Action

A person is in the action stage of behavior change when he makes the time and commitment to modify his lifestyle. In the action stage, people make lifestyle choices that benefit their health on a daily basis.

Athletes and Supplements

A final important consideration when it comes to supplementation is the psychological influence of the supplement. Some people feel that taking a supplement helps them to perform better. The placebo effect is when a person's belief that something has an effect results in a real physical change. For example, when someone gets confidence from taking a supplement, even if there is no proof of that supplement's impact, discontinuing use of the supplement may have a powerful effect on the person's state of mind. It may, in fact, be detrimental to his or her physical performance. In cases such as these, the continuation of the supplement is fine as long as it poses no serious health threat to the taker.

The Importance of Iron

Iron is a mineral that plays several important role in the body. An adequate supply of iron in the blood ensures that oxygen is getting to all body cells. When cells have plenty of oxygen they are best able to convert food into energy that the body can use. So you see, consuming enough iron is vital to an exerciser's energy and overall performance. Iron deficiency anemia is perhaps the most common deficiency in the United States. It affects as many as 58 percent of all females. Besides women, other groups at risk for iron deficiency anemia include adolescents and athletes.

Factors that lead to an iron deficiency in athletes include heavy training, decreased iron absorption, breakdown of red blood cells during exercise, gastrointestinal bleeding, iron loss through awaiting, and inadequate dietary intake. Vegetarians are more likely to suffer from iron deficiency since the iron that plan sources supply is not as readily absorbed as is iron obtained from animal sources. When symptoms of iron deficiency, such as fatigue, are present, a simple blood test is done to confirm the diagnosis. Treatment includes increased dietary iron intake as well as supplementation. 

Building Muscle Mass

You've got to eat to lose body fat. Say that again? This statement often seems crazy to people like Jessie, who are new to the world of fitness. But , this idea holds true. This is because muscle needs calories to grow, and muscles burn more calories than fat. A client who isn't building muscle despite consistent weight lifting probably isn't eating enough calories to fuel muscle growth. Teaching clients to use high calorie foods to supply the needed fuel for muscle growth is helpful, especially for clients who have difficulty finding the time or desire to consume these needed calories. Examples of nutritious high calorie foods include nuts, dried fruits, peanut butter, and smoothies made with soy or protein powder.


When exercising to build muscle mass it is important to eat enough quality protein. A high quality or complete protein supplies all the essential amino acids in the ratios that the human body requires to build muscle tissue. A protein source that is deficient in one or more of the essential amino acids is termed a low quality or incomplete protein. Do you remember reading about complete and incomplete protein in the previous lesson?

What Controls Our Health Habits?

Also contributing to the difficulty in changing our health habits is the fact that these habits often are unstable over time. For example, some people go on crash diets for special occasions such as weddings and reunions. In doing so, they restrict their caloric intake for a short time losing large amounts of weight only to return to their old eating habits following the special occasion. Other people might adopt a healthier lifestyle only to slip back into their old pattern  during a time of high stress. The job of a personal fitness trainer and nutritional specialist is to help clients establish and maintain healthy behaviors that they can sustain for a lifetime.

Assess Your Psychological Health

Since psychological health plays a key role in wellness, it is an important aspect to consider when evaluating your overall health. Even small adjustment problems can become troublesome if they are not addressed in an effective manner. Do you have a positive outlook on life, or do you view things pessimistically? If you suffer from a psychological disease such as depression or an eating disorder, are you taking steps to address your illness?


General Health

Smoking, drug use, and excess alcohol and caffeine consumption can be extremely damaging to your health. Do you overindulge in any of these? Yearly physicals are a good idea even for the most healthy and active individuals. Do you suffer from any chronic pain or illness? Do you take any medications, if so , are these medications still necessary?

