Speaker 1: Having conscious awareness enables us to see what we're about
Speaker 1: to do and potentially to make a different choice. To
Speaker 1: feed the good wolf, the one that again represents what
Speaker 1: we aim to do. Welcome to the one you feed.
Speaker 1: Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the
Speaker 1: thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or
Speaker 1: you are what you think ring true, and yet for
Speaker 1: many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf. M thanks for joining us. Our guest on
Speaker 1: this episode is Michelle Seeger, an award winning researcher at
Speaker 1: the University of Michigan with almost thirty years studying how
Speaker 1: to help people adopt healthy behaviors in ways that can
Speaker 1: survive the complexity and unpredictability of the real world. Michelle's
Speaker 1: first book, No Sweat, was featured in The New York
Speaker 1: Times and won the two thousand and fifteen Best Book
Speaker 1: Awards in the Diet and Exercise category. It also became
Speaker 1: the number one selling book in Amazon's Exercise and Fitness
Speaker 1: category when released. Today, Michelle and Eric discussed her new book,
Speaker 1: The Joy Choice, How to Finally Achieve Lasting Changes in
Speaker 1: Eating an Exercise. Hi, Michelle, welcome to the show. Thank you.
Speaker 1: It is great to be here again. Yes, so, I'm
Speaker 1: so happy be to have you on. I was saying
Speaker 1: to you before we started that I don't remember when
Speaker 1: we talk to you. It's probably at least four years ago,
Speaker 1: but the conversation really has stuck with me since then.
Speaker 1: It's one of the things I reference a lot, which
Speaker 1: is the basic idea that you know, the key is
Speaker 1: just to move in any way any time that you can,
Speaker 1: and that everything counts. You know, those things really really
Speaker 1: left an impression on me. But you've got a new
Speaker 1: book out called The Joy Choice, How to Finally Achieve
Speaker 1: Lasting Changes in eating an Exercise. And we'll get into
Speaker 1: that a second, but let's start, like we always do,
Speaker 1: with a parable. In the parable, there's a grandparent who's
Speaker 1: talking with their grandchild, and they say, in life, there
Speaker 1: are two wolves inside of us that are always a battle.
Speaker 1: One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness
Speaker 1: and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the grandchild stops, thinks about it for a second and
Speaker 1: looks up at their grandparents and says, well, which one wins,
Speaker 1: And the grandparent applies the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 1: means to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 1: that you do. I love that you start the podcast
Speaker 1: this way. It's a profound foundational thing both I would say,
Speaker 1: in my life and in my work. And this time around,
Speaker 1: I actually am going to tell you a quote that
Speaker 1: is so meaningful to me, and I think it has
Speaker 1: to do with this what you just read the paraball
Speaker 1: and it's from Dan Seagull, who I'm sure your listeners
Speaker 1: know where our attention goes neural firing flows and neural
Speaker 1: connections grow, and so putting that parable within you know,
Speaker 1: this essential neuroscience which speaks to how important it is
Speaker 1: for us to feed the wolf that we really want
Speaker 1: to become, if you will, the virtues that we want
Speaker 1: to embody and live. But I also I think it's
Speaker 1: really important to bring the challenge to to doing that.
Speaker 1: It sounds logical to say, well, if we feed the
Speaker 1: right wolf, then we're going to live in the way
Speaker 1: we really value living. And again I value this, I
Speaker 1: believe in it. And it's still challenging sometimes because and
Speaker 1: this is the thing, because it takes conscious awareness before
Speaker 1: we feed the wolf, and having conscious awareness number one
Speaker 1: enables us to see what we're about to do and
Speaker 1: potentially to make a different choice to feed the good wolf,
Speaker 1: the one that again represents what we aim to do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, so much of the quote unquote bad wolf
Speaker 1: behavior in our lives is completely unconscious. As you said,
Speaker 1: it's just running on autopilot. It's just the default behavior
Speaker 1: that we've either been conditioned into that we are left
Speaker 1: with after we deal with all our stresses and problems
Speaker 1: and dizziness. The parables a little dramatic, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's you know, good wolf and bad wolf. And you know,
Speaker 1: I've always preferred the Buddhist terms of skillful and unskillful, right,
Speaker 1: But as I've joked many a time a parable about
Speaker 1: an unskillful wolf just doesn't work the same. But that's
Speaker 1: really what we're talking about. So most of our unskillful
Speaker 1: behavior is happening on autopilot, and we have to be
Speaker 1: able to bring things to conscious awareness in order to
Speaker 1: change them. And that is at least half the battle.
Speaker 1: I think when we first spoke about this five to
Speaker 1: seven years ago, I don't know that I raised that issue.
Speaker 1: That's why it's so wonderful. They have an opportunity to rethink, well,
Speaker 1: what does it mean to me today? That idea is
Speaker 1: so important to me that it is pasted on my
Speaker 1: wall right in front of me. So it's hard to
Speaker 1: do when we have the intention, and when we practice,
Speaker 1: we get better at it. Yep. Absolutely, So I want
Speaker 1: to pivot to the kind. I want to start with
Speaker 1: the idea that a lot of us who are listening,
Speaker 1: many if not most of us, have had significant challenges
Speaker 1: in building consistent exercise and eating habits. They are elusive
Speaker 1: for many, many, many people, and so a lot of
Speaker 1: this conversation where we're going to start is trying to
Speaker 1: explore why that is, and then we'll move into some
Speaker 1: of the ways we can solve that. But you start
Speaker 1: off by saying, we initiate a change in eating or
Speaker 1: exercise in what you call a motivation bubble. Say a
Speaker 1: little bit more about what a motivation bubble is. The
Speaker 1: motivation bubble is a concept that just came to me
Speaker 1: when I was talking to a journalist about why we
Speaker 1: start and stop and start and stop endlessly. It's because
Speaker 1: we've been taught to approach exercise intentional eating in this
Speaker 1: way that focuses us on very aspirational goals. And of course,
Speaker 1: if we're going to achieve aspiration no goals, then we've
Speaker 1: got to do it right, and we have to do
Speaker 1: it precise in precise ways. And if you think about
Speaker 1: that as a bubble, it's this big thing, and we
Speaker 1: often don't think of exercise or healthy eating in the
Speaker 1: same way we think about parenting or our work or
Speaker 1: being a life partner with someone. It's separate, and it's
Speaker 1: over there, and we have to do it right, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to plan it, and it's on a separate
Speaker 1: trajectory than everything else. It's a bubble that is in
Speaker 1: a different orbit from the other life bubbles that we
Speaker 1: live in. And so because it's so overinflated by the
Speaker 1: moment we make it. Whether it's New Year's whether it's
Speaker 1: leaving our doctor's office and we're finally gonna please them
Speaker 1: or do it right, or whatever it is, it bumps
Speaker 1: up against any other life area and it just bursts.
Speaker 1: It's fragile because it's overinflated. Yeah. I love that idea
Speaker 1: of how these bubbles rub up against the other areas
Speaker 1: of our life. And you know, that's a fundamental idea
Speaker 1: that runs through this book, and it's a fundamental idea
Speaker 1: that I learned through coaching a lot of people over
Speaker 1: the years. And that idea, and you say it very
Speaker 1: well in the book and in many different ways. The
Speaker 1: core idea, though, that you say is that habits require
Speaker 1: a stable context to form. So that's great. However, most
Speaker 1: of our lives are not anywhere near a stable context.
Speaker 1: If you have a demanding job, and you have children,
Speaker 1: and you have perhaps aging parents, and you have a
Speaker 1: social life, and I mean, our contexts are never stable.
