Introduction

Michelle Shelfunt is a Psychotherapist and Holistic Life Coach. The Adult Chair Model teaches us how to become healthy adults. Brian Keene, one of Ireland's leading thought leaders on all things health, fitness, and nutrition joins the show. This week we talk about emotional balance with food and fitness.

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Trigger Warning: This episode discusses topics such as exercise, relationship with food and body image. Though the intent is to promote a conscious and healthy mindset around these topics, please use caution in listening if you have a history of an eating disorder or body image disorder.

Summer is here…and with it, thousands of messages about diets, weight loss and fitness.

There is so much pressure from society to look a certain way, and these messages can be so harmful to our mental and emotional health.

At the same time, movement and nourishment are vital parts of both physical and mental health, and many people have positive fitness goals for themselves: being able to participate in a sport they love, having more energy to play with their kids or staying active as they get older.

We need a more conscious approach to the conversation around fitness and nutrition – one where we learn to tune out the voices of our society and tune into ourselves instead: our why, what we really want and what we uniquely need to be healthy.

Brian Keane is a personal trainer who helps his clients approach fitness from a more holistic perspective, bringing mindset, motivation and emotional well-being into the fitness journey.

He realized that clients would come to him saying they wanted their bodies to look a certain way, but what they really wanted was to feel a certain way: secure, confident, peaceful.

Now as part of his training, he helps people identify their why, connect to their emotions, evaluate their relationship with food and exercise and look at the whole picture of well-being – sleep, stress, connection, etc.

In this episode, Brian breaks down his holistic approach to fitness, walking us through how to navigate diet claims, find inner strength while remaining self-compassionate, tap into the power of motivation and make small, lasting changes in any area of life.

Listen to discover:

What exactly a holistic approach to fitness is
How to tell the difference between physical hunger and emotional hunger
Sorting through diet culture and the millions of claims about the "best" way to eat
Building mental toughness while staying self-compassionate
How to find motivation
Why trying to make too many changes over time is counterproductive

Our bodies are part of the self, and all parts of us are interconnected. Our emotional health impacts how we treat ourselves physically, and how we care for ourselves physically impacts our emotional well-being.

The key is to find a balanced approach to fitness that incorporates the whole self. Whether you’re someone who can’t wait to get to the gym, someone who wants to start exercising more or someone learning to treat your body more kindly, it’s all about tuning out the noise, the pressure and the cookie cutter images of beauty and doing what works for YOU!

"I help [clients] rewire their relationship with food and rewire their relationship with fitness so that they can take that holistic approach so that it's serving their life and not taking from it." - Brian Keane

"Everything that happens to us happens to us for a reason. What's meant for you won't pass you as long as you listen." - Brian Keane

"In their mind, they think that if they look this specific way, it will remove this feeling that they have." - Brian Keane

"When you take a holistic approach to fitness, all those other areas of your life can improve." - Brian Keane

"It's always an internal job." - Michelle Chalfant

"So many of us, we use food to numb out our emotions." - Michelle Chalfant

"With food being 'good' and 'bad,' that's more a projection that we as humans are putting on the food." - Brian Keane

"Your body knows what it wants you to eat." - Michelle Chalfant

"It's all about balance." - Michelle Chalfant

"Motivation is just a state change." - Brian Keane

"Everything is difficult when you try to change it first. But...if you persevere and you're consistent with it and you make it a daily habit, eventually it becomes your new normal, and then it becomes easy." - Brian Keane

"Too many changes too soon is a recipe for failure." - Brian Keane

"The small things done consistently well lead to extraordinary results over time." - Brian Keane

"I don't like that word, 'diet,' but I do like having this goal of just being healthy." - Michelle Chalfant

LINKS & RESOURCES

Brian Keane Website

https://briankeanefitness.com/

"The Fitness Mindset" (Brian Keane book)

https://briankeanefitness.com/fitness-mindset/

"Rewire Your Mindset" (Brian Keane book)

https://briankeanefitness.com/rewire-your-mindset/

Crisis Text Line for Eating Disorders

https://www.crisistextline.org/topics/eating-disorders/#what-is-an-eating-disorder-1