06/16/2021
What differentiates those who are successful with losing weight and getting in shape from those that don’t? This is a question that many people seek to understand but very few can answer. And I’ll tell you that the path to changing your body lies in changing your behavior.
Changing behavior is the difference between those that succeed and those that don’t. This is true for all things, but it seems to be forgotten in physical fitness and health industry.
It doesn’t apply exactly the same to each individual, because all of us have different skill sets but we need to understand this concept and how to use it.
I’ll tell you a story of one of my clients. John was a football player who had always been overweight. He was 30 years old, about 6’1 and over 300 lbs. He’d tried several times to get down to a healthy weight, but he always failed. He would cycle between bouts of weight loss and weight gain, something we in the fitness industry call “yo-yoing”. When I talked to him about why this was happening, he told me his problem was consistency.
Well, when I talked to him about this, I thought it was amazing. He had the skills to lose weight because he knew how to exercise from his football background. And he clearly had motivation to attain his weight loss goal otherwise he wouldn’t have tried so many times. But even when he knew that his consistency was the problem, he still couldn’t fix it. He still couldn’t change his behavior and make it last.
This is where understanding behavior was extremely useful. Because it’s not just john that has this problem. According to the CDC 42.5 percent of adults over the age of 20 in the United States are obese. And that was in 2018. Unfortunately, it’s safe to assume that that number has risen. I say this because a research publishing company named run repeat reported that 40% of people living in the USA gained weight during the pandemic shutdown.
It’s clear that there is a massive problem with weight gain and to solve the problem we first have to define it. We could define this as an exercise problem, that people just aren’t moving enough. We could define this as a nutrition problem, that people aren’t eating healthy food or are just eating too much. It could be an education problem or an awareness problem or a social acceptance problem. If you define it as one of those problems you might use technology to come up with solutions; there are apps to track calories eaten, calories expended, track your sleep, set reminders for exercise and help plan your day to include activity. All of those are important technologies, products and solutions to the problem.
But if we don’t think about how we influence individual’s behavior, we fall short of creating lasting change.
Well let’s look at another one of my clients. I’ve trained a 13 year old the last 3 years. When we started, he had no knowledge of health and fitness and he had several bad habits revolving around screen time. He was overweight by a large margin, he had very little body awareness, very little strength or endurance and almost no understanding about nutrition. And it was my responsibility to help him change these things.
Rather than having him focus on 10 things at once, I asked him to do 1 thing. I asked that he move his body for 30 minutes, every day. I wanted to set in place a habit and mental expectancy for movement. This was crucial especially at his young age so that he would not fear physical activity. Which is something I’ve noticed in many adults. I don’t exactly what it comes from, but I would say the majority of people are afraid of hard physical exertion. That was my first objective for him, not to be afraid.
For several months we built his skills for exercise and in the meantime, he was building his habit to move. We didn’t start with anything hard; everything was very manageable, clear and could be done correctly. And while we trained, I was doing my best to educate him about the importance of sleep, exercise and nutrition.
Let me fast forward to where we are now. In our training sessions we start by running about a mile. During the run we review his sleep schedule for the last couple of days, we talk about what activities he’s been doing for his 30 minutes and we review what he’s been eating. All the while I help him process and understand how each of these are affecting how he feels and how he’s progressing.
We set plans, goals and review strategies for difficult circumstances. And I’m proud to say that he is a completely different person than who I met years ago.
So how did my clients change their behavior? They were taught to observe different influences that were affecting how they behaved. And I taught them to use 6 lenses of perspective to analyze what their major influences were. You can do this too.
This is a concept presented by Joseph granny an astounding applied social scientist who uses the 6 sources of influence to help both fortune 500 companies and individuals trying to escape the desperate circumstances of living in the Nairobi slums of Kenya.
The 6 sources of influence on our behavior are motivation and ability in our personal lives, our social lives and in our structural lives.
I’ll explain these as they related to my clients:
John and Wyatt both had personal motivation. They had the wanton desire to live healthier lives and have a leaner physique. But this on its own, doesn’t work. This is because motivation is an emotion and emotions by definition are not constant. On top of that, it doesn’t matter how badly you want something if you don’t possess the ability to achieve it.