Speaker 1: They're always changing. And like I said, I really figured
Speaker 1: that out working with people where I'd be like, well,
Speaker 1: it's just um, you know, every morning at ten am,
Speaker 1: you're gonna do X, right, and there's a lot of
Speaker 1: benefit in some degree of specificity. And what do you
Speaker 1: do if ten o'clock every day you have no idea
Speaker 1: quite what's going to be going on then? And so
Speaker 1: this idea of a stable context. Share a little bit
Speaker 1: more about that, sure, And I want to say I
Speaker 1: believe planning is very important. So if we don't plan something,
Speaker 1: it is unlikely to happen. So this concept that we're
Speaker 1: talking about, it's not mutually exclusive of planning. It's actually
Speaker 1: what we have to do when our plans don't work out.
Speaker 1: But before we go to that issue, I want to
Speaker 1: stay focused on your question about the stable context. So
Speaker 1: habit formation, which is doing something automatically without the need
Speaker 1: for cognition or effort or willpower, is wildly popular. There's
Speaker 1: been a lot of best selling books about it over
Speaker 1: well quite a few years, but it's become even more
Speaker 1: popular recently. Part of the reason it's become more popular
Speaker 1: is because it is an easy way to develop apps.
Speaker 1: So if people are trying to develop fitness, say apps,
Speaker 1: or different types of apps, it seems like, oh, I'll
Speaker 1: use the habit loop and I'll create my ap around.
Speaker 1: It's very easy and it makes sense. But the problem
Speaker 1: is is that what works in theory doesn't necessarily and
Speaker 1: often doesn't work in reality. And so let's go back
Speaker 1: to the stable context habit formation is based on in academia,
Speaker 1: it's discussed a little differently than you know, the three
Speaker 1: steps of the habit loop, which is a context que
Speaker 1: that is stable. It requires stability. Then we've got to
Speaker 1: step to the behavior, let's say flossing. We associate the
Speaker 1: queue is either putting our toothbrush down or walking in
Speaker 1: the bathroom at night, whatever the que is that you've established.
Speaker 1: And then three is some type of reward with flossing.
Speaker 1: That could be a feeling of a clean mouth or
Speaker 1: accomplishment or whatever the reward is. Now, with the behavior
Speaker 1: like flossing that happens in the bathroom, often at night
Speaker 1: after the kids are asleep, there's not a lot of
Speaker 1: room for disrupting that context. But when we step out
Speaker 1: of the bathroom into the realities of our full life
Speaker 1: context and daily needs, like you introduced in the beginning,
Speaker 1: there are so many forces and unexpected things that we
Speaker 1: simply don't know are going to happen. And the habit
Speaker 1: loop is based on the assumption that this context is
Speaker 1: going to remain stable. But when we're talking about more
Speaker 1: complicated behaviors that might have multi steps that might have
Speaker 1: a lot of resentment or ambivalence with them, like exercise
Speaker 1: and intentional eating, tends to have while those forces easily
Speaker 1: disrupt the context que And so that's why the whole
Speaker 1: concept of habit formation its value has been over generalized
Speaker 1: in the field of health promotion, because health promoting behaviors
Speaker 1: are much more complicated then a simple behavior like flascing
Speaker 1: our teeth. Yeah, and it's really interesting. You know, we've
Speaker 1: interviewed many of the leading proponents of the popular writing
Speaker 1: about habits, and there's a lot of wisdom in there,
Speaker 1: and there is limitation in there. You know, let's take b. J.
Speaker 1: Fogg and tiny habits, right, a great method, but like,
Speaker 1: how do you scale from a tiny habit to a
Speaker 1: big habit? I mean, there's some ways to do it,
Speaker 1: but there's a point where it crosses over from something
Speaker 1: that can be automated to something that really can't. And
Speaker 1: you know, I love what you just said there because
Speaker 1: you pulled out two really important things, two things that
Speaker 1: are working against us. One is just the chaos of life.
Speaker 1: I plan to go to the gym this morning at
Speaker 1: eight am, and I woke up my kid as a fever. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: not going to the gym, right. So we've got all
Speaker 1: these external things, and then you brought up the fact
Speaker 1: that we often have all this ambivalence inside of us
Speaker 1: around this, and when those two things collide, it's a disaster, right,
Speaker 1: Because maybe I could overcome the internal ambivalence if I
Speaker 1: can get just a routine going. You know, I often
Speaker 1: think I can't make a habit out of exercise, but
Speaker 1: I can build momentum around it, you know, I can
Speaker 1: get some energy behind it where it's way easier to
Speaker 1: do than it used to be, maybe when I was
Speaker 1: first starting the habit. So you've got these external things
Speaker 1: that rub up against the internal. We all would know
Speaker 1: this phenomenon, which is that like, okay, we are supposed
Speaker 1: to be working out at ten am, we get a
Speaker 1: call from our boss at ten o'clock and at ten
Speaker 1: ten we're done, and we don't work out, right, we could,
Speaker 1: but that combination, we've got just enough excuse that is
Speaker 1: now rubbed up against our internal ambivalence that it just
Speaker 1: comes off the rails. And that's why I don't want
Speaker 1: to leave this conversation prematurely because it's so foundational to
Speaker 1: everything else we're going to talk about. But that is
Speaker 1: why I call them decision disrupters and decision traps, because
Speaker 1: it's that internal self talk that, by the way, is
Speaker 1: not our fault. It does not derive from us. It
Speaker 1: derives for outside of us. We've internalized it through our socialization,
Speaker 1: through the education we've received in society and the media,
Speaker 1: in research, you know, from our clinicians office. Everything we've
Speaker 1: learned about exercise and eating has taught us to think
Speaker 1: about it in a very myopic and really unhelpful way
Speaker 1: for most people. I mean, why is it that we
Speaker 1: think of exercise and healthy eating with this need for precision,
Speaker 1: with this need to hit a bulls eye, when all
Speaker 1: these other life areas again, things that we want to
Speaker 1: sustain for life, being parents, good parents, hopefully, But guess what,
Speaker 1: there's ups and downs in our parenting, there's ups and
Speaker 1: downs in our relationships, in our marriages, there's ups and
Speaker 1: downs in our career. But we don't bring that same
Speaker 1: sensibility and wisdom to eating an exercise. But it's again,
Speaker 1: it is not our fault, as individuals. It is simply
Speaker 1: the way we've learned to approach it. And I to say,
Speaker 1: some behavior change strategies cultivate a type of a precision thinking,
Speaker 1: which doesn't help most people. Yeah, there's a world of
Speaker 1: difference between something that you can manage to sort of
Speaker 1: keep rolling for thirty days versus something that you're going
Speaker 1: to keep rolling for thirty years. Nearly any relationship can
Speaker 1: survive thirty days, that's right, good fight, But very few
Speaker 1: can survive thirty years. And it's a completely different orientation.
Speaker 1: And so we'll get to orientation around exercise and eating,
Speaker 1: like why our orientation is difficult there? But let's stay
Speaker 1: for a couple of minutes on this idea of habits
Speaker 1: when they work and when they don't. You talk about
Speaker 1: people being habitters or unhabitors. What does that mean? Sure? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I want to be clear that that was
Speaker 1: a playful concept that I created to get us to
Speaker 1: think more critically about what we've been taught about how
Speaker 1: to change our behavior, whether it's worked for us, why
Speaker 1: mayor may at work for us, Why it may or
Speaker 1: may not work for other people. So, as you know,
Speaker 1: in my book, I use my husband as an example
Speaker 1: a pure habitter. And while I contend in the book,
Speaker 1: and I've been doing a lot of talking about this recently,
Speaker 1: that habit formation is not going to work for most
Speaker 1: people when it comes to complex health promoting behaviors, it
Speaker 1: does work for some people. And my husband is a
Speaker 1: great example of this, because he has created a frictionless
Speaker 1: experience again to create his context queue for his exercise habit.
