somebody who does like a lap pool, like a sorry, a pull up or a chin up, if they get season that that they go to the lap machine, and they're just gonna, they're gonna be so much stronger. Because your body, your stimuli in your body to do to move its center of mass, right center of gravity. And when you're moving your body, it's a lot more stimulating for strength verse for that for a given size. While if you're going to do like, the more weightlifting like the more bodybuilding version, which is a lat pulldown or a benchpress. Instead of push ups, push ups with a weighted vest is amazing. By the way. When you do that you because you're not moving your center of gravity, or you're stimulating your body by saying, Oh, you don't have to move yourself. So you have divided like, I'll just get huge. So if you want to get big, then movements where you're not moving your center of gravity, but if you want to get strong relative to the size, then bodyweight movements are great when you were talking. So when you mentioned yoga, I even say yeah, yoga, you know, because it's, you're doing what's called, you're doing a hold. So in scientifically it's called an isometric movement you're not moving. So when you do an isometric, very stimulating, I've, you know, sometimes do isometric or I might follow an isometric work on on YouTube or something. And just a great way different way to keep that tension. Because your your body really registers time under tension, you can, if you can tense it long enough. And intensely enough, then you're still going to get growth and strength and gains, bands, I've got like bodies like bands that go that are like taller than I am, so that you can do like thrusters for the squat and a press up at the same time. Keep a couple of those go to, I think what is it Home Depot, grab some nice thick gloves like these these neoprene gloves, you can work like if you don't want to get, you know, some, some calluses, or if it's a little comfortable, but keep those in your travel bag. And you have your gym, like a couple bands of different strength levels, and you got your gym when you're going about and doing your traveling and business trips and stuff.

I love that. And that's what I like about your program is and I really, I want to talk for a little bit about the 12 week kind of idea behind like, why did you pick 12 weeks and what what I've hearing is that you really work with you work with women who are basically working from home or entrepreneurs or on the go or busy busy people. So you're not my understanding is your program is not designed that you need to go get a gym membership. And you need to spend two hours a day at the gym, you know, an hour doing cardio and our doing straight. Tell us kind of a summary of what what that 12 week program is in and what kind of big topics you cover in that.

In the behavior change coaching? We do. So that is the coaching, I suppose my personal training side, right? So my coaching my behavior change coaching, we talk about figuring out what your habits what your values are. So there's one exercise we do early on, what are your values? So that you need three? What are the three main values? Because those are the start dates, these coaching tools stack up on top of each other? What are your goals? What are your objective goals? What are your behavioral goals? So objectives like I want to lose x pounds usually. And then your behavioral goals, or I want to be x waist size or something. And your behavioral goals are more I want to feel good in this dress. I want to feel good. You know, going for a walk with my dog or something. Yeah. Actually liking my exercise. That's the behavioral and then we do visioning work like who do you want to be? Who who are you? Who do you want to be? What are your one exercise we do are the 30 things towards so looking at the values that you have? What are 30 things? No write it down? What are 30 things that how is it going? How are things going to help? One of my clients this week, she's doing the five pillars. So that's looking at areas of your life, three areas of your life you've been successful at? And then breaking it down? What What Why Were you successful at you getting your degree, climbing the corporate ladder, raising your kids, whatever, break it down to a few steps and then and then clump those aspects into different into into sub sub intersections. So that like for me, I think I have like systems and pragmatism and passion. So once you're out of this program, 12 weeks, which is usually about how much you take how long it takes to form a habit, once you're out of this program, and if you're like having hitches, you can look at your exercise your homework that you did, so that you can you know, okay, I'm good at this. So maybe I should focus on maybe she gets some type of tool that helps me in this way. So that is the behavior change coaching. It's out of England when the founder, he Tim, out of the Institute of fitness behavior change. He was a personal trainer and you know, one of his clients wasn't really wanting to exercise showing up but didn't do their homework. And he was just started coaching. And so once he started coaching the client rather than just watching them exercise some people do need that. But yeah, that's when he saw changed like my client. He was with me for he's been with me for about a year and about two years now. About a year he did not lose weight, and then boom, end of June. got onto the behavior change. 50 pounds gone? Because the mental, we changed the mindset. Yeah. And then in terms of yeah, in terms of my personal training, yes, it's mostly bands or nothing, the floor, I start with nothing, usually, maybe I've got to have what's called the dip station, the LIBOR bar out of Canada. I love my clients to use that, because you can do so many things with that. But if they have kettlebells, and I can work it in, but I don't tell them to get it. Okay. dumbbells, then I can work it in. But yeah, I want them to feel comfortable at home, okay, I can bang off a workout, it's snowing outside, I don't have to go to the gym, this is my option for when I'm at home.

Well, and if you can work out from home, you know, sometimes just like the thought of driving to the gym is the problem. It's not the gym. It's like, Oh, my God, I do not want to go outside. I don't want to have to deal with the traffic. i Nobody look after the kids, you know, that kind of stuff. So if you can work out from home, you are so much farther ahead. So, sir, this has been wonderful. And I know we've talked about a whole bunch of different concepts here. So if we were to if if I was to put you on the spot and say, what is the one thing that you want people who are hearing this, and we're talking about self care this whole month? What is the one thing that you would like people to keep in mind about your conversation, but what you think is relevant for people who were trying to improve their fitness, trying to lose weight, trying to make these kinds of changes in their life

mindset. It's I think mindset is the most important when you're trying to improve your habits when it comes to fitness and nutrition, and other healthy habits in your life.

Love that. So really, it all starts with mindset, if you can get that organized, you're going to have success and the other things. And I think you've showed that in a few examples. So thank you for that. If people want to get ahold of you find out more about what you do or connect with you to either do your behavioral coaching or your personal training services or any other of the other services you offer. How can they reach you?

S for some J for Joker, G for George at s j g fit.com. That's my short email SKG at SJG fit.com.