Get in the zone: an extract from Colman Noctor's new book 'The 4-7 Zone'
Pictured in Waterford is Colman Noctor with his new book, The 4-7 Rule. Picture: Patrick Browne
In contemporary language and media, we hear ‘mental health’ being described as a single entity. It is something you ‘have’ or you ‘don’t have’. In reality, mental health is far more nuanced and complex than that.
We don’t talk about physical illness in this way, because we accept that it exists on a continuum of severity — so why do we believe it is OK to talk like this when it comes to describing mental health?
While it might seem comforting to imagine that all mental distress can be resolved by running a marathon, meditating every morning, or downloading a mindfulness app, it is at best naive and at worst exploitative. Many serious mental disorders require far more intensive support than this, and this message is not helpful to those who simply cannot ‘walk it off’.
That said, when I began to realise that my reaction to the wellness messengers was far from the 4–7 zone, I began to read more of the research into the importance of diet, sleep, and exercise in our mental health. The findings are indisputable. To establish balance and equilibrium in our lives, our bodies are the first place to start. There is no denying the symbiotic relationship between the body and the mind.
Many of us will notice this two-way relationship between our bodies and our emotional lives. When we have an important event coming up that we are worried about, we can notice our sleeping patterns begin to be affected. Perhaps it’s harder to fall asleep, or we keep waking up throughout the night. If we have a big job interview or an exam coming up, our anxiety can manifest in our bowels. We may experience physical cramps in our stomachs and have bouts of constipation and diarrhoea in the run-up to the event.
If we have experienced a difficult life event like the loss of someone close to us, we can see that our bodies react by oversleeping or not sleeping, and we can feel exhausted all the time despite having had many hours of sleep. Our emotional lives also have an impact on our diet.
What is especially important when it comes to diet, sleep, and exercise is that it does not have to be extreme. The biggest mistake people make when it comes to these dimensions of human behaviour is overcorrection.
The temptation to slip into the ‘new me’ frame of mind is high, and many try to overextend their commitment to a healthy lifestyle, which proves unsustainable. Inevitably, after a short period, the unsustainability of these goals becomes clear, and they give up. This leaves people with feelings of being ‘a failure’ or not enough, and as a result, their emotional health suffers as a consequence.
Adam’s story
Adam is 47 years old and is married with two children. He works in a busy and stressful job as a salesperson, which involves a lot of driving and long hours. Adam recently attended his GP for an investigation into a series of repeated chest infections. While he was there, the doctor decided to do a series of physical tests. The test results revealed that Adam’s blood pressure and cholesterol levels were higher than they should be, and he was overweight. The doctor strongly advised Adam that some lifestyle changes were needed if he was going to improve his current health status. Adam also suffered from low mood and intermittent bouts of anxiety and stress, but he did not mention this to the doctor, as he was embarrassed.
He left the doctor’s office and decided he needed to get to grips with his current lifestyle. Adam went to a sports shop on the way home from the doctor’s office and bought a new tracksuit and a pair of top-of-the-range runners. He downloaded the ‘Couch to 10k’ running app on his phone and pledged that he was finally going to do something about his lifestyle. He downloaded a ‘carb-free’ diet plan and bought all the ingredients that were recommended in the plan, deciding he was going to combine this plan with an
intermittent fasting programme he had heard great things about. The following day was to be the start of his new regime. He was going to do it this time and he was not going to fail.
When Adam returned to therapy after his failed attempt at lifestyle change, we decided to readdress his goals with the 4–7 zone in mind. We looked at how it can be used effectively to improve his diet, sleep, and exercise.
Adam had rated his healthy choices in terms of diet, sleep, and exercise as 2/10, 2/10, and 1/10 respectively. So the goal would be to get those ratings up to a minimum of 4/10.
Diet: Some professionals might recommend that Adam should start to make his lunches for work the night before and provide complicated menus of hummus dips and celery sticks. But in reality, these interventions were not feasible for Adam in terms of the practicality of having time to prepare these lunches and, of course, the taste. We devised a plan that worked with Adam’s current lifestyle.
As the mainstays of Adam’s diet were the deli roll with crisps and a fizzy drink, the only alteration we recommended was to replace the fizzy drink with flavoured water and perhaps change the type of crisps to a low-fat option. We also suggested that Adam not eat the leftovers from his children’s dinner and perhaps have something other than a beer at night-time when he was watching TV. Adam achieved this almost immediately, and one month later rated his dietary health as 4/10.
Sleep: The goal for Adam was to limit himself to 10pm when he was working on his laptop. Ensuring he was finished by 10pm left a two-hour window to watch a movie if he wished and be in bed by midnight. This moved his sleeping hours from 5.5 hours a night to 6.5 hours, and improved his sleeping pattern. This change took about a week to get used to, but one month later Adam rated his sleep pattern as 5/10.
Exercise: When we looked at Adam’s schedule, we realised that his children had no activities on a Thursday evening. Coincidentally, a rugby club in the next town ran a social adults’ touch rugby game on a Thursday night. As touch rugby is non-contact, the risk of injury was far less. The social aspect and competitive elements of the game appealed to Adam more than solo exercises like running the roads on his own did. This offered him an opportunity to move and engage in exercise for at least an hour a week.
