Robyn Spurr

Personal Health and Weight Loss Coaching For Women

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The Freeing Power of Personal Rules

Without reminders + gentle nudges + bumpers to keep us in our lane, we will inevitably default to autopilot mode.

In other words, we will do what we’ve always done.

Autopilot works brilliantly when we have zero interest in changing our actions – but when it comes to self-improvement, it’s kryptonite.

If you’re serious about getting better at something, you’ll need..

1. Self-awareness
2. Accountability tools
3. Personal rules

Yes — rules.

Guidelines. Instructions. Behaviors. Habits. Whatever you want to call them.

The idea of setting rules to live by strikes fear in most people. We immediately recall all the times unfair or cruel rules were forced upon us – or the times we attempted to live under unbearable self-imposed rules (no eating after 6:00).

That is not what I’m talking about.

Below is a list of my current daily habits.

  • Go for a walk
  • Eat at least 5 servings of veggies
  • Keep a daily journal (3 things that would make today great + 3 things I’m grateful for and why)
  • Do at least 2 sets of one strength training exercise
  • Post EVERYTHING consumed on YouAte (a food journaling app)

I track each one of my daily habits in an app called Habit Share. My steps are tracked with Fitbit.

Why all the apps?

If you aren’t aware of what you’re doing, then it is extremely hard to change your life with any degree of consistency. Trying to build better habits without self-awareness is like flying blind.

Rules are often associated with a lack of freedom. But setting rules for yourself is completely different. Freedom is the whole point.

Self-imposed rules aren’t constraints, they’re behavioral boundaries you get to establish yourself, through your own experience and wisdom.

A good personal rule sets you free from having to stop and negotiate with yourself for the hundredth time on the same issues. Should I have a third drink? Should I go for a walk today? Should I order the salad?

Despite our fear of rules, acting in accordance with a well-considered personal rule does not feel constraining. Instead, it generates a profound feeling of power and independence.

Coach Tips:

  • Choose rules that make your life better and set you up for success. Rules that aren’t so difficult you can’t adhere at least 80% of the time.
  • Choose rules that add and enhance (eat a serving of veggies at dinner, go for a walk) rather than subtract (no sugar).
  • Experiment with short-term rules (14 days, the month of February). Be curious. Try. Test. Investigate.
  • Utilize accountability tools (Habit Share, Fitbit, YouAte, a coach 😃)
  • Choose rules that gently stretch you in the direction you want to go.
  • Most important, choose rules that feel like love not punishment.

💙Robyn

Interested in a one-on-one coaching relationship with me? It would be an honor to work with you if and when the time feels right.

To learn more about Personal Health Coaching click HERE. 

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Why Nature Makes Us Healthier, Happier and More Creative

I knew that spending time outside was good for me before reading Florence Williams’s, “The Nature Fix.”

To be honest, I wasn’t sure I’d learn anything new from the book.

I was wrong.

Williams decided to write the book after a move from Boulder, Colorado to Washington D.C. left her depressed and wondering if it had to do with the sudden shift to metropolitan living.

Nature, Williams concludes in the book, isn’t just something nice, it is a necessity – and one that is profoundly undervalued.

Researchers have found that time in nature can reduce blood pressure, anxiety, depression, stress, rumination and mental fatigue. It can also improve attention, memory, cognition, sleep, self-esteem and happiness. And the implications may stretch beyond the psychological benefits.

Surprisingly, as powerful as experiences in nature can be, not everyone benefits. Some people (around 15 or 20 percent), just don’t like nature and don’t get much out of it.

My city dwelling + London loving sister comes to mind. I suspect she is a member of this minority.

So how does nature work its wonders for the people who do like it? Williams concludes that “nature appears to act directly upon our autonomic systems, calming us, but it also works indirectly, through facilitating social contact and through encouraging exercise and physical movement.”

Even a small amount of time “can make us less aggressive, more creative, more civic minded and healthier overall.”

As little as 15 minutes in the woods has been shown to reduce test subjects’ levels of cortisol, the stress hormone. Increase nature exposure to 45 minutes, and most individuals experience improvements in cognitive performance.

To stave off depression, Finnish researchers recommend five hours a month in nature, minimum. A doable amount for most of us.

At the start of the year, I introduced a daily walking habit that has proven to be life changing. I’m happier. More energetic. More relaxed. More creative.