Speaker 1: In the morning, he sleeps in his exercise clothes, and
Speaker 1: I always say, thank goodness, he is a good laundry person,
Speaker 1: and his alarm goes off, you know, five in the morning.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure exactly what time because I am still sleeping,
Speaker 1: and he goes into the basement, he's already dressed, gets
Speaker 1: on the bike, exercises, no one else in the house
Speaker 1: is up, and then he has a sense of satisfaction.
Speaker 1: So his rule word, and I have asked him about it,
Speaker 1: His reward is that he feels like he's accomplished something,
Speaker 1: and it's often the only thing he feels that way about.
Speaker 1: So some people can do that, but he is a
Speaker 1: habitter in all areas of his life. And this isn't
Speaker 1: necessarily true for everyone. But I have tended in my
Speaker 1: coaching too, to see that people who succeed with a
Speaker 1: complex behavior like exercise or healthy eating often are quite disciplined.
Speaker 1: Often structure their life so that it doesn't have a
Speaker 1: lot of interruptions. They check off their to do list
Speaker 1: most of it every day because of who they are,
Speaker 1: and I believe that they represent a minority of the
Speaker 1: population and they have the innate self discipline to push
Speaker 1: through even when they don't want to do something. I
Speaker 1: want to pick it that for a minute, but I'm
Speaker 1: not going to will come back around to it because
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot in there that is actually
Speaker 1: very interesting, because I think some of what he's doing is,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of best practices right for this. So
Speaker 1: some of it is he's naturally oriented that way, and
Speaker 1: you know, the other is he's figured out how to
Speaker 1: get up at the time that nothing else is going
Speaker 1: to get in the way. You know. As people often
Speaker 1: ask me, like what should I exercise in the morning
Speaker 1: or the evening, I'm like, well, the first answer is
Speaker 1: it totally depends on you, right. The second answer would be,
Speaker 1: assuming there's not a strong preference for in your life,
Speaker 1: morning tends to be better. And the reason morning tends
Speaker 1: to be better is less things can get in your
Speaker 1: way in the morning. Right by the time six o'clock
Speaker 1: rolls around, any number of emergencies could have occurred in
Speaker 1: your career and your family at six am, there's far
Speaker 1: less of them. So there is something to be said
Speaker 1: for he's done that. But I think what you just
Speaker 1: pointed to is there's a rigidity in that and some people,
Speaker 1: I don't want to make this agenda thing, but I
Speaker 1: have seen this where, particularly in child rearing families, where
Speaker 1: the father is able to sort of get some rigidity
Speaker 1: and the mother doesn't because she's the front line of
Speaker 1: the support. And so it's not fair to compare those
Speaker 1: two people in that way because their contexts are very different.
Speaker 1: That's right, And you know what you're speaking to is
Speaker 1: the chapter on chaos. The fact that research does show
Speaker 1: that the more chaos in the house, and of course
Speaker 1: the person who is primarily responsible for managing the chaos
Speaker 1: has much less ability to stick to the plan, right,
Speaker 1: which is the quote unquote, And we're not using the
Speaker 1: word rigidity in a negative way. It's descriptive. Right, There's
Speaker 1: still tends to be a gender that is primarily in
Speaker 1: charge of child rearing and house management. And it does
Speaker 1: tend to be the female, but it really any whichever
Speaker 1: parents is going to be primarily responsible for these issues.
Speaker 1: I mean, think about how much anticipated unexpected there is
Speaker 1: in our life is singular individuals. Now, add on top
Speaker 1: of that one to three kids, maybe a couple ats,
Speaker 1: and you know whatever else that might be going on,
Speaker 1: and that exponentially increases the amount of interruption that our
Speaker 1: self care behaviors are going to have. So let's explore
Speaker 1: a couple of assumptions underlying you know, why habits don't
Speaker 1: work for un habit ors. We've got a few different assumptions.
Speaker 1: I don't think we need to hit all of them,
Speaker 1: but you want to hit a couple of them, sure,
Speaker 1: well one of them. And we've already spoken about this,
Speaker 1: so I'm just gonna check a box by explicitly saying
Speaker 1: one of the assumptions of successful habit formation is that
Speaker 1: it's going to work equally while across behaviors. Because the
Speaker 1: books talk about many different types of behaviors, they generalize
Speaker 1: and so we know that that isn't true based on
Speaker 1: how you and I have just been talking about, and
Speaker 1: even in the habit literature, which is you know, going
Speaker 1: to be the most precise discussion of habit formation, and
Speaker 1: the academic literature, there's even a nuanced new converse station
Speaker 1: going on in that literature about she is habit formation
Speaker 1: really appropriate for a complex, multi stuff behavior like physical activity?
Speaker 1: And so they're they're discussing it right now. But I
Speaker 1: think it's important to point out that that is occurring
Speaker 1: and it's a more nuanced, important conversation. Another assumption I
Speaker 1: can check the box on really quickly is that it's
Speaker 1: going to work equally well for everyone. While we already
Speaker 1: talked about certain roles and responsibilities really make that a
Speaker 1: much heavier, if not impossible lift. And in fact, the
Speaker 1: most popular study that gets quoted both, I would say,
Speaker 1: in academia and an industry is study that assessed how
Speaker 1: long it takes to form habits? Do you know that
Speaker 1: study that I'm talking about. It gets talked about all
Speaker 1: the time, and it it basically says, while there's a
Speaker 1: huge variation between behaviors and people from like eighteen days
Speaker 1: to two fifty six something in that range, so huge
Speaker 1: variation which is so huge that it's almost it's basically meaningless.
Speaker 1: But the sixties six day average still gets talked about,
Speaker 1: even though it's an average of you know, eighteen days
Speaker 1: over two hundred. But the important thing about that getting
Speaker 1: it everybody is that the study was conducted among university
Speaker 1: students who are they have very different lives, and yet
Speaker 1: even among a group of students who have a lot
Speaker 1: more flexibility traditionally, at least of those university participants did
Speaker 1: not achieve the automaticity status that that sixties six day
Speaker 1: average is about. So we have to ask if students
Speaker 1: who tend to not be juggling all these things that
Speaker 1: we've been talking about can achieve automaticity. Wow, then how
Speaker 1: are people who are you know, have a few kids,
Speaker 1: you know, and work outside of the home and and
Speaker 1: have aging parents. The third thing I want to say
Speaker 1: is that the assumption is that automating our choices about
Speaker 1: exercise and healthy eating is the ideal because in theory
Speaker 1: automating it, yes, I don't want to have to use willpower,
Speaker 1: Yes I don't want to have to use my cognition
Speaker 1: as such a limited resource. But in lives that necessitate
Speaker 1: pivoting and being flexible, we need the exact opposite. So
Speaker 1: the assumption that automaticity is the gold standard. What we
Speaker 1: should all aim for. I think is false because of
Speaker 1: the reasons we've talked about already. If we are not
Speaker 1: optimally primed to pivot with our exercise and healthy eating,
Speaker 1: then you know, as forty years shows us, we won't
Speaker 1: be successful sticking with it, or at least most people
Speaker 1: want right and we want automaticity because it sounds easier,
Speaker 1: and we know that when something becomes automatic for us,
Speaker 1: it's easy to do flossing as an example. Or I
Speaker 1: was trying to think a habit I've just developed recently
Speaker 1: that I realized has become automatic, but it's a very
Speaker 1: small thing. I can't remember what it is now. I
Speaker 1: want to say, not only does do we want it
Speaker 1: because it sounds easy, it is a wonderful resource that
Speaker 1: our brains are structured to have, so it is beneficial.
Speaker 1: You know a lot of times people drive places that
Speaker 1: they know, you know, on autopilot. I don't want people
Speaker 1: to think that I'm anti habit. I'm absolutely not anti habit.
