How you can use techniques and processes from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to help your fitness pursuits.
If you struggle sticking with or beginning health and fitness behaviours, addressing unhelpful thinking patterns is going to be helpful, in more ways than one!
These unhelpful thinking patterns can be a major barrier and get in the way of your health and fitness behaviours.
As discussed in a previous article, unhelpful thinking styles such as ‘all-or-nothing thinking’, ‘discounting the positive’, ‘catastrophising', ‘“should” statements’ etc. can create/contribute to this barrier.
For example, a common one is ‘all-or-nothing thinking’ where you may feel like if you’re not doing everything perfectly, then what’s the point … may as well not do it at all?
There’s also the all-too-common ‘“should”statements’, fuelled further by social media influencers with dichotomous thinking, arguing about things you ‘should’ and ‘shouldn’t’ be doing. Overwhelm ensues and you may end up just doing nothing instead.
You may also perceive yourself in a way that is unhelpful, such as not being worthy of self-care, not being capable of being a better version of yourself or simply being fixated on escaping certain thoughts and feelings by engaging in self-defeating behaviours.
Your thoughts and feelings can end up dictating how you live even if it’s far removed from how you want to live and the kind of person you want to be.
So what can be done!?
I’m obviously not qualified nor have the training to deliver acceptance and commitment therapy, but if you struggle with these unhelpful thinking patterns, there are some great principles and techniques within ACT that can help!
These are my takeaways from Russ Harris’s book, “ACT made simple”:
This is skipping ahead of the process, but it’s worth starting with what you value and what kind of person you want to be. Whatever your values are, and it’s important that they are chosen by only you, I strongly believe that your health and fitness is going to be the foundation.
How well you’re feeling and functioning is going to influence how well you can connect with others, create, be kind, support those around you, have a sense of freedom and independence etc. (whatever your values may be).
Have I convinced you?
Your values can set the stage and act as a compass for how you want to behave on a day-to-day basis! If you’ve been convinced, let’s say health and fitness is what you value (which would mean engaging in actions that benefit this area of your life).
You can get hooked! It’s not that these thoughts and feelings are bad and you need to get rid of them, its just that they can lead you to engaging in behaviours that move you away from your values (you get hooked by them and may even begin to identify with them).
What does this look like?
An example is viewing yourself as incapable of ever getting fit (thoughts/feelings) so you decide not to train (moving away from your values) and may even identify as ‘not being fit’.
Or, you may be getting so caught up with an unpleasant feeling or thought that you can’t direct your full attention towards health and fitness behaviours and instead choose an activity that feels good in the now and distracts you (but ultimately moves you away from your values).
If this keeps on happening, it’s bound to hold you back from making any real progress.
The ‘choice point’ pictured below represents this: When situations, thoughts and feelings occur that ‘hook’ you, you may behave in ways that move you away from the person you want to be (but you may get immediate payoffs like a sense of relief or distraction/avoidance). If you can ‘unhook’ yourself, those situations, thoughts and feelings are still present, yet you’re able to behave in ways that move you towards the person you want to be. This will be the difference between a better or worse life in the long term. In our context, it’ll be the difference between health and fitness results or not.
There are many techniques to getting unhooked, but the process centres around being present, opening up and doing what matters:
In line with what I do, and being a great way to practice these processes, let’s use a training session as an example where thoughts and feelings are telling you it’s all too hard and you should just stop (but that would be moving you away from your values).
1. Being Present: This is the first step when those thoughts and feelings arise – and it’s simply about acknowledging them. You notice them, and then you perform a physical action and note what you can hear, smell, touch or taste. So, using our training sessions as an example, if these unhelpful thinking patterns are popping up (eg “I’ll never be able to stick with this, this is too hard”), you can practise acknowledging them (eg. “there’s that thought/feeling”), then, while performing an exercise, note the feelings in your muscles, the music you can hear, the pace of your breathing and so on.
2. Opening Up: Continuing with the example, you can then give these common thoughts and feelings a name, like you’re naming a story (eg. This is the “can’t do it story”) or simply “I’m having the thought that I’ll never be able to stick with this”. Now you can ask yourself whether that story is helpful or whether it’s trying to hook you? Is it your ‘inner critic’ trying to get you to stop exercising? You may conclude that it is just the usual, unhelpful story popping up – so you don’t have to get rid of it, you can just let it be.
*A metaphor used that I really liked: Thinking of life as one big stage show and there’s a part of you that can step back and watch the show. These thoughts and feelings are like the performers who are trying to get your full attention, grab hold of you, and pull you up onto the stage (trying to hook you). But, when you do the ‘opening up’ above, you’re stepping back from the stage and can see the performers clearly while taking in more of the show. You can fully engage with and complete you training session (stepping back and taking in more of the show) even if these thoughts and feelings are popping up (the performers trying to get all of your attention and drag you onto the stage).
3. Committed Action: This is about living by your values and having an idea of the actions you can take so that you’re actively living them (“what’s the smallest step you can take in the right direction?”). To continue with the example, after becoming present and noticing/naming the “can’t do this” thought, you may have the plan that when this shows up, instead of stopping your exercise, you’re going to perform a few more repetitions or go for thirty more seconds. This is taking an action, a ‘towards move’ (exercising) that is in line with your values (health and fitness).
By practicing this process in a controlled gym environment (during your training session), not only will it assist your fitness but you can carry it over to bigger and more challenging issues that you’re struggling with. There may be situations, thoughts and feelings you’re experiencing that are hooking you and pushing you in the opposite direction to who you want to be. These processes can help you to still move in the right direction even when these situations, thoughts and feelings are present and uncomfortable.
Unhelpful thinking patterns, feelings, and uncomfortable situations can become major obstacles in your health and fitness pursuits by capturing all of your attention, ‘hooking’ you and leading you to behave in ways that move you away from improved health and fitness. By practising the techniques taught in acceptance and commitment therapy during your training sessions, you’ll be less negatively influenced by these thoughts/feelings/situations and will instead move in a direction that benefits you and reflects the person you want to be.
1) Harris, Russ. ACT Made Simple: An Easy-to-Read Primer on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. 2nd ed., New Harbinger Publications, 2019.
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