#4 - Negative Body Image | Getting Results

- Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Virtue podcast. I am your host, Shona Virtue. I am so excited to be here today because we are talking about feelings of overwhelm and not getting results in your training and your health endeavors. (upbeat music) I'm particularly excited about this one because it comes up so much. I get so many messages about this. So many messages about feeling overwhelmed because we are honestly inundated with information on health practices that we should be achieving and doing each week. And then on the same token, this feeling of not getting results and it can be a very frustrating feeling if you are putting so much effort into your training and yet at the same time, you're just like, what the hell? So today's podcast is all about providing you with effective strategies for managing this feeling but also for getting results. And I'm gonna talk to you today about what that feeling of overwhelm is, the three things that you're probably not considering about this overwhelm and this not getting results specifically about not getting results. And I know that you're going to walk away with something that you can integrate into your current practices that will help you. And if you don't walk away with that, I want you to message me and say, you know what, Shona, I didn't. I didn't take anything away. I want my 35 minutes back whatever length of this podcast will be. And I will say, unfortunately, I can't give you that back but let's have a chat and we can have a chat, you know what I mean? Alrighty, let's get on with the podcast. We're going to begin with a quick definition of overwhelm so that we're all on the same page here. Even though I'm sure we've all felt it at some point in our lives. So the term overwhelm can be defined as emotionally or mentally overburdened to be deeply affected or to feel swamped by emotions or thoughts to the extent that one struggles to cope or manage. So for example, someone might feel overwhelmed by grief or stress or anxiety. We know what it feels like. We've probably all felt it at some point in our life and it comes up very consistently with also not feeling as though you're getting results. And this is a common message that I get. In my DMs is, show no, I don't know what to do. I'm really trying so hard. I'm doing XYZ and I'm not seeing results. And so the point of bringing these two things together, because I could definitely do a whole podcast and simply just not getting results and then a whole podcast in isolation on the feeling of overwhelm. But the reason they go together is because I think that not getting results is often a catalyst for the feelings of overwhelm. When you feel as though you're not getting results, the effort that you might be putting into your health, behaviors and endeavors are not justified. So that effort feels suddenly like, wait, I'm doing all these things about it and what's the point? And so I understand that. So results are a really important aspect. Now I could sit here and try to tell you to like, you know, connect to the sensation of exercise and just enjoy it for the act of moving your body. And that is absolutely true. That is absolutely true. And it's a point that has, I have definitely raised many, many times. But today I want to talk about potential reasons for why you're not getting results. But specifically in relation to this feeling and this relationship between overwhelm. Because when that emotion comes up, the first thing that we have to do is honor the emotion. Often what happens, and I've spoken to many of you about this stuff in the DMs before, is often you get that feeling of overwhelm and what do you do? You try to add more. You go, it's because I'm not doing enough. It's because I'm not doing this. And so instead of actually stopping for a second and trying to allow that emotion to subside in some way, we're often scrambling to think about, I feel this way and I'm not getting results because I'm not doing this. I'm not eating enough protein or I'm not integrating that. And the problem on top of that is that then you open up social media to try and distract you from these uncomfortable feelings and you open it up and you're inundated with further information. Now when you're in a moment like this, a moment of overwhelm pours first because we need less, not more. And I'm going to talk you through the steps even though you're probably like, "Well, isn't that more?" But first and foremost, the most important thing is to pours and take a deep breath. Now I know that maybe sounds patronizing, but I don't mean it in a way of, you know, just take a deep breath and let's just kind of carry on. I mean genuinely take a long inhale and a slow exhale. Regulate the nervous system because we cannot take any logical steps if we haven't first addressed the heightened level of emotion because that heightened level of emotion is going to skew our perception of the situation and I'm going to talk about it in a second. But there are three things that I want you to focus on immediately. Okay, so you've taken your breath, but here are three things that you're probably not considering when you're looking at overwhelm and the feeling of not getting results. Here's what you're going to do. The first thing you're going to think about is your data collection. A lot of you collect terrible data. And what I mean by that is a lot of you will collect only one data point and that is your weight, whether it's going up or going down. And that's not a bad thing. Trends in weight are fine and they're great to collect their one data point, but they are only one data point. And they're not enough because particularly for female bodies, we are experiencing the menstrual cycle. And that can impact the weight gain, the weight fluctuations. Now in addition to that, food, sodium levels, sleep, this can all interact with our weight. So if you're not collecting any other data and you're just purely going on weight alone, you're not going to get a clear picture. And what happens when we can't see properly, right? If you just like cover your eyes and try and walk through the streets of London, I think very shortly you're going to feel overwhelmed. Overwhelmed with the intensity of the people you're not seeing, you're getting bumped into things you're feeling out