PsychFit

Personal Training Meets Weight Loss

PsychFit, Inc. is a program that combines psychotherapy and fitness instruction with the purpose of helping individuals retrain their brains and bodies in healthy, positive, and constructive ways.

PsychFit originated as an idea that has been circulating in the mind of its founder, Jane Baxter, Ph.D., CPT, for over 30 years. In her own words, Dr. Baxter explains:

“My thinking around creating PsychFit originated back in the early ’90s when I was getting my Masters in Social Work. I was learning a lot about self-destructive behaviors and the depression and anxiety that usually results. The standard treatment practice was and continues to be a combination of psychotherapy, and, if needed, medication. Exercise has always been thrown in there as important, but never officially stressed as a necessary component of symptom alleviation. Eating habits really weren’t mentioned at all as a way of helping with mood problems.

After finishing my degree, I decided to become a certified personal trainer, with the idea of offering individualized treatment planning that combines psychotherapy and fitness instruction. I’ve often wondered why we can’t train our brains in similar ways that we can train and strengthen our bodies. Well, the good news is that WE CAN! Several years, another degree and lots of training and research later, I have formed the program PsychFit.”

The psychotherapy component involves a process called Challenge and Correct, and the fitness portion is called Deliberate Motion, both explained below.

The Challenge and Correct process involve you and Dr. Baxter working together to identify, challenge, and change the negative and self-sabotaging thinking that usually is at the root of many self-destructive or depressive behaviors.

Some of these mistakes in thinking include magnifying the negative and/or minimizing the positive; making sweeping negative conclusions that go beyond the reality of the situation; viewing situations in only two categories (good/bad, all/nothing) instead of on a continuum; having a rigid idea of how you or others should behave and overestimate how bad it is when these expectations are not met; and so forth.

Together, we will work through these distortions both during and after the fitness phase of the sessions.

The fitness workout is called Deliberate Motion. It involves an incredibly efficient, safe method of training with weights and working out one’s cardiovascular system.

Everyone from the top training pros to the Surgeon General agrees that weight training should be the main focus of every fitness routine. Weight-bearing exercise is the key to strength, flexibility, and exercise-induced weight loss, because it is the most effective way of building lean muscle mass, and, in turn, metabolizing fat.

The difference between Deliberate Motion and other weight training programs (and what makes it so safe) is the deliberate, slow movements of the weights during the repetitions.

The reps are not up and down movements, but rather a cyclical, smooth rotation where the slower the movement the better.

“I ask individuals to slow their upward movements to an eight to twelve-second count, as well as the downward portion of the lift.”

National, neuroscientific research supports PsychFit in its entirety. John Ratey, MD, Harvard Neuroscientist, writes that, “. . . through current sharp imaging technology and brilliant clinical research, we now have proof that brain development is a continuous, unending process. The brain has a tremendous ability to compensate and rewire with practice. Experiences, thoughts, actions, and emotions actually change the structure of our brain. So the more we repeat the same actions and thoughts (from practicing strength training workouts to incorporating daily affirmations), the more we encourage the formation of certain connections, then the more fixed the neural circuits in the brain for that activity become.”

He goes on to say, “The many connections we find between the motor and cognitive functions suggests that any sort of physical activity improves our cognition. For example, we often experience anxiety because we have no possible motor schemata to solve a problem. Outwardly, we freeze with anxiety while inwardly we churn. Movement provides the physiological release that we need to bring our minds and bodies back into balance. Fundamental motions, like brisk walking or lifting weights, trigger the most deeply ingrained neural firing patterns in the brain. It may be that, as this happens, it causes the brain to establish fundamental firing patterns among complex thought, helping us find a solution or generate a creative idea.”

“Finally, with our advanced understanding, we now see that the three major neurotransmitters—norepinephrine, dopamine, and serotonin—that have preoccupied researchers concerned with mood, cognition, behavior, and personality, are all increased by exercise and are strongly implicated in its mood-elevating effects.”

We will work together in my office and gym setting to literally challenge and correct your mental and physical capabilities.

The result: you have an effective and efficient route to reach your greatest human potential.