Speaker 1: What I am concerned about is the over generalization of
Speaker 1: the value of habit formation for complicated behaviors that people
Speaker 1: keep failing at. And I think one of the reasons
Speaker 1: is because as a field. We keep telling people to
Speaker 1: do things that are just not valid in their life contacts. Right, Right,
Speaker 1: It's not that automaticity is bad or that we wouldn't
Speaker 1: want it where we can have it, but you don't
Speaker 1: want to insist on an approach that's simply not going
Speaker 1: to work. You just keep bashing your head against the wall.
Speaker 1: So we sort of debunked that. You're probably assuming you
Speaker 1: are trying to form a habit that is a to
Speaker 1: step complex habit, like eating well or exercising regularly, and
Speaker 1: you have a complex life, right, Your life is such
Speaker 1: that it has chaos, And so I'm going to say
Speaker 1: we're now talking about of the people at this point, right,
Speaker 1: Some people like, if you're already exercising every single day
Speaker 1: for the last nine years, you can just tune Michelle
Speaker 1: and I out and move on to the next show.
Speaker 1: For everybody else, though, less let me interrupts you want
Speaker 1: to understand unless that person who does have it down
Speaker 1: wants to understand why other people in their lives our
Speaker 1: struggle so much. So, I think it is valuable for
Speaker 1: the people who get it right or not getting right
Speaker 1: is the wrong word, who have successfully figured out how
Speaker 1: to sustain and be consistent with these complicated behaviors. And
Speaker 1: I'm gonna pause here and say that listeners do not despair.
Speaker 1: We're not saying like you're doomed to never stick with
Speaker 1: eating right or exercising. This is not, you know, abandon
Speaker 1: all hope you who enter here, right, We're going to
Speaker 1: get there, but we're sort of taking down some of
Speaker 1: the myths before we get there. So let's talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about You've got a section called why we
Speaker 1: don't just do it? You know, just do it? Being
Speaker 1: quotes right that phrase just do it? So what are
Speaker 1: some of the reasons that we don't just do it?
Speaker 1: We've identified some of them, Yes, but now I think
Speaker 1: we're moving from the external to the internal exactly. Thank you.
Speaker 1: That is a perfect introduction. So we have learned to perceive, approach,
Speaker 1: and experience exercise and intentional eating. Again, while these ideas
Speaker 1: might generalize to other self care behaviors, the book is
Speaker 1: really explicitly focused on eating an exercise because of the
Speaker 1: reason they are uniquely united or under the umbrella of
Speaker 1: weight loss and all of the really problematic things that
Speaker 1: brings between weight ism and shame and hating exercise because
Speaker 1: it's punishing because you think you have to do it hard,
Speaker 1: or feeling deprived, not because you actually are, but because
Speaker 1: you're making a choice out of this external should I
Speaker 1: can't eat that bad food, and it makes you feel
Speaker 1: resentful or rebel. And here I am jumping into the
Speaker 1: four decision desrupters, which reflect the inner scripts, the inner things,
Speaker 1: the things we tell ourselves at these decision points. We're
Speaker 1: at a party. We recently started eating plan that we
Speaker 1: felt really good about and have really been successful following,
Speaker 1: and we've noticed that we feel good. We go to
Speaker 1: a party and there's nothing on our plan there. And
Speaker 1: on top of that, there there's a glistening chocolate cake
Speaker 1: across the room that you know is seducing us with
Speaker 1: the look and the aroma and all of the stuff.
Speaker 1: And instead of saying to ourselves, oh jeez, I you know, yes,
Speaker 1: chocolate cake is great, but I love this eating plan
Speaker 1: I'm on, the internal script tends to be again, it's
Speaker 1: not our fault. That's how we've learned to think about it.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I can't have that chocolate cake. I
Speaker 1: can't have it. It's not on my eating plan. What
Speaker 1: is one of the biggest disrupters, It's rebellion because humans
Speaker 1: are wired to rebel against anything which takes away our freedom.
Speaker 1: So that's this internal rebellion script that we play. And
Speaker 1: of course what happens is there's all this energy to
Speaker 1: just take the thing we don't think we should or
Speaker 1: can have, and we don't even do it with a
Speaker 1: sense of gosh, how much do I want of the cake?
Speaker 1: Do I need to eat the whole piece of cake?
Speaker 1: Often what happens out of rebellion is we eat three
Speaker 1: pieces of cake because we are just taking that energy
Speaker 1: of I can't and it's boomerang into you know, screw you.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna eat as much as the cake as I
Speaker 1: want to. So that's one of the primary internal decision
Speaker 1: traps I've seen in my coaching, and you know, as
Speaker 1: a as a coach, I'm wondering if you recognize these
Speaker 1: decision disrupters that happen at the moment of choice. And
Speaker 1: this is why instead of thinking we need things to
Speaker 1: be precisely right and automated, I mean, how is that
Speaker 1: decision like they had a party automated. We are outside
Speaker 1: of any context. We've established our eating habits around and
Speaker 1: we have this seduction occurring and So if we don't
Speaker 1: have the mental wherewithal to make a choice that is
Speaker 1: the most adaptive choice that's going to enable us to
Speaker 1: both stick with our greater goals, whatever those are. It
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be precisely right, but also feel like
Speaker 1: we're participating in our social lives with our families and
Speaker 1: our friends, which is among the most motivating things that
Speaker 1: human beings have is other people. So if our exercise
Speaker 1: and healthy eating inner dialogue reflects a conflict between participate
Speaker 1: painting with the people we feel most connected to, while
Speaker 1: that is an automatic setup to fail too, because we are,
Speaker 1: for anything in human nature, motivated to align with our
Speaker 1: families to participate. And then we're talking about rebellion. We've
Speaker 1: talked about another really common one is perfection. We can
Speaker 1: use the chocolate cake as an example. So looking at
Speaker 1: the chocolate cake, it's not it's a black or white,
Speaker 1: it's can I have it or can't I have it?
Speaker 1: It's the can't is a perfect world. I cannot have
Speaker 1: at all, the cake all or nothing, And then nothing
Speaker 1: in the situation is eating the whole thing or more.
Speaker 1: And that sets us up when we look at our choices.
Speaker 1: Am I gonna run for forty five minutes or walk
Speaker 1: for forty like I planned, all, oh gee, that phone
Speaker 1: call only gives me thirty five minutes, Why bother? Or nothing?
Speaker 1: I'm not going to do anything, So it works because
Speaker 1: all or nothing really this black and white thinking, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, is a cognitive distortion, yet it's the
Speaker 1: way potentially the majority of people think about these two
Speaker 1: choices in the arenas of exercise and eating. Another one
Speaker 1: is what I call accommodation, which is really a bit
Speaker 1: outside of the topic of exercising and eating, but it
Speaker 1: is fundamental to the decisions people make in the moment.
Speaker 1: Right if someone's needs or our work needs seem to
Speaker 1: be competing with our plan to exercise or our eating plan,
Speaker 1: because a dear friend just handed us a delicious chocolate
Speaker 1: chip cookie that she made, and we feel that we
Speaker 1: need to show her that we care about her and
Speaker 1: value this gift she just gave to us that instead
Speaker 1: of thinking about, well, gee, I'm eating this way that
Speaker 1: doesn't include the chocolate chip cookie or whatever it is.
Speaker 1: It could be a burrito, for all I care. My
Speaker 1: need to validate her needs is more important than my need.
Speaker 1: And again, if it's all or nothing, thinking. Then it's
Speaker 1: the whole cookie versus something else or not at all.
