WHAT IS ACT?
Emma Gallagher is a Doctor of Clinical Psychology Candidate at Monash University’s School of Psychology and Psychiatry and is the trial coordinator for ACTing on Weight. Says Gallagher, “Acceptance Commitment Therapy is a psychological intervention designed to increase people’s psychological flexibility, so that they are more able to handle the difficult thoughts and feelings that human’s inevitably experience during their life.”
People have a natural tendency to get caught up in and struggle with their negative feelings, which then limits them. Rather than fighting to change these feelings, ACT teaches you to accept them and work from there. “You accept that, as human beings, we have a range of emotions and thoughts and that’s OK,” says Gallagher. “It’s about recognising these thoughts and feelings, and examining the behaviours they lead you to. Essentially, ACT is about mindfulness.”
The commitment comes in when you commit to making choices based on what you value most in your life. “Goals are like the stepping stones on the way to your values,” says Gallagher. “You can never tick a value off your list. If you want to be a healthy individual, for example, you will have to make choices on a daily, or even hourly basis that will move you toward that ideal, but the actions must be consistent.”
ACT AND PEAK NUTRITION
Studies have shown that for many people the maintenance of a healthy weight is far more difficult than losing weight in the first place. As part of her research, Gallagher has identified emotional eating as one possible obstacle to weight loss maintenance. She is exploring the theory that unless people learn an appropriate way of dealing with their emotions, they are likely to regain weight through emotional eating, and/or make poor food choices.
Even for people who are not aiming to lose weight, emotional eating can get in the way of a healthy, sustainable relationship with food and it is something that must be addressed.
To achieve peak nutrition, it is imperative that food choices are driven by the desire to fuel your body appropriately, rather than by your feelings. This is where mindfulness techniques are particularly important. Emotional eating is an automatic response, something people do without really thinking about the consequences.
ACT teaches you to accept the uncomfortable emotions – sadness, anger, boredom, exhaustion – and find different ways to deal with them. By looking to your values for guidance, you can make choices based on where you want to be and therefore avoid sabotaging your hard work.
ACT AND PEAK PERFORMANCE
If emotional eating and weight loss aren’t an issue, ACT can also help you or your clients achieve more in their fitness training. By accepting that sometimes training will be hard and that there will be moments of discomfort, you can learn to embrace it and make it work for you. This can be the case even if you might not like or want to experience the discomfort. When people become more willing to experience difficult feelings – whether they’re physical or emotional – they oft en aren’t as limited by them as they previously were.
ACT can help deal with our thoughts that get in the way of our exercise efforts. For example, your clients may say, “I’m too tired today” but ACT teaches then that they can have that thought and act in the opposite way.
Explains Gallagher, “It’s about tuning into your thought and deciding whether you want to act on that thought or not. You probably don’t realise that you do this all the time. How many times have you woken up to your alarm clock and thought ‘I really don’t’ want to go to work today so I am going to call in sick yet, in the end, you find yourself acting in the opposite way and going to work? It’s about learning you can have a thought and still choose to act differently.”
MAKE IT WORK FOR YOU AND YOUR CLIENTS
Use this practical example to help you and your clients get more from training.
An approach synonymous with Russ Harris, one of Australia leading ACT trainers, is that of becoming mindful by adopting the persona of ‘a curious scientist’. In this persona you intensely explore an unpleasant sensation instead of trying to get rid of it or avoid it (ie. by stopping your training session or changing activities when it starts to get too hard).
Step 1:
Notice you have a feeling or sensation you have the urge to avoid, ie. discomfort or fatigue.
Step 2:
Acknowledge the urge and choose to explore the sensation instead of avoiding it.
Step3:
Observe the sensation as if you are ‘a curious scientist’ who has never experienced this sensation before. Use some of the following questions to guide your exploration. Where is the sensation? Is it inside or outside of your body? Does it have edges? Where does it stop and start? If it had a shape what shape would it be? If it had a colour what colour would it be? Is it heavy or light? Is it hot or cold? Is it moving or still? Don’t think too hard about your answers to these questions. Go with your fi rst answers, or your ‘gut instinct’.
Step 4:
Breath into the sensation or breath into it and around it, whatever makes sense to you.
Step 5:
Make room for the sensation and allow the sensation to be there. You don’t have to like it or want it, just allow it.
Step 6:
Notice you can have this sensation and continue your training. Though this may seems strange or diffi cult at first, with practice it will become easier. You can then use this technique to explore unpleasant sensations related to other behaviours that you wish to address, such as emotional eating.
WANT TO GET YOUR CLIENTS INVOLVED?
If you think your clients may benefit from learning more about ACT, now is the time for them to get involved. The ACTing on Weight team from Monash University is currently recruiting adults who have recently lost weight to participate in research about weight loss maintenance and emotional eating. There are no diets, pills or shakes. Instead a FREE workshop is provided that aims to teach people new psychological skills designed to help them better handle difficult thoughts and feelings that may be contributing to their emotional eating and weight loss maintenance struggle.
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