Sedentary Lifestyle

Today, technological advances and modern conveniences have led to an increasingly sedentary lifestyle for many Americans. Many people have jobs that require them to sit in front of a computer all day while modern machinery has made physical labor nearly nonexistent in many occupations. Children opt to play video games, foregoing physical activities that were popular a generation age. Cable TV provides hundreds of channels to choose from, and the average American watches several hours  of television daily. People drive their cars even short distances rather than biking; they use drive- thru windows for everything from purchasing food and prescriptions to getting money from the bank. Unfortunately, a sedentary lifestyle has become the norm in America today.

Social Factors

Examples of social factors include the amount of familial support a person has access to, whether a person belongs to a church or temple, and how frequently a person participates in social activities with others. Laughter and connecting with others helps keep our stress levels low, which in turn contributes positively to our health and wellness.

What Controls Our Health Habits?

Also contributing to the difficulty in changing our health habits is the fact that these habits often are unstable over time. For example, some people go on crash diets for special occasions such as weddings and reunions. In doing so, they restrict their caloric intake for a short time losing large amounts of weight only to return to their old eating habits following the special occasion. Other people might adopt a healthier lifestyle only to slip back into their old patterns during a time of high stress. The job of a personal fitness trainer and nutritional specialist is to help clients establish and maintain healthy behaviors that they can sustain for a lifetime.

When Bad Feels Good

Another obstacle people face when trying to change their bad health habits is the pleasure they get from these unhealthy practices. For example, junk food and sweets are fun to eat. A person may crave her favorite foods and derive great pleasure from eating them. Many unhealthy behaviors are automatic, such as planting oneself in front of the television for several hours each night. Any habit that is pleasurable is difficult to break, and in our society eating junk food and watching hours of TV are two of the strongest.

Preparation

When a person is in the preparation stage of behavioral change, she has made the decision to change her behavior but has yet to put the change into action. People in this stage may have made attempts at change in the past and failed because they didn't have a plan.

An example of a person in this stage is Dana, a 33- year-old  mother who knows that her eating habits are unhealthy and has made dozens of failed attempts at dieting during the past few years. However, she consistently fails back to her old, familiar patterns. There have been times in which Dana has modified her eating behavior by choosing a healthier snack or ordering a salad rather then the normal high-fat dishes she routinely gets when out to eat with her husband. however, she has been unable to reduce or eliminate her junk food cravings or consistently increase her physical activity.

Dana tends to blame stressful life events for her inability to successfully change her eating behaviors. She says that she will start to exercise and eat right just as soon as her life becomes more manageable. Delaying action and previous failed attempts of behavior modification both are signs that a person is in the preparation stage of change. 

Obesity and Diabetes

Obesity puts a person at greater risk for developing several lifestyle related diseases. When a person ingests more food calories than his body uses, the excess calories are stored as fat. The American diet is high in fat, and people typically don't operate at the activity level necessary to use all of the calories they consume.

You probably remember learning a little about Type 2 diabetes in your first lesson. Type 2 diabetes is a disease in which the body fails to use insulin effectively. Obese individuals are more likely to develop this condition than others . Just as Type 2 diabetes generally is brought on by poor lifestyle choices, many people can reverse this condition by achieving a healthy body weight through proper diet and exercise.

High Blood Pressure

Do you remember briefly discussing high blood pressure in Robert's example earlier in this lesson and lt. You know that it is caused by increased pressure on artery walls. High blood pressure often is called the silent killer because many people don't even know they have it. This disease claims many lives in the United States each year. Some factors that put one at risk for high blood pressure are not within a person's control. These include age, race, heredity, and gender. Risk factors that can be controlled include obesity, alcohol use, sodium intake, oral contraceptive use, stress, and physical inactivity      . High blood pressure puts people at risk for heart attack, stroke, and kidney failure. Medication often is used to control high blood pressure, but people also can lower blood pressure through lifestyle adjustments, just as Robert did.            

Professional Boundaries

Your first client of the day is 15 minutes late again this is the third time in her last five visits she's been late. What do you do? Do you run fifteen minutes late all day ,or do you give your clients a 45 minutes session instead of the hour she booked ?

This client is violating one of your professional boundaries. Your professional boundaries are the limits you set for your practice for example, your policies when clients cancel appointments, what you do when you have to cancel appointments, and even the kinds of training you offer.