of control. And essentially that's what's happening on any health and fitness journey, whether that is weight loss, whether that is fat loss, whether that is hypertrophy, change of body composition. If you have your eyes half closed here through poor data collection or through only collecting one data point, you are going to feel overwhelmed. And then finally, what variables could be impacting your results? That you're not tracking. So step one, what variables are you collecting? I'm only collecting weight. Okay, we need to change that. So what are you not collecting then? I guess I'm not really tracking my sleep. Interesting. Your sleep is one of those variables that could be impacting your results, that you're currently not tracking. In addition to sleep, what about protein? What about hydration? What about the emotional journey that you're experiencing throughout your week? How about food patterns in relation to those emotions? How about weight lifted? Now weight lifted and all of the ways in which your body is improving on that front is going to tie in 2.2. So the power of self esteem on perception. As I said right now, we're talking about three things that you're possibly not considering. First one was data collection. Second one is the power of self esteem on perception. There is a meta-analysis that I will link in the show notes and show you. But essentially the findings of this meta-analysis, or basically they were looking at body dysmorphic disorder and how it interacts with low self esteem. There are several things that they were trying to look for. They wanted to know if a low self esteem was related to body dysmorphic disorder and how much it really interacted with the outcomes, with the severity as well. So some of the findings or the conclusions that were drawn from this meta-analysis and like I said, I will put it in the show notes so that you can access it. Low self esteem is a significant characteristic of body dysmorphic disorder and this is not just because of depressive symptoms. Now, BDD is not only about negative feelings towards one's appearance, but it also relates to broader negative feelings about oneself. Can I read that again? BDD is not only about negative feelings towards one's appearance, that is a common misconception. So it may manifest in that way, but it also relates to a broader negative feeling about one's self, hold that thought in the back of your mind. Now, the result suggests that treatment and prevention strategies for BDD should focus on improving self esteem and challenging underlying negative beliefs about oneself. Now, we did talk about challenging beliefs, challenging our thought patterns, challenging our narratives in the previous episode. Was it previous episode? No. Before that. No, it was the previous episode. The stories we tell ourselves, it's very cognitive behavioural, therapy-based. But this is so, so important to recognise. What is the current state of your self esteem? And if you are in a low place, you have to know that it is going to impact your perception of the physical appearance of your body. That's huge. That is really huge. You really think about the implications of that. That when you're looking in the mirror, depending on how you feel about your self, your current state of self esteem, not just how you feel about the way you look. So remember that. It's not just about the way you feel, about how you look, it's how you feel globally about yourself. So we have to acknowledge other things that are going on in our life that could be impacting our self esteem. And this is where obviously therapy can play a huge role. But what if you can't afford that right now? What if you are absolutely stretched? Cost of living is rising. I recognise that every time someone says, make sure you go to a therapist. Obviously, if you think that you are experiencing BDD symptoms, body disorder symptoms, and they are impacting your life, then please, please, like the recommendation is to go speak to your GP, go and get a referral, get yourself to a psychologist. That is definitely the first and foremost recommendation. But I recognise we don't have time and we don't have money. So what can you do? This is by all means not a cure for BDD, this is not what I am saying here. What I am trying to say is, if you feel as though you have low self esteem, what can you do on a budget without therapy, until you get to a point where maybe you can afford it. And I would highly recommend looking at your budget and going, okay, I might need to maybe for the next couple of months, I'm going to scrimp on going out and I'm actually going to like put some money aside so that I can see a psychologist, even if for a few sessions. One thing I will say as well is when you go and speak to a therapist or honestly any professional, healthcare professional, if you're going to see a trainer in fact, not for BDD, but for anything and you're having financial issues, tell them straight away and just say, hey, I'm struggling for money so I'm not going to be able to afford more than three sessions with you or more than two sessions with you. It doesn't mean that in the future I'm not going to come back and try, you know, and want to train with you or want to work with you or want to practice with you. It just means right now I'm having a rough time, I've saved up this much money. What can you give me that I can take away from these sessions that will enable me to continue? We're all human beings, healthcare professionals ideally have gotten into the business because they care about people and they care about helping people. You're better off being honest because if they can provide you with something that you're going to be able to take away and make use of and really stretch out. So coming back to my tip on self-esteem, the biggest things that have helped me, that have helped others, that have helped me when I've gone through breakups, intense, intense breakups that have like shattered my self-esteem, sport, skill acquisition and focusing on what you have achieved and what is around you. So in other words, gratitude, yes, but I'm going to unpack that just a little bit so that we're a little bit more clear on these things. Sport is a huge one, not just because of the act of acquiring the skill within the sport and the sense of, wow, I'm using my body, I'm doing exercise, I