I must admit, I’ve been scratching my head about why I didn’t do it sooner.

When working with my clients on introducing new + healthier habits, we always start small.

Given the abundance of research pointing to the benefits of getting outside, consider how you might start small.

Is it possible to carve 15 minutes out of your day to get outside? For me, avoiding social media during the day was essential.

We suffer from an “epidemic dislocation from the outdoors,” Williams writes, and it’s destructive to our mental and physical health. The therapy is straightforward. “The more nature, the better you feel.”

XO ~Robyn

Interested in a one-on-one coaching relationship with me? It would be an honor to work with you if and when the time feels right.

To learn more about Personal Health Coaching click HERE. 

To schedule a Discovery Session click HERE.

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The REAL Reason Healthy Eating is Hard (and how to do it anyway)

The benefits of good nutrition and maintaining a healthy weight are clear. There’s no need to provide yet another list.

With so many compelling reasons to eat a healthy diet, why is it so difficult to actually do?

Hint: the answer is not more willpower or greater motivation.

One of the MAIN reasons eating a healthy diet is difficult is because JUNK FOOD IS DELICIOUS (+ widely available + inexpensive).

Steven Witherly is a food scientist who has spent the last 20 years studying what makes certain foods more addictive (and tasty) than others. Much of the science that follows is from his brilliant report, Why Humans Like Junk Food. According to Witherly, when you eat tasty food, there are two factors that make the experience pleasurable.

First, there is the sensation of eating the food. This includes what it tastes like (salty, sweet, umami, etc.), what it smells like, and how it feels in your mouth.

Food companies will spend millions of dollars to discover the most satisfying level of crunch in a potato chip. Their scientists will test for the perfect amount of fizzle in a soda. These factors all combine to create the sensation that your brain associates with a particular food or drink.

The second factor is the actual macronutrient makeup of the food—the blend of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates that it contains. In the case of junk food, food manufacturers are looking for a perfect combination of salt, sugar, and fat that excites your brain and gets you coming back for more.

The more junk food you eat, you more you crave it.

So how do you build the habit of eating less junk? How do you become a healthy eater?

Here are two simple strategies.

#1. Reduce exposure. Remove the cues.

The easiest way to become a healthy eater is to avoid buying processed and packaged foods altogether.

If you don’t own it, you can’t eat it.

The number one driver of behavior change is your environment.

Your environment has an incredible ability to shape your behavior. Nowhere is this more true than with food. What we eat on a daily basis is often a result of what we are presented with.

You can also reduce your exposure (or the triggers that often lead to a craving) by managing what you see on social media.

If your Instagram feed is bursting with cupcakes, you WILL crave cupcakes each time you see one.

The average person spends over two hours a day on social media. That’s a lot of cupcakes.

Full disclosure: I recently unfollowed a local French macaron shop because MACARONS!!!

I do not have superhuman willpower – or endless stores of motivation. What I do have is an environment designed to set myself up for success.

The best way to unwind an unwanted (“bad”) habit is to make it invisible and/or difficult.

Reduce exposure. Remove the cues. Increase the number of steps between you and the “bad” habit. Limit choices.

  • Don’t put the ice cream in your shopping cart. Don’t even go down the ice cream aisle.
  • Put half your restaurant meal in a to-go box immediately and close it up.
  • Get the decadent French macarons off your Instagram feed.
  • Stash the snacks in the back of a shelf that requires a chair to get to.
  • Wrap unhealthy foods in aluminum foil and healthy foods in plastic wrap.
  • Put fruit (and other healthy snacks) on display.
  • Repackage unhealthy snacks into smaller Ziploc bags or containers.
  • Use a small plate so getting seconds means having to get up.

#2 Never eat two unhealthy meals in a row.

A flexible healthy diet means making allowances for unhealthy food from time to time. I’m a Jersey girl. I love pizza and bagels and a good eggplant parmesan on occasion.

I am not a perfect eater. I don’t want to be a perfect eater. Delicious food brings me joy when eaten in moderation.

I have a simple rule that I try to follow: whenever I eat an unhealthy meal, I follow it with a healthy one.

The “never miss twice” rule helps to guide me back toward a healthy diet as quickly as possible.

Fall down. Get up.

You can take this same approach to almost anything in life. If you want to make a unwanted behavior more difficult, then increase the number of steps between you and the behavior.