Speaker 1: And these things are the internal part that disrupt the
Speaker 1: in the moment decision. It's how our brain has learned
Speaker 1: to think about it. And that's why the book and
Speaker 1: the method is really about guiding people to notice in
Speaker 1: the moment. It gets back to your pivotal parable, which
Speaker 1: is which am I going to feed this old reaction
Speaker 1: and habit habitual way of thinking, which tends hasn't served
Speaker 1: most people for many years, or do I want to
Speaker 1: feed a different wolf that's going to give me a
Speaker 1: more adaptive long term result. I've started sending a couple
Speaker 1: of text messages after each podcast listener with positive reminders
Speaker 1: about what's discussed and invitations to apply the wisdom to
Speaker 1: your life. It's free, and listeners have told me that
Speaker 1: these texts really helped to pull them out of autopilot
Speaker 1: and reconnect them with what's important. When you get a
Speaker 1: text for me during your day to day life, it's
Speaker 1: one more thing that helps you further bridge that gap
Speaker 1: between what you know and what you do. Positive messages
Speaker 1: when you need them for me to you. So, if
Speaker 1: you'd like to hear from me a few times a
Speaker 1: week via text. Go to one you feed dot net
Speaker 1: slash text and sign up for free. I want to
Speaker 1: ask you a question about the perfectionism, the all or nothing.
Speaker 1: On the exercise side, it seems very clear to me
Speaker 1: right that all or nothing thinking is not helpful, because
Speaker 1: if I can't work out for an hour, I don't
Speaker 1: work out at all versus working out for forty five
Speaker 1: minutes or five minutes even right, I think if there's
Speaker 1: anything that has changed my ability with many of these things,
Speaker 1: particularly exercise, it has been a little bit of something
Speaker 1: is better than a lot of nothing. Right, do something,
Speaker 1: you can do something. But I want to pivot this
Speaker 1: to things like eating, and particularly things like eating sweets,
Speaker 1: because there are differing opinions out there, and I think
Speaker 1: the answer you're gonna give me is it depends. But
Speaker 1: nonetheless I'm still gonna kind of walk through the question
Speaker 1: more about how you would think about it than what
Speaker 1: your answer is, and that is there are people who say,
Speaker 1: you know, when it comes to sweets, For me, I
Speaker 1: am an abstainer. Abstaining works best for me. I don't
Speaker 1: have to figure out under what circumstances you know, I'm
Speaker 1: a recovering alcoholic radic. So in this case, I'm an abstainer. Right.
Speaker 1: I often talk about the beautiful clarity of zero. Right,
Speaker 1: it's just simple, there's no debate in there. Right. But
Speaker 1: food is a different animal than drugs and alcohol. So
Speaker 1: there are some people who say, look, I just I
Speaker 1: cut it out completely, and then there are other people
Speaker 1: who are looking to integrate it and in a way
Speaker 1: where they've got some degree of moderation around it. And
Speaker 1: there's some people who think that you're kind of one
Speaker 1: of those or the other, and determining which of those
Speaker 1: you are is really a wise thing to do and
Speaker 1: then come down in that way. But how do you
Speaker 1: think about that challenge when it comes to eating? Thank
Speaker 1: you for raising that that is a really important issue.
Speaker 1: So I want to say, as you already said, now
Speaker 1: there are some people who feel that the issue on
Speaker 1: addiction versus not when it comes to eating, I would
Speaker 1: say has not been solved. There are just really core
Speaker 1: people on doing research who claim both sides. But a
Speaker 1: more mundane how we live our lives perspective, it is
Speaker 1: important for us to figure out now challenges. If people say,
Speaker 1: well I am the type of person, well, no, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna take a step back. Part of the problem is
Speaker 1: that we're asking this question gin without explicitly shining a
Speaker 1: light on the context of the food choices, because people
Speaker 1: would say, oh, I'm a zero person, I cannot do moderation.
Speaker 1: But really it's a false psychotomy. If people are making
Speaker 1: choices under shoots and feeling like they've got to do something,
Speaker 1: or feeling that their bodies are there they are bad
Speaker 1: or unattractive or whatever it is, If all of that
Speaker 1: junk surrounds the eating choice, then I would say, we
Speaker 1: can't know if someone is truly a moderation versus a
Speaker 1: zero person because it's all these other forces that are
Speaker 1: inside of our brain that we've learned to have that
Speaker 1: we have to be aware that that's going to be
Speaker 1: going on, because it's very hard to do moderation if
Speaker 1: you're going to have perfection and rebellion and other decision traps,
Speaker 1: because those forces they're not going to let you be
Speaker 1: successful with moderation or for zero for that matter, because
Speaker 1: we're always going to be reacting number one. I want
Speaker 1: to make sure that that issue is clear. Getting back
Speaker 1: to the moderation versus zero, there are for sure individual differences.
Speaker 1: But here's something that most people may not know. The
Speaker 1: emerging research on this question suggests that it is the
Speaker 1: moderation approach which is going to be more effective for
Speaker 1: more people. So there's a couple of studies. One study
Speaker 1: is looking at a weight loss registry, and I'm not
Speaker 1: focusing on weight losses and outcome because I think it
Speaker 1: really sets people up to not stick with exercise and
Speaker 1: healthy eating for many of the reasons we spoke about
Speaker 1: five to seven years ago. But they wanted to know,
Speaker 1: in this group of people who had lost and were
Speaker 1: maintaining a substantial amount of weight, which strategy was going
Speaker 1: to be most effective with eating over a year. Is
Speaker 1: it coming to a weekend with you know, trying to
Speaker 1: stick to the plan, which would be a zero approach, right,
Speaker 1: I don't do you any of it. I'm going to
Speaker 1: stick to the plan no matter what. Or is coming
Speaker 1: to the weekend eating with something with a little more flexibility,
Speaker 1: which is technically in the literature called flexible restraint. Which
Speaker 1: of those two eating strategies is going to be most
Speaker 1: adaptive for eating over time? And the research found and
Speaker 1: you're not going to be surprised because of the way
Speaker 1: I set this up that it's the flexible restrainers who
Speaker 1: had more adaptive eating and outcomes. So I believe it
Speaker 1: comes back to this core wisdom about how we live
Speaker 1: every other area of our life. We can't hit a
Speaker 1: bull's eye every time we parent, we cannot hit a
Speaker 1: bull's eye every time we engage with our partners and
Speaker 1: our work. And it's that sensibility that it's about a
Speaker 1: journey and an intention. We want to do things as
Speaker 1: certain way, but sometimes we can't. I can't do it today, okay.
Speaker 1: Or I have to make the perfect and perfect choice,
Speaker 1: or I could make no choice, but that isn't going
Speaker 1: to get me as far as the perfect and perfect choice.
Speaker 1: So I think the biggest issue is that we have
Speaker 1: come to believe that exercise and eating are different than
Speaker 1: these other lifelong journeys. Yeah, I like that idea of
Speaker 1: flexible restrainers. Like, I mean, I think could I moderate
Speaker 1: drugs and alcohol, I probably would. It seems like the
Speaker 1: better choice right at this juncture in my life. I've
Speaker 1: proved multiple times that doesn't work, and the risk reward
Speaker 1: ratio is just stupidly out of whack, right, It's just
Speaker 1: you know, it's like, well, what would I get well,
Speaker 1: I'd be able to have a drink a couple of
Speaker 1: times a week. What might I lose? Everything? Okay, not
Speaker 1: worth doing right? A piece of cakes a little more subtle,
Speaker 1: and you know, I certainly know that Jenny and I
Speaker 1: have been on a I would say, very good healthy
Speaker 1: eating journey, particularly since her mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer's.
Speaker 1: I think we were healthy before and then we kind
Speaker 1: of upped it even from there. But it has not
Speaker 1: been rigid and restraining. You know, there is flexibility in there.