Adam also offered to help out with his daughter’s football team. This meant that during the sessions he was no longer sitting in the car waiting for her to finish. Instead, he was out on the field setting up cones and drills and incorporating movement into his week. After one month, Adam rated his exercise and activity levels as 5/10.
Psychology: Adam had described his psychological health as 3/10 initially. He described having little sense of identity outside of his work and his family. His self-worth was low, and he felt like he was failing. As Adam made the small changes to his lifestyle, he got to experience some ‘quick wins’. The measurement of his success was not defined by the reading on the weighing scales; rather it was measured by the effort he was making to make different decisions.
These choices did not require a high commitment level, but the corrective emotional experience of being able to achieve — and more importantly sustain — a goal was a game-changer for Adam. He would later admit that despite these changes being small, they had a big impact on his self-worth. His children would ask him when he returned from his touch rugby games: “Did you win?” and “Did you have fun?”. He described the fact that his children saw him role model and engaged with a sport as significant to him. He had never been involved in anything like that since they were born, and he felt it was important for them to see sport as something that could be a lifelong hobby.
After one month, Adam rated his psychological mindset as 6/10.
Social: Adam had little or no social contact outside of work. He felt that the people he met at work were people he ‘had’ to interact with, and although they were, on the whole, nice people, they weren’t people he would choose to socialise with. He rated the health of his social network as 3/10. The major change here was that he felt he had found his tribe in the rugby club. These were people who shared similar interests, and he enjoyed the conversations with them. There was also a social night every few months where the group would meet up for drinks, and although this hadn’t happened yet, Adam was looking forward to it. After one month, Adam rated his social life as 4/10.
Behaviour: The tweaks to Adam’s behaviours were paying dividends for him. The improvements in his diet, sleep, and exercise motivated him to make other behavioural changes. He bought some new clothes and paid more attention to his appearance and overall self-value. He was feeling energised by achieving these small goals, which provided him with the volition to make other changes in his life. The ripple effect of success is similar to the ripple effect of failure, and the positive experiences achieved through one behavioural change can often lead to another. One month after initiating these small changes, Adam rated his behavioural health as 6/10.
Cognition: Adam had initially been in a ruminative, negative thinking cycle. His failed attempt to change his lifestyle had left him feeling useless and ineffective. He had adopted a position of ‘resignation’ when it came to making any meaningful change in his life. Interestingly, it was the behavioural changes he made that seemed to impact his cognitive shift and not the other way around. So often we say that mindset determines behaviour, but neglect to acknowledge that behaviour can positively impact mindset. After an experience of failure, Adam needed to have a corrective emotional experience of success. That is why the small, achievable goals were so important to this process. After one month, Adam rated his cognitive health as 6/10.
Emotions: Worryingly, Adam was in a dark emotional place. He had experienced his life as ‘not enough’. His comparisons to his brother and his reflection on his lack of life achievements were affecting him in a very negative way. The visit to the doctor seemed to confirm many of the worries he had about himself. It was not that the doctor’s concerns had upset him so much; they were merely a catalyst for Adam to think about a series of experiences he was having in his life that had caused him to feel like he was failing. Adam was also quite alone in his emotional world.
Not keen to share his worries or anxieties, he kept them to himself. This added to his sense of loneliness, and his lack of self-belief prohibited him from making the changes he needed so that he could begin to find some of his self-worth again. But the GP visit was a catalyst for positive change too. Sometimes, we have to be shaken out of ourselves a bit to realise that we need to make changes. Emotional upset can lumber on under the surface, and sometimes a difficult life event can jump-start the process of decline or recovery. Initially, Adam’s response triggered further decline, but later it was an important part of the changes that would impact his emotional life positively. After a month of cognitive, behavioural, and social improvement, Adam rated his emotional health at 4/10.
Avoiding overcorrection
What Adam’s story tells us is that the knee-jerk 8–10 response is often the wrong option, despite its allure. Adam’s keenness to flip the dial on his lifestyle, and the seduction of the quick-fix brigade, meant that what he attempted was an example of overcorrection. He tried to change too much too quickly, and this inevitably failed. The message he was hearing was that extreme approaches were the way to go.
Our obsession with gratification and speed has meant that many of us will fall into similar traps to Adam’s. We want things to be vastly different in the shortest time possible, so fad diets and extreme exercise regimes are the order of the day. In reality, extreme changes only work in the smallest number of cases, and the risk of their increasing our feelings of failure is incredibly high.
The plan Adam adopted considered his baseline, or starting point. It looked at what was possible, not what was optimal, and it looked at ensuring quick wins to optimise Adam’s self-worth and maximise the chances of ongoing success and continued engagement.
The reason why the 4–7 zone worked with Adam was because it focused on achieving fulfilling changes over gratifying dramatic results.
- ‘The 4-7 Zone: An easy and effective way to lie a balanced life — and become your own therapist’ by Dr Colman Noctor is published by Gill Books, €18.99
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