21/10/2022
Exercise for your mental health?take a read
Exercise improves your mental health, its true, we have heard! But what people neglect to tell you is that its not the same for each person and each condition and if we tried to treat everyone the same it can actually have the opposite affect. 😬😬😬
I have a few clients with different conditions and I wanted to explain how I work with them, so here goes..
I have a client with OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) she first started with me to get a bikini body👙for her summer holidays ☀️🏝️ so I made a plan that involved a calorie deficit, higher protein, gym 3 days a week, over 10,000 steps daily🏋🏼♀️🏃♀️, sounds simple but what I wasn't aware at the time was that my clients ocd issues centred around control & perfection, she also didn’t have a good relationship with food. Because of this she wasn’t able to see the improvements she was making instead she could only see the negative things, she was getting frustrated with the calorie counting and even started to try and beat her calorie deficit and steps every day which lead to her not eating enough!! she was exhausted, annoyed and lacked confidence in the gym 😴😤
Thats when I decided I needed to do change things up for her. We stopped the calorie and step counting right away ⏱️✋🛑, instead I made her a list of foods she could have through the week and now we focus on having a healthier lifestyle and not being on a “diet” 🥗🍱. she now walks for pleasure out in nature 🍁🍂which helps sooth the symptoms and she enjoys doing it. In the gym i found the exercises that were right for her. 🏋🏼♀️🤸♀️💪🏽
Now we do strength training 💪🏽 She is much happier and comes to the gym for her mental health and not for the bikini body (although she will get that too 😉) and for the days the negative thoughts come back I keep videos for her (with her permission) to see the difference and the improvements she has made!
OCD is personalised to everyone just like any other mental or physical health issue. make sure your trainer knows this and is able to adapt to YOUR needs!
If this sounds familiar and you want more information drop me a DM 📩