feel good, those aside. The thing that I think is beautiful about sport, even if it's an individual sport, even if you're going in and doing just gymnastics or just rock climbing or just something that's very individual, is that there's always a community and as human beings, we need community. We need it. It really impacts not just our psychological health but our physiological health as well. The community of sport and I turned to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, I turned to wrestling during breakups and those things were incredibly helpful and I will always have a special place in my heart for those sports, not just, not just because of what they do for me physically but because of the community that builds around them and a lot of people come to these sports because they're searching for that community as well. So there's a really beautiful connection that can occur through sport that helps to lift your sense of belonging which can improve those feelings of self-esteem. Second is skill acquisition. So if you are not a sporty person, that's fine, respect, I understand that. Okay, so skill acquisition might be for you because it's still going to help you with connecting to some kind of community. Maybe that's chess, maybe that is cooking, whatever it may be, if you can aim towards something that involves skill acquisition around other people, learning from a mentor. As you start to build and improve and increase those skills, that is going to build your self-esteem in other parts of your life. So yes, maybe your romantic relationships are crumbling, okay, but this too shall pass. We know that this is going to pass. It honestly does. I can tell you now, on the other side of many, many bad relationships, many failed things, it does pass. But in the meantime, building up your sense of self through skill acquisition in other ways, through mastery can be so insanely powerful on that self-esteem. And then as I said, gratitude, I guess I'm grateful that my lungs have air in them, like no, no, that's not what I'm talking about here, particularly not if you're really in the depths of low self-esteem. But ideally, you can connect with people around you who may help to distract you from certain experiences that you're going through, just to give you some respite. And it's through that respite that we can start to regulate our nervous system and things get better. And through that we can then find this connection to things that we're grateful for, which might just be other people in our lives, other situations, our work, our skills that we've acquired. Summary. Power self-esteem on perception. Incredibly powerful. So if you're feeling overwhelmed with not getting results, be honest with yourself about where your self-esteem is currently sitting. And let's normalize this idea of self-esteem fluctuating for us as human beings. It does do that. So it's okay, but it's about being honest with ourselves that that is the case, and it could be impacting the reflection that you're seeing in the mirror. We're going to focus on improving that self-esteem through potentially three mechanisms. Sport, skill acquisition, and as I said, special gratitude. It came not just the pseudo-happiness gratitude. Three things you're probably not considering. We said data collection. We said the power of self-esteem on perception. And this final one that I'm going to talk about is lowering stress. And we're going to do this through four mechanisms. The first is breathing practices. Like I said, the second you feel that sensation of overwhelm. And I know you felt it before. You know, you might be in the gym or you might be training or you might be waking up and looking in the mirror and just feeling like what the fff. And that emotion starts to rise. You feel the tears well up behind your eyes, acknowledge it, honor it, part of the human experience. That is your cue to sit with it, not to run away from it. So breathing practices can be really useful there. Big inhale in, full exhale out. Working on that two by one breathing to help regulate the nervous system, to bring us back. And stress point two, social media use. I probably don't need to go into detail here. But when I remind people to do this, they're like, oh, yeah, actually you're right. When we're really honest with ourselves about how and when we're using it, you know, some things can come up. We're like, okay, you know what, yeah, you're probably right. I have been maybe using this in the wrong way. Social media, we know that it causes us to compare a lot of upward social comparisons as opposed to downward social comparisons. Although there's a lot of traumatic content that gets posted online now. So maybe for a lot of us, you know, we're still seeing a lot of downward social comparisons. But regardless, either way, those comparisons can start to make us feel shitty. And as I've said many times before, it's human nature to compare yourself. We live in an independent universe, interdependent universe. It's very relational. It's understandable that that's going to be a natural mechanism of living in that type of space. Trying to tell people to not compare themselves to others is very, I think it's a little bit redundant, to be honest. It's like saying, don't breathe too much, okay? Just don't breathe too much. It's natural. So with that in mind, we have to self-regulate some of the things that are going to be healthy comparisons for us. And social media use can be one of those things where it's like a drug, right? Where you're taking a human act and you're giving it kind of like junk comparisons, I would say. They lack context, they lack purpose a lot of the time. They're just strictly like, look at my great life. It might be better than yours. That's not the fault of the content creator, actually. They're just sharing things that they feel proud and happy about. If you have a photo album, who remembers photo albums, you know, you're not putting in the bad ones. Maybe they were all at the back. They're sort of like falling out of the book. I mean, I'm really demonstrating my age here, but for anyone listening, that's super young photo albums. You need to print out your photos and stick them in a book and you'd have loads of them. If you go to your parent's house or your grandparents house, like, that's the way that you look at photos. That's