Speaker 1: And I think one of the important things is there
Speaker 1: are situations, like you talked about, where we find ourselves
Speaker 1: in a situation and we have to be able to
Speaker 1: make a decision. And I want to get to that
Speaker 1: because that's really important. I also think that we can
Speaker 1: really do well with planned exceptions. A planned exception would
Speaker 1: be today is Wednesday, November twenty three. Listeners, you were
Speaker 1: going to hear this in January, but for Michelle and
Speaker 1: I it's a day before Thanksgiving. I could make a
Speaker 1: planned exception tomorrow that you know what, for Thanksgiving dinner,
Speaker 1: I'm just eating whatever, and I'm going to have one
Speaker 1: piece of dessert and that's it done right now. The
Speaker 1: problem for a lot of us is that if we're
Speaker 1: all or nothing right, the minute that we blow up
Speaker 1: with a Thanksgiving dinner, we think, well, screw it. It's
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving weekend, right, it's the holidays, right, And the next
Speaker 1: thing we know, it's January one. So I found you know, okay,
Speaker 1: let me be clear about what the rules are. And again,
Speaker 1: there's some flexibility in them, but they are rules that
Speaker 1: are designed to have flexibility. There's lots of ways this
Speaker 1: can go wrong. You know, I've been in the only
Speaker 1: on special occasions and the next thing, you know, like
Speaker 1: Billy getting to see on his report card is a
Speaker 1: special occasion, and you know, but being clear birthdays or
Speaker 1: I've had other people who, you know, I don't think
Speaker 1: they have alcoholism issues. They said, I'm just not going
Speaker 1: to drink alone at my home and their life isn't
Speaker 1: like they're not out partying all the time. For a
Speaker 1: college student, that's a terrible thing. It's not gonna make
Speaker 1: any difference. But for most adults, they just go, Look,
Speaker 1: if I'm out with friends, I'm gonna have a couple
Speaker 1: of drinks. But when I'm home alone, nothing right. So
Speaker 1: there are ways that we can have some flexibility and
Speaker 1: also some clarity. It's not all or nothing. That's correct.
Speaker 1: And I think inherent in the flexible approach and strategy
Speaker 1: that I'm teaching. Inherent in that is people are making
Speaker 1: intentional decisions. So that's also the beauty of flexibility is
Speaker 1: it asks people to be in charge of their choices,
Speaker 1: not the inner scripts. It's about saying, oh, I see
Speaker 1: you perfection steering me down, or I see you rebellion
Speaker 1: steering me down. But guess what, You're the bad wolf.
Speaker 1: And I know that I've been feeding you for thirty
Speaker 1: years and it doesn't get me where I want to go.
Speaker 1: So I want to go in a different direction. And
Speaker 1: so I think for me anyway and my philosophy, and
Speaker 1: it sounds like we might align on this is that
Speaker 1: when you teach this flexible approach, it is inherently about
Speaker 1: the individuals saying, Okay, this is what I care most about.
Speaker 1: This is how I want to participate in celebrations. It
Speaker 1: asks people to become very clear about what they value,
Speaker 1: what they most want, and it asked people to critically
Speaker 1: think about, you know, if I'm going to stick with this,
Speaker 1: if I'm going to stick with a healthier eating lifestyle,
Speaker 1: just like a parent, and you know, for a journey
Speaker 1: of thirty years on the other side of the third years,
Speaker 1: what's really going to let me do that? And rigidity
Speaker 1: it works for some people, and like you said, when
Speaker 1: it comes to alcohol, being rigid is absolutely the solution.
Speaker 1: You know, it's important for people to truly know what's
Speaker 1: going to work for them. But again, if people don't
Speaker 1: understand the societal context around the meaning of eating healthy
Speaker 1: eating and exercise, that has the potential to continuously thwart
Speaker 1: what people do because it creates these inner dialogues, the
Speaker 1: forces that lead us to the bad wolf instead of
Speaker 1: the skilled wolf, if you will. Yeah, underlying a lot
Speaker 1: of what you're saying here is reconnecting with our ability
Speaker 1: to choose and our ability to decide what's important to us,
Speaker 1: and not doing that on autopilot, right, not just following
Speaker 1: the scripts we've been given. Not doing this because even
Speaker 1: because my doctor said I should write like, I'm not
Speaker 1: saying we should just heedlessly ignore our doctors. It's worth
Speaker 1: going when my doctor said that I should probably do this,
Speaker 1: and why would have said that. It's because if I don't,
Speaker 1: this might happen oh, if that happened, that would affect
Speaker 1: my relationship with my children. Like we eventually get back
Speaker 1: to what matters to us, but reconnecting with our choice
Speaker 1: is the key piece. Absolutely, not just choice, conscious choice,
Speaker 1: which is the opposite of an automatic habit. Now, I
Speaker 1: do want to say something that I think is crucial.
Speaker 1: We've been talking about it in one way, but I
Speaker 1: think it's really crucial to say it in this way.
Speaker 1: The value of any choice at a party after work,
Speaker 1: the value of every single choice we make is determined
Speaker 1: by the context of the other choices and needs. If
Speaker 1: we're not aware of that, and we're not skilled at
Speaker 1: being able to pivot and compromise, find the creative compromise.
Speaker 1: I don't have the sixteen minutes to take the walk outside.
Speaker 1: I only have fifteen minutes, but I care that it
Speaker 1: lifts my mood. You know, I have all these kid
Speaker 1: things to do, and I have at this work that
Speaker 1: I've got to get done, but I have fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1: So when we become skilled in being able to compromise
Speaker 1: and pivot, which is of course the joy choice, the
Speaker 1: perfect and perfect option that lets us do something instead
Speaker 1: of nothing. When we do that, then we can keep
Speaker 1: our momentum. If we don't know how to successfully navigate
Speaker 1: those choices with intention, then they're going to keep derailing us,
Speaker 1: which kicks us right off the path of lasting change.
Speaker 1: You actually say early in the book, what we're talking
Speaker 1: about here are choice points. You and I had an
Speaker 1: interesting conversation about where that phrase comes from, and we
Speaker 1: realized I might have arrived at it from multiple different sources.
Speaker 1: But these choice points. I'm at a choice point. Do
Speaker 1: I eat the chocolate cake do I not? Now I
Speaker 1: have a choice whether I work out, whether I don't
Speaker 1: work out, And you say, I call these conflicts choice points,
Speaker 1: and they are the real place of power for achieving
Speaker 1: lasting changes in eating an exercise. And I think that's
Speaker 1: so much of what this is about is about learning
Speaker 1: to navigate choice points. You know, when I work with
Speaker 1: a coaching client, you know, we start off and I say, well,
Speaker 1: let's put what structure we can put in place, let's
Speaker 1: put what plans we can put in place, because you
Speaker 1: know what, if we can get some of that in great,
Speaker 1: But you know what, at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: you're still going to bump up against these choice points.
Speaker 1: And what we can learn to do is say, what
Speaker 1: is happening inside me when I make the right choice,
Speaker 1: and what is happening inside me when I make the
Speaker 1: wrong choice or the choice that I want to make,
Speaker 1: or the choice I don't want to make. Let's non
Speaker 1: moralize it, right, the choice I want to make versus
Speaker 1: the choice I don't want to make. And the value
Speaker 1: of a choice point actually is that it can narrow
Speaker 1: our window of focus to a moment we can actually go, Oh,
Speaker 1: here's what I was saying to myself, here's what I
Speaker 1: was thinking, here's what I was feeling. Okay, Well, what
Speaker 1: might I say to myself next time? What might I
Speaker 1: do differently next time? It gives us a real, for
Speaker 1: lack of a better word, an actual, specific point in
Speaker 1: time that we can look at, and it becomes less
Speaker 1: about Oh, I've got to figure out my entire emotional
Speaker 1: makeup versus I have to figure out what's going on
Speaker 1: inside me. Now. That's right and inherent in choice point
Speaker 1: is choice, And as you know from all of your work,
Speaker 1: choice is the epitome of what cultivates autonomy and self determination.
Speaker 1: And we know that high quality motivation is embodied in
Speaker 1: the idea that I'm in charge and I get to choose,
Speaker 1: and that is the antidote to all or nothing thinking.
