Robyn Spurr

Personal Health and Weight Loss Coaching For Women

Habits

By

Make a Move

If I’m being perfectly honest, I’ve felt somewhat paralyzed over the past few months. The pandemic restrictions are lifting (hooray) at the same time I’m making frequent trips to New Jersey to help care for my Mom. Planning ahead has been tricky at best. 

  • Should I reactivate my gym membership?
  • Plan for a vacation? 
  • Commit to that party? 
  • Take my business back to full capacity? (This one is happening SOON!)

It’s a weird place to be. Not knowing is downright disorienting. But indecision and staying stuck feels TERRIBLE.

So last week, I decided to make one simple decision around fitness. To commit to Pilates twice/week when in Colorado. 

My first Pilates session felt like an act of self-love. Like an important vote cast in favor of my health and well-being.

The benefit of making a move (ANY move) when you’re feeling stuck is that it creates momentum and can put in place a chain of events. That single Pilates session inspired a search for my Fitbit which is happily living on my wrist again (and will FOR SURE motivate me to get more steps). Feeling stronger + fitter and moving more will elevate my mood and positively impact additional choices. 

If you’re feeling paralyzed/unsure/stuck, ask yourself what your next move is. Big. Small. Doesn’t matter. Just take action – and let the momentum carry you forward.

💙 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.

By

You Probably Won’t “Conquer” Emotional Eating – and That’s Okay

Many of my clients tell me they want to eliminate emotional eating forever.

As someone who has struggled with emotional eating, I completely understand the desire to make this behavior go away forever. To never feel compelled to turn to food for soothing or stress relief or out of boredom again.

Some people get there, but most don’t – and that’s okay. You can make mountains of progress without conquering emotional eating altogether.

In my opinion, it makes more sense to work towards less frequent and less intense episodes of emotional overeating. Attempting to “end” emotional overeating once and for all sets us up for disappointment. Any time we overeat, we feel as though we’ve failed. And feeling like a failure is not motivating.

When we work on our emotional overeating from a place of compassion + “aim for a little better”, here’s what tends to happen:

* We build better ways of coping with stress in general. We start adding tools to the toolbox. Instead of JUST eating, we have many more options, even if we still keep eating in the toolbox as one choice.

* We start organizing our lives to remove the stressors we don’t need and can control (e.g. whether we write the holiday letter this year).

* We start realizing that we are less helpless, hopeless, and powerless than the story we told ourselves in the past.

* We cope less with food.

When we DO cope with food:

* We’re consciously aware of it and stay much more “checked in”.

* Eating episodes are less epic and less intense. We eat one chocolate bar instead of three + we’ll often be able to stop well before the point of fullness. We’ll often get to a “that’s enough; I got what I needed” place much more quickly.

* We’re able to recover from any eating episodes more quickly.

* We bring more gentleness, kindness, and compassion to ourselves in our difficult moments.

Rather than “I’m a weak sack of crap”, we think “Hey friend, you’re having a rough time right now, huh? What can we do to calm down and feel better? I’m here with you, you’re OK, we’ll get through this together.”

So rather than “all or nothing, conquer this forever”, shoot for “a little less, a little better, a little bit at a time”.

And maybe you WILL conquer emotional eating forever – but if you don’t, it’ll be way better than it was. 

💙 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.

By

Eliminating Triggers

The path to changing our behavior has very little to do with resolve.

We achieve control, not through willpower but by finding ways to take willpower entirely out of the equation.

The central force for eliminating bad habits, according to social psychologist Wendy Wood, author of “Good Habits, Bad Habits,” is friction. In other words, making bad habits inconvenient.

She cites the ways in which increased friction has produced a decline in smoking: laws that ban it in restaurants, bars, airplanes, and trains; taxes that have helped triple the price of cigarettes in the U.S. in the past twenty years; the purge of cigarettes from vending machines, and of tobacco ads from TV and the radio.

We can apply the same concept to eating behaviors. But first, I think it’s important to explore the science behind cravings.

