‘Getting To Grips With Men’s Health‘ is the first of three podcasts on the subject of men, their health (both mental and physical) and other weight related issues.
Joining Aisling Connolly is Robbie O’Neill. Robbie has a long and extensive career in weight loss and weight management with Motivation. After consulting and managing clinics, Robbie now heads up the training department here at Motivation and he brings a wealth of experience to the podcast table.
In this podcast Aisling and Robbie look at how men approach weight loss in general and the changes men can make to their lifestyles, changes that will have a marked impact on their lives.
Male clients tend to come in when they have a significant amount of weight to lose rather than with female clients as we tend to see them earlier in the weight loss cycle.
Men are generally goal orientated and at the beginning they will focus a lot on the scales – checking on how much weight they lost that week. We focus instead on the benefits accruing from losing the weight.
A great example from Robbie is the keen golfer who reports back that he is now hitting the ball further than he has in a long time (after losing weight).**
This is one example of the small things they (men) want to get back. Rather than the big things – that number on the scale – it’s the small things that count; I’m able to walk on a Sunday with my family. I used to sit in the car and wait for them to come back. I didn’t want them to see how much I was struggling.
On Exercise
One of the questions often asked is what is the best exercise to lose weight and our reply is always, something that you enjoy.
Do men feel under pressure to look a certain way?
You look at TV, the sportsman you hold in high esteem and you want to be like them. You don’t vocalise it but you work towards that. For some men, they want to look a certain way so they put there all into it, that is, until you can’t do anymore.
This is what we call perfectionism and what is interesting is that when you play it back to the client that they display strong perfectionism traits, it’s definitely not something that they are aware of.
Then you explain that it’s all or nothing.
I’m either doing it or I’m not.
I’m going to be that way or I’m not going to be that way.
Perfectionism has a huge impact on their weight loss and life in general. The key is to change a little bit and be that best that we can be.
How important talking is for our health.
In social situations it seems more acceptable for men not to talk. Men tend to sit back and let things happen and not talk about it so much. In the aforementioned social situations, men don’t tend to look around and think aloud ‘I’d like to be like him’ whereas for women there is that feeling of being judged in social situations that they need to look a certain way.
As a consequence, for men, it appears to be a little easier so they allow (weight gain) to go a little further.
Click the play button below to listen to Getting To Grips With Men’s Health.
**Why not check out our Assist Pillar pdf – The Golf Report: Swing Into Health And Lower Your Golf Handicap. Click here to get your FREE copy.
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