Episode 1: What is Weight-Neutral Coaching?

Research indicates that weight is not an effective indicator of health, yet we often assume it must be. Today’s episode explores a different approach to health and wellness, called weight-neutral coaching.

Episode Transcript:

INTRO MUSIC: Welcome to The Compassionate Wellness Podcast. I'm Alex Treanor. I'm a Nationally Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach, and I am so excited you're here. The wellness industry is full of do's and do not's, should's and should not's. But I like to take a different approach. I'll be sharing all things health and wellness from a joyful, real-life compassionate perspective. If you're ready to drop the cookie-cutter approach and create a life you truly love, while eating a cookie or two along the way, let's dive in.

Welcome to the first episode of my podcast. I am so excited about this. I'm excited to bring you health and wellness information, tools, resources, all the things. Before we jump in with the first episode, I thought I would just take a few moments to introduce myself.

My name is Alex Treanor, I am a health and wellness coach. I am certified through the National Board for Health and Wellness Coaches, which is the official credentialing agency for health coaches. I have a bachelor's degree in anthropology, which may not seem the most applicable on the surface. But anthropology is the study of people and cultures. And if you think about it, psychology really tells us the why behind human behaviors and we explain anthropology as being the how, which I think is very applicable to coaching because coaching is really the how, the how of behavior change, the how of making an impact in our health and wellness routines.

In addition to my anthropology degree, I have a master's degree in integrative wellness. During my graduate program I focused my studies on learning about weight stigma, disordered eating patterns, mindfulness, self compassion, and how all these things relate and come together.

On a more personal note, I am a wife to my wonderful husband and a dog mom to Rusty, who you may hear sometime in this podcast, I enjoy embroidery, cross stitching, hand lettering, pretty much any craft that your grandma would do, I'm probably super into it. I love going to the beach, being by the water. I have a recent obsession with Formula One, which if you follow me on social media at all you've probably sick of hearing me talk about, but it's a new thing for me, and I'm really into it. We are Ferrari people. Well, I'm a Ferrari person. My husband is a Mercedes person. But we are all about Formula One right now. And last, but definitely not least, I love a good chocolate chip cookie, you will probably hear me talk about chocolate chip cookies a lot on this podcast because I feel like life is better with a chocolate chip cookie.

For this first episode, I wanted to talk about something I'm really passionate about, which is a weight-neutral health and wellness coaching, what that is, what it means, and why it matters.

So before we jump in with what weight-neutral coaching is, I thought it may be helpful to just talk about coaching in genera. IT can be pretty nebulous and abstract, so I wanted to bring a little bit of context to what coaching is. The best analogy that I can think of for coaching is to think of it like a road trip. On this road trip, you are the driver. You are in the driver seat, you get the steering wheel. I, as the coach, am the passenger, your navigator seating next to you. Coaching is self-directed, so what that means, is that you as the driver are setting the destination. You are turning that steering wheel, and you are making every decision about where that car is going. You have ultimate control when you are enrolled in coaching

Coaching is also a partnership. We are riding together; we are in the same car. As a coach, I am not already at the destination telling you "Hey, why are you late? I need you to get. Here figure it out". That's not helpful. I am also not sitting outside the car watching you with a walkie-talkie saying, "A little more left. A little more right. Slow down. Speed up." A lot of my clients are moms. You may have a minivan full of children yelling; having someone outside that car directing you, gives no context to what is actually happening in that car, which is important when understanding how we're going to get to a destination. If you've got eight people asking "Are we there yet?" and wanting more Cheez-its that's going to be different than if you have a solo drive with your ideal playlist on. It's different context and that's important for coaching.

Coaching is also all about support and accountability. This is a long drive. Change takes time. We are not running around the corner to Target, although I'm in for a target run to you if you want that, but let's say we are going from New York to LA, right, this is a road trip. You need somebody who can help keep you alert and focused, have good conversation, keep the vibe up, have a good playlist on. You need a good DJ. That's that support and accountability when it comes to coaching.

The last thing I want to point out with this coaching relationship is that coaches are trained in behavior change in theory. You want a navigator who knows the map, you want someone who knows the route, and not just the route but the whole map, right? Someone who on this drive can say, "Hey, this is an important pitstop, we should stop here and look at this. This is going to this is going to mean something". We also want someone who can say, "That doesn't really matter, we can skip that. Let's keep going forward. We can leave that one behind". You want someone who knows the navigation, who knows what stops and sites are important and where we can move forward, and that's what a coach is really trained in.