Speaker 1: All or nothing thinking, there's only two choices, and I'm
Speaker 1: forced to choose between sticking to the plan or just
Speaker 1: tossing it all to the wind. But no, the choice
Speaker 1: point is way to sack. There are options here. They
Speaker 1: give me freedom to align myself with the context of
Speaker 1: needs and options at the moment. Let's pivot to what
Speaker 1: can we do in choice points? And you talk about
Speaker 1: an executive functioning team. These are aspects of our brain
Speaker 1: that we can and you correct me if I'm saying
Speaker 1: this wrong, but that we can call upon in choice
Speaker 1: points to help us make better decisions. Is that an
Speaker 1: accurate way of saying it? I would say that choice
Speaker 1: points evoke our executive functioning team when we are at
Speaker 1: moments of decision making, when we're at moments of problem
Speaker 1: solving and potentially pivoting. That is the work of our
Speaker 1: executive functions. And you know, as you know in the book,
Speaker 1: I talk about three primary executive functions that are discussed
Speaker 1: in the literature on eating, especially in other areas of
Speaker 1: living like a d h D. Sometimes they talk about
Speaker 1: seven executive functions. So there's different ways of talking about it.
Speaker 1: But the bottom line when it comes to executive functioning
Speaker 1: is it is our brains innate decision making, self management,
Speaker 1: problem solving, goal striving apparatus, And so why don't we
Speaker 1: cultivate it the three primary executive functions too, so that
Speaker 1: we better set our brains up to help us make
Speaker 1: the skilled choice. I want to go into those three
Speaker 1: in a second, but I want to just clarify a
Speaker 1: little bit of what we're saying here. I think that
Speaker 1: what you're saying is that step one is we have
Speaker 1: to recognize we are in a choice point, yes right,
Speaker 1: because so often we just slip off into not exercising,
Speaker 1: not eating right right, without any real thought of what's happening.
Speaker 1: You know, I often talk about the very first thing
Speaker 1: we have got to do is bring whatever is happening
Speaker 1: into consciousness. That's recognize that I'm about to make a
Speaker 1: decision or a choice. It may not seem like I am,
Speaker 1: but I am about to and I'm making it the
Speaker 1: way I traditionally have made it without thinking about it.
Speaker 1: So I first have to bring it up into recognizing, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm in a choice point. And now once I've done that,
Speaker 1: then I call in my executive functioning tools to help
Speaker 1: me make the right choices. And I wouldn't say I'm
Speaker 1: calling on because it's that kind of happens automatically. What
Speaker 1: I'm saying is the way we think about it is
Speaker 1: either going to thwart or support our executive functioning right
Speaker 1: because the old reactions, the old decision traps that we've
Speaker 1: talked about, the inner script. If you're scripting, I can't,
Speaker 1: I can't, or it's got to be all or nothing.
Speaker 1: You can see how that script that we tell ourselves,
Speaker 1: the narrative, absolutely distracts us from the option. Yes, So
Speaker 1: how can our executive functions work effectively when we're going
Speaker 1: down a rabbit hole with the shoulds and all are
Speaker 1: the black and white thinking? So you are right, and
Speaker 1: I think this is becoming more out there in mainstream.
Speaker 1: But behavior change is belief change and different choice making,
Speaker 1: and we cannot do either of those things if we
Speaker 1: are not conscious at the point of choice. So it
Speaker 1: isn't as sexy as peloton or have it formation being
Speaker 1: aware at a point of choice. But we cannot change
Speaker 1: the way we think, which is the precursor to changing
Speaker 1: what we do, if we do not have conscious awareness
Speaker 1: at that point. Great, So let's talk about the three
Speaker 1: executive functions that you think are critical for making healthy choices. Okay,
Speaker 1: so the first primary executive function is called working memory,
Speaker 1: and this is the part of our brain that holds
Speaker 1: in processes information at the same time. And most people
Speaker 1: can only hold in process like one to three pieces
Speaker 1: of information. So you can see that if you're focused
Speaker 1: on a narrative about I can't, I can't that sort
Speaker 1: of thing, or I've got to please her, or I
Speaker 1: want her to know I love those kinds of thoughts,
Speaker 1: that's in your brain. So that kind of thinking has
Speaker 1: a huge potential to overwhelm our working memory. But working
Speaker 1: memory is the backbone of effective problem solving because that
Speaker 1: is the space. It's not really you know, I'm not
Speaker 1: calling it a literal space, but that's where problem solving happens.
Speaker 1: And if we can't hold the information in our brain
Speaker 1: because we're too focused on worrying of whether we're gonna
Speaker 1: make the right decision, then we won't be able to
Speaker 1: problem solve and pivot. So that's working memory. And we'll
Speaker 1: talk about the decision tool that I created to clean
Speaker 1: up that space. If you will then we've got cognitive
Speaker 1: flexibility or flexible thinking. Our brains are innately wired to
Speaker 1: do flexible thinking. If we think about eating and exercise
Speaker 1: and more flexible ways. We are basically aligning this new
Speaker 1: thought process with this very important ability mental ability that
Speaker 1: we have to pivot like we do in all these
Speaker 1: other areas of our lives. And then the third primary
Speaker 1: working memory is referred to as inhibition. More popularly people
Speaker 1: think about this ability as self control, and so this
Speaker 1: has been the primary focus changing our eating. We're just
Speaker 1: going to inhibit ourselves. We're gonna stick to the plan.
Speaker 1: But in reality, I believe more people would be successful if,
Speaker 1: instead of feeling like they have to inhibit all the time,
Speaker 1: they actually learned to think about choice points and that
Speaker 1: being flexible is actually adaptive not having to do it perfect.
Speaker 1: But actually, you know what, just like all these other
Speaker 1: life areas, I'm going to do this perfectly imperfectly, so
Speaker 1: I stay the journey. So what is the joy choice?
Speaker 1: So there's a technical definition which I'll say the joy
Speaker 1: choice is the perfect and perfect option that lets us
Speaker 1: do something instead of nothing. This doesn't just give us
Speaker 1: the momentum we want to keep going forward, on the
Speaker 1: path or journey of lasting change. There's another really meaningful
Speaker 1: way to think about it, and that is that if
Speaker 1: our decision to take a part of that self care activity,
Speaker 1: a part of that exercise, a part of our eating
Speaker 1: plan and fulfill that we are doing it to take
Speaker 1: care of ourselves, to respect our greater goals, and in
Speaker 1: doing so, we are fueling ourselves for the people and
Speaker 1: projects we care most about. So it's not just about
Speaker 1: the formula for sustainability that you know has science supporting it.
Speaker 1: It's also about making a choice that lets us be
Speaker 1: our full self that harmonizes exercise choice or are eating
Speaker 1: choice with the whole other parts of our lives and
Speaker 1: who we are, which includes our connections and loved ones.
Speaker 1: So that is why it's called the joy choice. It
Speaker 1: lets us harmonize exercise and eating within our full self.
Speaker 1: I love that. So let's talk about the decision making tool?
Speaker 1: Is it? Is it? Pop? Is that the decision making tool? Okay,
Speaker 1: that's what I thought. I just want to make sure
Speaker 1: I'm referencing the right one. So this is a way
Speaker 1: to sort of navigate choice points. Yes, if our executive
Speaker 1: functioning is this innate brain system for pivoting, and problem
Speaker 1: solving and long term coal pursuit, Like, wouldn't it be
Speaker 1: wonderful if we could support the three primary executive functions?
Speaker 1: And so this is a tool that I've developed and
Speaker 1: used with my coaching clients, and I call it POP. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm going to bring us back to the very beginning
Speaker 1: of our our conversation where you asked me about the
Speaker 1: motivation bubble. We talked about the fact that the motivation
Speaker 1: bubble is very vulnerable and life bursts it right, it
Speaker 1: bumps up against something and life burst the bubble. While
Speaker 1: with the POP decision tool, instead of letting life burst
Speaker 1: our bubble in this passive way where we're kind of
Speaker 1: victimized by things, we autonomously take charge and we puppet.
