How I Am Helping My Friend Reach His Fitness & Mental Health Goals
My friend who I met from a business group, Chris, is on a fitness and mental health journey.
Dealing with depression and PTSD, Chris wanted to make a change in his life.
As he is working on his own business, he believed he needed to get both his mind & body in check so that he could give his all.
So Chris decided to pursue a more active lifestyle as his outlet: where he could feel better in the long-term, rather than the short-term gratification from stress or emotional eating.
Essentially, he wanted to exercise his depression away.
So Chris and I set up a few goals:
- Lose a total of 150lbs. Chris wanted to go back to as close as to how his body looked when he was younger.
- Build a foundation for better eating habits. Chris followed 500 calorie crash diets in the past. My mindset is to “eat as many calories as you can that also helps you lose weight”. This meant he could get away with something like a 3000 calorie diet (based on his height, body weight, and activity level goals).
- Use exercise as a healthier outlet in managing stress. As he and I have dealt with emotional eating, I wanted to help him use exercise as a better tool to have in his arsenal.
- Building stress resilience in exercise. Exercise has been shown to potentially improve resilience to stress.
So with these in mind, we set out to work together.
Since he and I live in different states, I am in direct contact with him through Zoom Calls and frequent text messaging.
With the Zoom calls, we decided to sit down and record our conversations so that he not only can look back, but we can help others on a similar journey.
You can watch one of my recent talks with Chris here:
After watching this, you’ll notice that Chris and I are taking SMALL steps to reach his goals.
In building new habits when dealing with depression, we need to tread LIGHTLY to engrain these habits into us.
We can’t go hard or quit things cold turkey.
We need to take it SLOW.
With that being said, here are some tips I recommend going on your own fitness and mental health journey:
- Build the foundation first. For example, you need to build healthy habits around eating first, to understand the benefits of proteins, carbs, and fats. Another example would be to start by doing light exercise and just MOVE. Then build on that foundation.
- Make micro-adjustments over time. Once you get the foundation down, you can make adjustments over time. Small steps move mountains in the long-term.
- Track progress in a few ways. Don’t just track the scale: take progress pictures, monitor how you feel after your workouts. Monitor how you’ve been feeling this week compared to last week. Check the progress you’ve been making at the gym.
By just following these steps, we can slowly change our body and mind.
Changing your thoughts and actions begins with small steps.
You may not see it yet, but you will in time. ;)
Thank you for reading. If you have any questions, comments, or insights for myself or for Chris, let’s discuss!
Until next time!
PS: If you would like an extra kick in the ass on your fitness and mental health journey, you can sign up for our Fitness for Mental Health email list (and get our mental health eBooks to go along with it). You can sign up here!
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