Psych in Your Life

When I’m working in my field, I will have to understand that everyone I’m working with has a different opinion and mindset when it comes to being healthy and fit. Things that have helped me on my weight loss journey won’t necessarily work for everyone. I took things very seriously when I started, especially with my diet and it won’t be realistic for me to expect new clients to start tracking and weighing out all of their food. It can be super overwhelming, especially for a beginner. It will be hard to adjust to a new lifestyle change and I will have to work with my clients slowly to break them out of bad old habits and into newer, healthier ones.

I know that I will porbably find troubles relating to some of my clients. I’ve had so much will power and self motivation because I’ve wanted it so badly. Some people will struggle and I know it will be difficult for me to understand why they can’t stay on track because I’ve been able to keep myself so focused. Those issues are dealt with mentally but I know there will be physical barriers between my clients and I as well. Because school and my own research has made me understand certain aspects of fitness, my clients will get frustrated because they don’t know the things that I do, things that to me are common sense. One example is that I know you can’t spot reduce or pick and choose where your body loses fat. Some people will get frustrated and I’ll have to explain that just because they do 100 sit ups doesn’t mean they will lose their stomach fat and gain a 6 pack.

Everyones bodies are so different and I’ve struggled with comparing myself to other people. How is she able to grow her arms so quickly or lose weight so quickly? It can be really discouraging especially when I feel like I’m doing everything right. My metabolism works differently and my body changes differently too. My shoulders have grown faster than anything else on my body, whereas my roommate has a really hard time putting muscle on her shoulders.

Opposite to positive punishment where something negative was added to diminish a behaviour, negative punishment is the removal of something pleasant following a behaviour to decrease the chance of it happening again.

Negative punishment has taking a larger role in my life since I’ve started taking my health and fitness levels more seriously. I track macronutrients and eat the same thing everyday. My diet consists of whole foods and unprocessed, clean foods. Once a week I have a “cheat meal” where I can eat whatever I want, without tracking, within about a 2-3 hour time frame. This is beneficial for me because it helps satisfy my cravings and it also shocks my metabolism. The surplus of calories can shake up my metabolism when it starts to slow down and I plateau.

Where the negative punishment comes into play is when I’m not consistent with my eating. Sometimes I find myself snacking or eating more than I should be in a day. If I’ve been cheating and not been able to keep my diet in check during the week, I take away my cheat meal for that week. Having a cheat meal is a reward for sticking to my meal plan and by taking it away for the week causes me to be more focused so that I can have one the following week. It gives me a chance to remember my goals and why I’m doing what I’m doing.

The difference between reinforcement and punishment is that during punishment, we are trying to decrease the chance of the behaviour occurring. In positive punishment, there is something negative added that suppresses the behaviour that it follows.

I’ve experienced positive punishment a lot in my life in regards to my parents. I grew up on a farm so there were always lots of household chores to do as well as helping my dad with the animals and in the barn. I have a twin sister whom the chores were divided between and my parents definitely used this to their advantage.

Whenever I misbehaved - whether that be not listening, arguing with my sister, staying out late, etc - it was easy for my parents to add more chores to my (seemingly unending) list of chores. One thing that really upset me was that some of these chores could be taking off my sisters list and added to mine. The household chores weren’t so bad, doing dishes, taking out the garbage, doing laundry, but others like cleaning up after all the animals in the barn or helping to bale the hay were gross and extremely tiring. Having these extra responsibilities meant I had less time to myself and to play and hangout with my friends.

Another way to shape and change behaviour is through negative reinforcement. Because it is still reinforcement, we still want to increase the chances of the behaviour occurring. The difference about negative reinforcement is that there is something being taken away rather than something being added.

I can also relate my time playing baseball to negative reinforcement. Sometimes during the season I wouldn’t always have the chance to spend time practicing my pitching skills. Whether I was too busy with school or sometimes I just wasn’t interested in spending my time practicing and that reflected when I pitched during games.

When I wasn’t practicing, my performance was lacking during games and my coach wouldn’t play me as much. It frustrated me because I knew I was letting my team down and the privilege of being pitcher was taken away from me. This would then motivate me to start practicing more so that I would get the chance to pitch more and in turn, prove myself and my skills to my coaches and teammates.