your social media feed is, your photos. And they're of yourself or your family or people in your close-knit community. They're not of other random people living great lives. So unless you're a photographer, and that's what you're taking photos of. But in that, you're looking at still at photos that you think are great. You're looking through them and you're going, yeah, I mean, collect. And then all the bad ones, they just got pushed to the back, right? They just got pushed to the back of the folder or they're like, not even in there. They're in some box in an attic somewhere and they're absolutely terrible and you barely look at them. On social media, that's the same thing that's going on, but it's of strangers. And so you're just looking at how great their lives are. But it's obviously going to impact us. Now we consume it kind of in a slightly numb way a lot of the time, right? Like just falling into a scroll hole, looking through. We can justify that we're, oh, yeah, but I follow these health pages. I follow Huberman. He always gives me a health tip. I mean, he posted this morning something of him walking through nature and I just sighed because I was like, oh, it's so beautiful. I wish I could walk through that this morning. How about that? Social media use. Please be more concerned with it. If we go back to our point about data collection, how are you collecting data? Maybe social media use could be something that you could really track and really make an effort to track. If self-esteem is something that's impacting you, stress is impacting you, then that probably is a data point that would be worth collecting and tracking it without judgment for a period of time. So maybe for a week and then looking back on it and going, oh, yeah, actually I have spent many, many hours in this app. This is probably not ideal. This be impacting in some way how I'm perceiving my body. I think it is. How about we shift this data point to actually only consuming it at lunch time three times a week? That might be a bit hard. Let's say every day at lunch time for 15 minutes instead, right? So don't try and go cold turkey immediately, but it's like, I'm only going to have this one period of time. I look through, okay, cool, done and you track those data points over time. Nervous system regulation. As I said, lowering stress, breathing practices are probably one of the best ways to do that. But we can also consider practices that are aimed at asking us to pause for a moment. Yoga practices, mindfulness practices are huge for this. So if you were to look at your week or your month, how much are you really putting that stuff in to your schedule? If the truth is not much because you're so focused on results and you associate results with hard work that hurts, sweat, muscle burning, aggressive, intense work, and that's the only avenue that you think you're going to achieve results, then you haven't considered the fact that you could be increasing your inflammation, right? So looking broadly on a macro level of like what you're actually putting your effort into across your weeks is really important. And then last, but certainly not least, what is happening in your relationships or potentially a lack thereof? Attachment theory has some very interesting implications for yes, our stress, but also our physiology or how that then starts to interact with our physiology. So it is incredibly important to consider the idea of relationships impacting our life and therefore increasing or decreasing our stress, let's say increasing in this case. And then that having implications on our physiology over time, now whether that's inflammation, whether that's sleep dysregulation, whether that's appetite changes, all of these things can be impacted by the quality of our relationships. That's why the bio-psychosocial model is so important because we want to look at these things not just from the physical perspective, but from the psychological and the social perspective too. That is the way that we're going to eventually start to get results. Let's have a quick recap. Three things you're probably not considering, data collection and within that point I want to remind you of the three things to consider. What variables are you collecting? What variables or data points are you not collecting? And what variables could you be collecting that are impacting your results? We also want to focus on trends, not the micro-element, the micro-changes that occur through the data. Point number two, the power of self-esteem on perception or a self-esteem on self-perception, remembering that low self-esteem is a significant characteristic of body dysmorphic disorder. And this is not just because of depressive symptoms, right? It is not just about negative feelings towards one's appearance, but also relates to a broader negative feelings about one's self and that's really important. How are we going to improve that self-esteem, potentially through sport, potentially through skill acquisition, and that doesn't have to be sport? And then of course, focusing on what you have achieved, what is around you, gratitude yes, but also with a little pinch of reality on areas that we might want to start to improve on. And that comes back to your data collection, considering maybe relationships as well. And then finally, we've got lowering stress, breathing practices, social media use, nervous system regulation. And finally, what is happening in your relationships, taking an honest look at whether the relationships in your life are nourishing you or taking away from you? And I say that, not as a blame perspective, we aren't looking at it like, oh, yeah, actually I have toxic people in my life, I need to get rid of them. It's more like looking at where could I also be contributing to the toxicity of this relationship, of the quality of this relationship, that's probably a whole podcast in and of itself. Alrighty. Thank you so much for joining me today. I have really enjoyed this chat with you guys. I hope that you've been able to take something away from it. If you have, let me know, please leave a rating that it's super helpful for the podcast, gets this stuff out there. If you think that it's helpful, go ahead and share it. If you found it helpful for yourself, if you think that it's going to help someone else spread the love and yeah, have a great week.