Meanwhile, if you want to make a good behavior easier, reduce the number of steps between you and the behavior. For example, if you want to make it easier to go for a walk then lay out your shoes and walking gear the night before. One less step between you and your workout.

People who are experts at what you want to do/be/achieve are not willpower and motivation unicorns.

They’ve simply designed their environment in a way that aligns with their goals and developed habits that get them the results they want.

If five flavors of potato chips lived in my pantry, I would eat ALL THE CHIPS.

I do not have junk food resisting superpowers. 

I have less cravings because I rarely eat junk food.

I’ve build up healthy habits over the years that run on autopilot.

My environment supports my goals.

I use apps and tools and services that make healthy living easier.

If my husband buys cookies, they go in the basement – or in his office.

You can do it too. Superpowers not necessary.

XO ~Robyn

Interested in a one-on-one coaching relationship with me? It would be an honor to work with you if and when the time feels right.

To learn more about Personal Health Coaching click HERE. 

To schedule a Discovery Session click HERE.

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Beauty Sick Book Review

I sometimes struggle with reconciling my advocacy of body acceptance with the fact that I help women lose weight.

Can you respect your body and want to change it?

My answer is a resounding yes. More than ever.

If I didn’t believe this to be true, there is no way I could do this work with integrity.

Unwinding beauty sickness and appreciating what our bodies do FOR us is an essential component of well-being.

In her book, Beauty Sickness, Renee Englen, a professor at Northwestern University and head of the Body and Media Lab, very clearly and in a very compelling manner exposes the cultural epidemic of beauty sickness, the obsession with appearance, and how it affects or has affected most women in America.

Using scientific studies and interviews with women, young and old and from all different walks of life, she shows the disturbing scope of this problem. The stories of these women are heartbreaking and oh-so-familiar and I could see myself (particularly my younger self) in so many of them.

But Renee doesn’t just leave you with the realization of all the damage beauty sickness has wrought, she very gracefully lays out some extremely helpful and practical solutions to the problem.

1. Function over form. When we really stop to analyze how much we focus on appearance, it’s pretty astounding. Instead of focusing on what we (or others) look like, zero in on what our amazing bodies CAN DO (e.g. hug our loved ones, see a beautiful vista, sing a song, hike a trail, smell lilacs).

The way to take better care of your body is not by shaming it, it’s by being kind and practicing gratitude for all the things it does for you.

2. Love not hate. Please don’t listen to those who claim you have to hate how your body looks in order to motivate healthy behaviors. These claims ARE NOT supported by any type of scientific data.

3. Ask different questions. How do you want the world to be different when you leave it? What kind of person do you want to be? What do you want to be remembered for? Probably not great abs. Let the answers to these questions have a greater influence on how you spend your time + money + energy.

4. Media. Don’t consume media messages about the ideal body. Whether its TV shows, your Instagram feed, magazine covers, books – if it pushes the unobtainable, photoshopped ideal, don’t look at it and don’t think about it.

I recently revamped my Instagram feed to include ONLY people + businesses that promote acceptance and inclusivity. Posts that lift me up and inspire. Life changing.

Instead of fighting the poison after it’s already entered your system, change what you’re consuming.

5. Body Talk. Try not to talk negatively about your body, especially in front of children. Whenever we complain about our body we’re encouraging those around us to do the same.

“When we degrade our own bodies, we send the message to others that it’s acceptable for them to do so as well.”

6. Praise Character. When praising others, try not to focus on appearance.

This one is HARD.

We’re conditioned to praise appearance. What’s FASCINATING is the research shows that even a “positive” comment makes the recipient become more body conscious.

“That shirt looks so good on you,” reminds the wearer that her appearance is being critiqued.

Instead of praising appearance, praise character, what they’ve accomplished, who they are at the heart.

“Anything that draws a woman’s attention to the appearance of her own body or makes her feel as though her body is being evaluated can result in body shame.”

I will say, I found this book difficult to read on occasion. It challenges. It triggers. It asks you to reexamine deep-rooted beliefs and behaviors.

But – if you’re ready, it can also be a powerful catalyst for healing.

XO ~Robyn

Interested in a one-on-one coaching relationship with me? It would be an honor to work with you if and when the time feels right.

To learn more about Personal Health Coaching click HERE. 

To schedule a Discovery Session click HERE.