Operant conditioning is a type of learning that is achieved through rewards and punishments for behaviour. Through this learning, there shows association between a behaviour and a consequence for said behaviour, whether that consequence be positive or negative. One way to shape and change behaviour is through positive reinforcement. Positive reinforcement involves following up a desired response with adding something good or motivating, thus trying to increase the chance of the behaviour happening again.

Positive reinforcement played a big role in my life when I was younger and played baseball. I played for a couple of years in house league and then moved to playing rep league and my dad helped couch every year that I played. When I started playing rep league, it was competitive for each position. I was a pitcher in house league and if I wanted to continue being a pitcher in rep league, I had to work hard for it.

I had to practice a lot to be as good as the other girls. My dad and I practiced a lot at home and he would always encourage me when I was improving or doing well. When I practiced a lot and was throwing strikes consistently, I got played more and my coaches and teammates were proud of me and wanted me to keep up what I was doing.

The positive reinforcement in those situations was the approval and encouragement that we added when I was pitching well. Getting those things from my dad, coaches and teammates made me feel good and in turn made me want to continue practicing so I could continue getting played and getting their approval. The encouragement increased my behaviour to practice more.

A heuristic in cognition refers to simple rules that provide short cuts in judgement or decision making. So availability is a cognitive heuristic where the person making decisions relies on knowledge that is more readily available rather than investigating or examining any other alternatives or other evidence. This can differ from person to person, based on past experience. When making decisions, you may think of related events or topics and the outcomes of those and your judgement will be very different than someone who may not have been exposed to such events of topics. We mainly use this heuristic for judging the frequency or probability of events, which can lead to over or underestimating the likelihood of something similar happening in the future.

I can relate the availability heuristic to my future career as a personal trainer for many reasons. The clients that I train won’t have the same background or knowledge that I’ve gained from my schooling. Fitness has been a part of my life and my family for many years and I’m only 20 years old. I could be training clients double my age who won’t know anything about living a healthy lifestyle and what that entails.

I’m positive that these clients will have been exposed to all kinds of fad diets and heard a million times “ways to lose 10 pounds by the weekend” or about taking a pill for a “magic fix”. These messages are plastered on magazines, advertisements, commercials - everywhere. Even if they won’t consciously read or listen to these messages, they become engrained in our minds because we are so exposed to them. Something else that plays a big role in these advertisements is celebrity endorsement. It’s so easy for something to believe a celebrity they look up to but we never know if what they are preaching is true.

Because these advertisements are so available to people, it will be hard for me to change my clients minds regarding losing weight and eating habits. Fad diets aren’t sustainable and are very unhealthy. I know how frustrating it will be to not see progress right away because we’ve been told that the pay off for working out is so immediate. These advertisements makes people think that the probability of losing weight is high - and it can be but not in the time frame that they think it will.

The conformation bias in regards to perception and critical thinking, refers to when we only look for or listen to information that adds to or supports our beliefs, while simultaneously ignoring information that doesn’t support those beliefs. This stops us from considering or learning from other information. This can lead to problems because it causes us to block out information that could be the truth or change our opinions. When problem solving, this stubbornness can blind us from working through such problems.

I can relate this to my life because in the past year I’ve lost about 45lbs and done so in a really health way. I’ve developed a good training routine, do a healthy amount of cardio and have been tracking macronutrients. Macros are the calculated amount of carbohydrates, fats, proteins and total calories in grams that you should eat in regards to losing weight, maintaining or gaining weight, whichever your goal is.

When it comes to fitness and health, many people preach very different things and it can sometimes be hard to decipher what is relevant to me in my life and if it’s true or not. In the future, when I’m working as a personal trainer I will have to do research and find out more information about different exercises and different types of training. Some of my clients may want to lose weight to look a certain way, some may be looking to build strength or endurance, everyones goals will be different. I’m lucky to be in school taking the Fitness and Health Promotion program because it will provide me with such a wide range of knowledge before I start my career.

I’ve had a couple of different trainers at the gym and even friends tell me different ways to do the same exercise/work the same muscle group and what exercises are better than others. I will have to examine the evidence behind what they say because not everyone can agree on such things. For my own safety and for my future clients safety, I’ll have to take it upon myself to learn how to properly execute exercises and what types of exercise or training programs will be most effective for their goals.