Coaching really is for when you know what you want to do or where you want to go. But you're having a hard time getting there. The coaching process is the car. It's the actual vehicle that you're in. When we're on a road trip, can you walk from point A, where you are, to point B, where you want to go? Absolutely. Will it take longer? Yeah, absolutely. If we're walking from New York to LA, it's going to take a little bit longer than if we're driving. Will it be more enjoyable, that change process, when you have a coach? I would say most likely, I do make a pretty great playlist. I feel like having someone in your corner to make that route with you makes a huge difference.

Okay, so now that we know a little bit more about what coaching is, let's dive into what a weight-neutral approach is. Using a weight-neutral approach means that I don't believe that weight loss is necessary for overall health and wellness. The focus of weight-neutral coaching is really on the skills that we can develop. The skills that we focus on in coaching, mindful eating is the first one. And there's a lot to unpack with this, so I wanted to focus on this one for a moment. Mindful eating includes building awareness and using your internal body cues that tell you about your hunger, your fullness, your satisfaction. Are the foods fulfilling that you're eating? Those things are all important when we're talking about mindful eating. Mindful eating is also about removing the idea that some foods are good, and some foods are bad. And by association that you are then good or bad for eating them, that moral judgment that we associate with food. How many times have we had that thought, "oh, my gosh, I ate chocolate chip cookies today, I was so bad". Right? We say that! And when we were telling ourselves that, it's not helpful for our health and wellness. So part of mindful eating is taking away this idea that some foods are good, some are bad, and that you are then good or bad for what you eat.

Mindful eating is also about improving your relationship with food. Many of us, myself included have years of dieting experience, years of food rules. And even if you have not dieted, we all live submersed in diet culture, and that can leave us feeling afraid of some foods or feeling like we need to restrict some foods, which then also leads to disordered eating habits. So how often have we said, "Oh, I can't have cookies", and then you eat a cookie, because you're stressed and you had a crazy day. Then you say, "well, I ate one cookie, I might as well eat them all". And it spirals. And that that habit, that eating pattern, is also not helpful for our overall health and wellness. Focusing on mindful eating helps us to improve that relationship with food, take some of that fear out, and be better able to then regulate our eating habits.

In addition to mindful eating, we also focus on habits outside of nutrition. This would be things like moving your body in ways that you enjoy, being active in fun, enjoyable ways. Building mindfulness skills, things like meditation, journaling, stress management. It's also focused on size-acceptance, body image, how we think about ourselves really impacts the habits and routines that we put into place.

By using this weight-neutral approach, we're able to focus on overall well being. We talk about food, we talk about exercise or activity. We talk about sleep, stress, social connections, all of these things are important. And in addition, having this underlying theme of self-compassion through it all.

The last thing I want to talk about, now that we know what coaching is, and what a weight-neutral approach is, is why those two things are important to come together. Why do we use a weight-neutral approach with coaching? I'm going to be sharing some information from different research studies. So there's a systematic review that I'll be talking about, and also a randomized control trial, both of those will be linked in the show notes for you if you want to look at them.

The first reason why I use a weight-neutral approach is ultimately because you are more than a number on a scale, it seems so silly when we say it that way. But that's really what it boils down to. You are a whole human, a whole human! And this number doesn't tell us much right? Our life requires context to understand and for it to be fulfilling it has to be more than what you eat and how you move. There's so much more to you than that. My thoughts on why I use the weight-neutral approach is because it's all about quality and wholeness, quality in the foods that you're eating, not not just the quantity, the quality of them, how they make you feel, the quality of your life, the quality of your relationships, the richness that you've built in the fulfillment, all of these things that are important. A weight-neutral approach really opens the door for us to look at this holistic view of health, and really embrace all these dimensions of wellness, which include your physical, but also emotional, mental, spiritual, social, all these things are a part of you, and they need to be recognized.