That brings us to our second lens. Personal ability. John had more personal ability, he had some knowledge about what he needed to do. He was taught how to track his calories and how to correctly gauge what and how much he needed to lose weight. Wyatt on the other hand had almost no personal ability. And the first ability we worked towards was overcoming fear of exercise. If you thought about it right now, what abilities do you have that could help with weight loss? Do you know how to track calories expended and eaten? Do you know how to cook healthy food that you actually enjoy? Do you know how to exercise so that you are getting the results that you desire (it could be strength, it could be size, it could just be lowering your blood pressure. Do you know what types of exercise you need to be doing?) Think about what abilities you have, and which ones you need so that the moments you are motivated are not wasted.
The next perspective we need to address is your social motivations. Will the people you’re around encourage you to lose weight and help make it easier? This is a tough consideration. The majority of the USA is overweight with nearly half being obese. Chances are that those around you are not in the habit of healthy decision making. And if you all the sudden want to make healthier choices, the people around you may not be doing the same.
With my clients I offered alternatives to get their social motivation encouraging healthy behavior rather than making it more difficult. The first was for John. You have to understand that if your friends or family are regularly drinking, smoking and eating fast food that you yourself are much more likely to participate in that behavior with them. Rather than meeting friends at the bar, we came up with other activities that he and he friends could do together that didn’t lead to such unhealthy outcomes. The teenager loves to play video games with his friends online. But I introduced him to another activity, soccer. So, when his friends visit, yes they still play video games but they also get outside and get active. For yourself, I’d encourage you to think about social motivation. Are you around people that encourage your health goals? Or are they encouraging you to do unhealthy behaviors and make it hard for you to refuse.
In joseph’s research he explains that this lens of behavior influence is the greatest determinant for sustained behavior change and should not be taken lightly. I encourage everyone to become a part of a community that is focused on a healthy behavior as it has the greatest chance of helping you attain sustained success in weight management.
The fourth influence is social ability. And you can answer this question very quickly. Are the people around you able to increase your personal ability to live a healthy life? Do they teach you the knowledge, skills and strategies for healthy behaviors? Or are you constantly having to explain why you do what you do to live healthier. It may seem small, but constantly explaining and justifying healthy habits is hard and it makes sustaining healthy behavior harder. Having a trainer is a great way to increase your social ability. We teach constantly and a few times a week we are their to encourage the habit of exercise. But that’s not enough, and it’s up to you, the individual to find more ways to enhance your social ability.
Structural motivation is crucial because we need to associate healthy behaviors as being good. It doesn’t always feel good when you say no to beer, pizza, ice cream etc.… But if you always bad about making the healthy decision how on earth do we do it over and over and over. You structural motivation is how you are incentivized to make healthy behaviors. You need to reward yourself for doing the right thing. Social capital is great when you are praised for the behavior, but when that isn’t available or isn’t enough, you should reward yourself. Maybe you buy a new outfit once your old ones don’t fit. Maybe you reward yourself with a trip or vacation once you goal is achieved. This can be individualized for what you find most valuable and rewarding.
For John, we set a goal of 20lbs lost and once achieved he purchased a new computer piece that would improve his frame rate for playing game. For the teen, we set a goal of doing 6 30 minute activities each week. And every week that he achieved this his mother would buy him a set of Pokémon cards. What would you use to incentivize yourself?
Finally, we’re going to look at structural ability. And while this one may seem obvious; you may be unaware of just how much influence it has on you. Your structural ability is based on your tangible location. Think about this, what is your house structurally set up to do? For many people the TV and the couch take up the center of the main living area. A room like this is structurally motivating you to rest, sit or lie down and watch TV. Is your home or living area in any way structurally incentivizing healthy behavior? You could have a designated exercise room (that was the garage for both the clients I’ve told you about). Are healthier food options easily accessible or do you keep candy and sweets out on the counter? Think about this awhile. How could you set up your structure so that healthy behaviors are made easier and unhealthy behaviors are made more difficult?
I hope that this talk has helped you understand that weight management is more than eating less and moving more. Even if it were just that, there’s much more influencing your behavior and your ability to sustain those behaviors then what you may have been aware of. I encourage everyone to write down each of the 6 lenses of influence and identify what is encouraging you towards your goal and what is detracting from it. This way you can have all your spheres of influence pulling towards success and sustained behaviors.