Speaker 1: So it's both a metaphor for us being in charge.
Speaker 1: We pop our plan. It's not workable any longer, so
Speaker 1: we're gonna pop it. And what we do when we
Speaker 1: pop it is then we open up the options. So
Speaker 1: that is the overarching metaphor. But it's actually an acronym
Speaker 1: which is really good for our working memory, recall, remembering,
Speaker 1: and recall. So POP stands for pause. And like we've
Speaker 1: talked about throughout this conversation. If we don't take a
Speaker 1: moment to bring our consciousness to the choice, then our automated,
Speaker 1: unskillful responses will just take over. So pause introduces this
Speaker 1: intentional moment where we can say, Uh, which wolf do
Speaker 1: I want to feed? I'm going to feed the one
Speaker 1: that's going to really take me to where I want
Speaker 1: to go. So that's the first PM POP the OH.
Speaker 1: I designed it to support working memory because it enables
Speaker 1: us to clear away to name any of the traps temptation, rebellion,
Speaker 1: and accommodation perfection. Oh, I see you, but guess what
Speaker 1: that's the unskilled wolf. I'm not going to go there.
Speaker 1: Let me focus my attention, take a breath, and then
Speaker 1: go on to the second step in POP, which is
Speaker 1: the oh, open up our options and play well, how
Speaker 1: better to cultivate flexible thinking that to consider it as
Speaker 1: an opportunity to play. Well. Gee, there's this awesome chalky
Speaker 1: cake over there. I want some of it. What are
Speaker 1: my options here? What did I plan to eat? What
Speaker 1: did they plan to eat? Later? I think I could
Speaker 1: eat half the cake, and I could do to wiggle
Speaker 1: around tweaks something else. I mean, it invites us to
Speaker 1: think in creative and playful ways about the choice point.
Speaker 1: And that is flexible thinking or cognitive flexibility in its essence.
Speaker 1: And now the second P and the ending of the
Speaker 1: POP decision tool is P pick the joy choice. There's
Speaker 1: no right or wrong answer here. The joy choice is
Speaker 1: the perfect and perfect option that lets us do something
Speaker 1: instead of nothing, giving us momentum and helping us harmonize.
Speaker 1: Are eating an exercise choice within our full self. So
Speaker 1: what POP does as an acronym is it makes it
Speaker 1: easier to recall I want to say. It doesn't mean
Speaker 1: it's going to be effortless. You still have to learn
Speaker 1: how to use it, and you can put it as
Speaker 1: a contact in your phone. That's one way people use it,
Speaker 1: so that you can learn to memorize it. But it
Speaker 1: also strategically guides our attention away from the decision traps
Speaker 1: to play. I have options here, let me open them up,
Speaker 1: and then to picking the imperfect choice that for the
Speaker 1: past three decades I haven't given myself permission to do
Speaker 1: because I'm forced to stick to the plan, which then
Speaker 1: I just rebel against. So it guides the specific thought
Speaker 1: process in a way we don't need to inhibit ourselves.
Speaker 1: It's not about harnessing self control. That's not the conversation.
Speaker 1: The conversation is given the choice point and my full
Speaker 1: set of needs and the value that choice has right
Speaker 1: now based on the full context of other things, which
Speaker 1: is the one I don't have to rebel against that question. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that. I think that's a very helpful acronym,
Speaker 1: and it we do need some approach because we're often
Speaker 1: going to find ourselves at choice points also in the
Speaker 1: moments of stress. Yes, you know that's where the bubble
Speaker 1: tends to rub up against life in moments of stress,
Speaker 1: and we know that in moments of stress, executive function
Speaker 1: tends to take a hike. So it's really helpful to
Speaker 1: be like, have something as simple as pop, okay, here
Speaker 1: I am, what do I do? And walk through those things.
Speaker 1: And I love the joy choice, this idea of the
Speaker 1: perfectly imperfect that allows me to do something rather than
Speaker 1: nothing in the context of everything I want to be
Speaker 1: eating an exercise has changed so fundamentally for me over
Speaker 1: the last decade, I would say, and it really has
Speaker 1: been in a complete reframing of it. And this is
Speaker 1: probably normal with age to some degree, but a reframing
Speaker 1: from vanity, a reframing from shoods and into this is
Speaker 1: what I know supports me in being the person that
Speaker 1: I want to be in the world. You know, when
Speaker 1: I don't exercise, I don't make a good interviewer. I
Speaker 1: don't make a good coach, I don't make a good father,
Speaker 1: I don't make a good dog owner. I'm not a
Speaker 1: particularly good partner. I'm very deeply unhappy within myself, you know.
Speaker 1: So for me, with exercise, it's just I just remind myself,
Speaker 1: like you're going to feel a certain way an hour
Speaker 1: from now, how do you want to feel in an hour?
Speaker 1: And I know for me, the way I want to
Speaker 1: feel in an hour is the way I feel on
Speaker 1: the other side of exercise, proud of myself, energized, you know.
Speaker 1: And same thing with food, you know, how do I
Speaker 1: want to feel at the end of this meal? How
Speaker 1: do I want to feel? And what supports me in
Speaker 1: what matters to me? And you talk about this near
Speaker 1: the end of the book, which is really just the
Speaker 1: importance of value based decision making. Right. The more we
Speaker 1: can be clear on what really matters to us, we
Speaker 1: have a much better chance of making good decisions because
Speaker 1: there's clarity there, but a lot of times we don't
Speaker 1: ever take the time to get that clarity, and so
Speaker 1: we're making decisions in fog about like, well, what really
Speaker 1: matters to me is this cake? You know? So, so
Speaker 1: I love that you sort of kind of near the
Speaker 1: very end, sort of bring it back to that core
Speaker 1: idea while and the neuroscience, the emerging science, directly supports
Speaker 1: that idea. I think that's among the most exciting science
Speaker 1: on creating sustainable behavior change is the work showing that
Speaker 1: when we value, when we believe that a choice aligns
Speaker 1: with who we are at our core, those brain regions
Speaker 1: light up. And also it's predictive of people making decisions
Speaker 1: over time related to that healthy choice. So, and the
Speaker 1: good news is we can actually change a lot. Some
Speaker 1: of your listeners might think, well, I don't value exercise
Speaker 1: in that way. I don't have those experiences it feels
Speaker 1: like it should. So I mean the beauty is that
Speaker 1: it's actually quite easy to convert exercise from those shoods
Speaker 1: and chores to feeling like a gift, and that it's
Speaker 1: a part of who you are, it's reflecting or values.
Speaker 1: So I mean, I think that's really important because people
Speaker 1: might be feeling gosh, I don't know how to do that.
Speaker 1: The first step is to recognize whether you have been
Speaker 1: coming to your exercise and eating choice points with this
Speaker 1: feeling of should and rules and precision, and if you
Speaker 1: are that, the first thing is to say, gosh, has
Speaker 1: that worked for me or not? And again, if it
Speaker 1: works for you and it makes you a happy person,
Speaker 1: there's no reason you have to pull away from that right,
Speaker 1: just like you said at the beginning. When we understand
Speaker 1: that our choices around what we eat and how we
Speaker 1: move our bodies reflect who we want to be and
Speaker 1: our personal preferences, and the reality is the true realities
Speaker 1: of our daily lives, that's the recipe for sustainable change. Indeed, Well, Michelle,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming on. It's been such
Speaker 1: a pleasure to talk with you. I found The Joy
Speaker 1: Choice a great read and so much great wisdom in it,
Speaker 1: So thank you, Thank you for having a again, it
Speaker 1: was such fun to talk. Thank you. If what you
Speaker 1: just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a
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