The second reason that I use a weight-neutral approach, and I've probably said this already, but weight isn't a key indicator of health, it's actually a very inconsistent indicator of overall health. What we've seen is that weight loss does not always equal health improvement, and sometimes it doesn't equal health improvement. I want to talk about this randomized controlled trial. So what they did is they compared two interventions, one being a weight-loss approach to health and wellness, the other being a weight-neutral approach to health and wellness. They followed these participants for two years, what they found was that both interventions had positive changes. They saw positive change in total cholesterol, the cholesterol came down, physical activity went up, they were more active, they ate more fruits and vegetables had higher self esteem, higher quality of life. So there were a lot of positives from both approaches. Where they differed, the weight-neutral approach, compared to that weight-loss approach, had actually a larger reduction in LDL cholesterol, which of the two collaterals, that's the bad cholesterol, that's the one that we want to reduce. So they saw larger reduction. And they saw greater improvements in intuitive eating, which was one of the things that they also measured.

The weight-loss approach, the thing that it was different in, was that the participants lost more weight. That's it.

So if we're looking at it, they had similar health benefits. The only thing that the weight-loss approach had that the weight-neutral didn't is that number came down, weight came down. But all the other health indicators were similar. I think it's important to also point out that with the weight-neutral approach, seeing that greater improvement in intuitive eating, we also know there's a lot of benefits to that to eating mindfully, and to reducing some of the bias or the stigma around our food choices. So that is an important benefit as well.

In addition to this, I think it's also important to note that, not in this study, but just in general dieting isn't shown to have a long term impact on losing weight. It's not always sustainable. There's actually a health risk associated with weight cycling, which is yo-yo dieting. When you lose weight, you gain it, you lose it, you gain it. That can actually be really hard on your body and that has increased health risks of that as well.

The third reason that I use a weight neutral approach is from this systematic review. I think this is important because it really summarizes a bunch of different research articles together. What this article says is that there was a physical improvement when using a weight-neutral approach compared to a weight-loss approach. We talked a little bit about that in the other study. They saw improvements in blood pressure and lipid levels, which is your cholesterol, your triglycerides. In addition to physical health, there were psychological health benefits from a weight-neutral approach. This includes things like self esteem, depressions, self-compassion, even those were were improved with a weight-neutral approach compared to a weight-loss approach. And the third thing that they noted was a behavioral benefit. So this is like the actions we actually take. Using a weight-neutral approach had a positive impact on improving diet quality, the foods that we're eating, getting enough fruits and vegetables getting enough protein, it also decreased disordered eating. So that might be stress or emotional eating, binge eating, diet restriction, that's a disordered eating quality. It also improved physical activity, as well. So all these different behaviors were also improved with a weight-neutral approach.

Those three reasons really boil down to ultimately, as a coach, I believe that there is more to life than a number on a scale, and that your health and wellness routine should enhance your life; I can guarantee weight is the least exciting thing about you. I want you to be able to soak up all the fun, all the joyful moments, all these things that you truly enjoy and that make your life rich and fulfilling and happy. Instead of focusing on what you need to take away or what needs to be restricted all the time.

I hope this gives you a little bit more context, a little more clarity on what coaching is, what a weight-neutral approach means and why it's beneficial. I am so excited to be on this podcast journey with you. If there are topics you're interested in, things you want to hear on the show, I would love to hear from you. I will include my contact information in the show notes. And thank you so much for joining me on this first episode.

OUTRO MUSIC: Thanks for joining me on this episode of the compassionate wellness podcast. If this message resonated with you, please share it with someone you care about. I'd love to connect with you as well follow me on Instagram @alextreanor.coaching, or visit my website alextreanorcoaching.com. And as a reminder, Treanor spelled kind of goofy, it's T-R-E-A-N-O-R. For any references mentioned in this episode, be sure to check out the show notes. I hope you have a wonderful day and don't forget to make time for something you enjoy.

References:

Dugmore, J.A., Copeland, G.W., Niven, H.E., & Bauer, J. (2020). Effects of weight-neutral approaches compared with traditional weight-loss approaches on behavioral, physical, and psychological health outcomes: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Nutrition Reviews, 78(1), 39-55. https://doi.org/10.1093/nutrit/nuz020

Mensinger, J.L., Calogero, R.M., Strange, S., & Tylka, T.L. (2016). A weight-neutral versus weight-loss approach for health promotion in women with high BMI: A randomized-controlled trial. Appetite, 105, 364-374. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2016.06.006