Wanted: professional help for the fitness challenged

When riding your Trikke isn’t enough.

When it comes to my eating habits, I’m a two year-old having a temper tantrum while trying to control something out of my grasp. So I decided to seek professional help.

In the coming weeks, some of the top Trikke trainers and health and fitness experts available will appear in this column in order to help me get a grip on my Six Month Fitness Challenge.

One of those experts is Russ Klettke, a certified fitness trainer, business writer and the author of A Guy’s Gotta Eat. He’s also a regular contributor to Hairloss.com (hair loss can be related to health).

In the article Lose the Junk Food, Lose the Calories, Klettke gives some great advice about cravings and the dilution method of mixing one’s favorite bad food with a good food, say potato chips and a salad (“chips are like croutons” is his point). That sounds like “guy” advice but point taken!

The article goes on to state that Americans consume 25% of their calories in junk food, mostly from sugary sodas. Recently, this American has had a thing for Green Tea Ginger Ale, which contains close to 36 sugar grams per 12 ounces. Ouch!

Since beating myself up and strict dieting isn’t helping, it’s time to consider the intellectual approach. I found this article (same site, same author), entitled The First Steps to Overcome Obesity, where eating out of habit is addressed.

“I’ve worked with many intelligent, self-sufficient, accomplished people,” says Michelle May, M.D., in the article. May is the author of Eat What You Love, Love What You Eat: How to Break Your Eat-Repent-Repeat Cycle. “Unfortunately they have developed habits that are self-reinforcing. The shame-blame paradigm doesn’t work at helping them to change their habits and lose weight.”

The shame-blame game never worked for me. Maybe it’s time to start a new habit: being kinder to myself. It’s a must if I’m to get anywhere with my plans and goals. Self incrimination doesn’t work; I’m tired of beating myself up.

So it’s back to some basics: taking it easy on myself and eating wisely, verses eating strictly. I’ve never been very disciplined, so why I thought the discipline approach would work is beyond me.