Your professional boundaries also protect your clients. For example, if you see a client in a restaurant, do you ignore her, wave hello from afar, or go speak to her? Although you may think, there's nothing wrong with being friendly, your client may have a different opinion. She may be at a business lunch, where her boss just spent 10 minutes disparaging personal fitness trainers. Or , for reasons of her own, your client simply may not want her casual acquaintances to know she has a personal fitness trainer.

At your first session with a client, share your professional boundaries for example, your policy about lateness. Communicating before the fact is the best way to prevent unpleasant problems. Later in this lesson, we will look at a specific procedure for resolving ethical dilemmas , however, keep in mind that being discreet is never a mistake.

Legal Boundaries

Legal boundaries are relatively easy to determine they are limits that your municipality, county, state, or some other political entity specifies. Zoning laws and certification requirements are two examples of legal boundaries.

Your legal limits as a personal fitness trainer may include issues such as whether you can make a diagnosis or sell health related products as part of your work.

Additionally, remember that as a personal fitness trainer you are not qualified to diagnose a client or recommend pharmaceuticals as a form of treatment. Doing so would be out of the scope of your legal boundaries. If you suspect a client has physical or mental problems that are beyond your scope of practice, refer him to a qualified professional.

Safe Lifting

Here are some general safety tips to help reduce injuries when weight training. Warm up at each session with light weights.

When starting a new exercise or after laying off exercise for a week or two, start with relatively light  weights.

Pay attention to joint pain. Using lighter weights and doing more repetitions might enable you to continue your session, but only if you can do so without pain.
Incorporate exercise that work agonist and antagonist pain, core, and synergist muscles to ensure balanced strength within a group of muscles and between  opposing groups of muscles. Imbalances in strength can destabilize a joint.

Always use good form while lifting and breathe and relax through your exercise. If you can't maintain the proper form for a particular lift, you're finished with that lift for that set. And remember to rest between 30 and 60 seconds before trying another set.

The Elbows

More than a dozen muscles cross at elbow joint, and it's also a fairly stable joint because of all the tendons and ligaments that help those muscles move the arm bones. However, because we spend so much time lifting and moving objects with our hands and arms, it's possible to injure the elbow through sheer inattention.

If your exercise involves throwing or boxing, you're at risk for overuse injuries and trauma from the explosive power. Tennis, golf, and weight lifting can cause elbow problems. And again, everyday actions in the workplace turning wrenches, constant typing, performing massages all can lead to overuse injuries at the elbow.

Next we're going to talk about how you can help your clients prevent some of the most common injuries. But before we do that, let's review what you've learned so far. Go to work and used what you learned have a good year.

The Knees

If your body were the world, the knee would be the United Nations. At the knee, the body's powerful muscles hamstrings and quadriceps meet and interact. Usually, the knee is capable of withstanding the forces placed on it while giving you the benefits of mobility. However, it's also vulnerable.

Something as simple as running when your weight and fitness level suggest that walking is more appropriate can injure the knee. So can wearing the wrong shoes, such as those without proper support or padding or shoes that once were appropriate for exercise but have outlived their usefulness. Improper exercise technique, especially if leads to muscle imbalances such as super strong quadriceps and weak hamstrings can cause knee problems.

And as is true with the other joints, knee problems, once started, can affect everyday activities, and everyday activities can affect knee problems.

Laws

It's often relatively easy to tell when you've broken a law-for example, the flashing lights in your rear view mirror are a clear indication that you've been caught speeding.Simply put, laws are rules of conduct . The requirements of laws are spelled out exactly, and breaking a law has defined consequences. Laws may be based on ethical or moral principles, but they are written down, and political entities such as city or state government enforce them.

How Can You Lose Weight ?

Good question remember that the key to any successful weight-loss program is to taking in fewer calories than are expended. A3,500 calorie deficit leads to a loss of one pound of body weight. Most people gain weight slowly as a result of consuming slightly more calories than they are able to burn off each day .