In an ideal world, your desire to eat would only be triggered by the internal signals that come up from your body to your brain.

Hungry. Seek food!

Except we no longer need to seek food. And our desire to eat is triggered by so much more than physical hunger. We’re bombarded with food all day every day and images of food wherever we turn.

The main problem we face is that seeing + smelling + thinking about food creates an effect that mimics what we experience when we’re physically hungry.

When you see + smell + imagine food, all the same processes that happen when you need food occur. The signals that reach your brain through your senses activate a neurological cascade that result in a surge of insulin + a drop in blood glucose. Lower blood glucose tells your brain you need to eat. Additionally, your stomach relaxes so you have a bigger space for food + need more to make it feel full.

This happens in response to simply seeing, smelling or thinking about food. Which was super helpful back when food was scarce. Today though, not so much.

If you’ve ever wondered why using willpower to overcome a craving feels like pushing a boulder up a hill, this is why. When we don’t respond to the cascade of biological events with food – it feels kind of terrible. Even when we don’t need food.

The most effective way to control our cravings is to eliminate triggers as much as possible.

Since Halloween is just a few days away, here are a few tips specific to Halloween candy.

  • Don’t buy candy until the day before Halloween (or the day of)
  • Have someone in your family hide it if it’s already been purchased
  • Buy something you don’t like
  • Leave the leftovers in a bowl outside at the end of the night (they will ABSOLUTELY disappear)

Bottom line, make healthy options convenient + visible and unhealthy options inconvenient + out of sight.

💙 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.

By

Punk Rock Eating

Why is the obesity epidemic continuing to spiral out of control?

We know that being obese makes us more likely to have heart disease + high blood pressure + diabetes + sleep apnea. It raises our risk of stroke and some cancers. It puts constraints on our lives and what we’re able to do physically. 

Yet nothing has changed.

Despite all we know and all the money we’ve spent, we are getting fatter and sicker as a society.

I was listening to a podcast while hiking yesterday and something clicked.

We don’t need more awareness or more programs or more funding. We need a new normal.

The way of eating that contributes to the ever-evolving health crisis we’ve found ourselves in is NORMAL.

As human beings, we want to conform. We want to fit in. We want to be accepted and liked by the tribe. So we do what’s expected. We do what is considered normal.

  • Go to school.
  • Get a job.
  • Get married.
  • Have kids.
  • Buy a house.
  • Order pizza.
  • Eat dessert.

Living an unhealthy lifestyle has become the standard.

Look around. Walk through the grocery store. Study restaurant menus. Watch commercials. Pay attention to what other people are doing and saying.

There’s no denying that what has become normal is not what’s best for us.

Consider this. It’s entirely acceptable to ask…

  • Why aren’t you drinking?
  • Is that all you’re eating?
  • Aren’t you having dessert?
  • Do you want a cupcake?
  • Are you sure you don’t want some bread?
  • Won’t you be hungry?
  • Want to supersize that?

It’s entirely unacceptable to ask…

  • Why are you eating three slices of pizza?
  • Why are you having another glass of wine?
  • Why are you snacking?
  • Why are you going back to the buffet again?
  • Are you sure you don’t want some baby carrots?
  • Why aren’t you ordering a salad?
  • Won’t you be full?
  • Are you sure you don’t want a small?

What if the tables were turned and a healthy lifestyle was normal?

My challenge to you?

Do what is best for your body + your life + your goals.

Be a rebel. A nonconformist.

A punk rock eater.

“Punk is: the personal expression of uniqueness that comes from the experiences of growing up in touch with our human ability to reason and ask questions; a movement that serves to refute social attitudes that have been perpetuated through willful ignorance of human nature; a process of questioning and commitment to understanding that results in self-progress, and through repetition, flowers into social evolution; a belief that this world is what we make of it, truth comes from our understanding of the way things are, not from the blind adherence to prescriptions about the way things should be; the constant struggle against fear of social repercussions.”


– Greg Graffin (Bad Religion)

💙 Robyn

To learn more about Personal Health Coaching click HERE.