When you talk to people who have long struggled with the challenge of losing weight, they’re often very critical of themselves. To quote Justine M., one of our Changers: “It’s embarrassing that a chocolate brownie or a piece of bacon can exert such a hold on you. It’s food, for crying out loud, not heroin.”
And she’s right. Food is not heroin. But she’s wrong about how challenging it is to bring food under control. According to scientists who venture to rate how difficult various addictions are to break, junk food sits in either first or second position. That’s right; food competes with cocaine, alcohol, nicotine, and yes, even heroin.1
Think about it. When it comes to physical cravings, you simply can’t toy with the substances to which you’re attracted. Imagine if you’re a two-pack-a-day smoker and your change plan called for you to puff on a cigarette three, four, or five times a day. Tempting yourself would lead to disaster. If you’re going to drop a bad habit, you’ve got to drop the bad habit all the way.
And that’s one of the reasons it can be so difficult to lose weight and keep it off. When it comes to eating too much food, you can’t go cold turkey. You still have to place in your mouth regularly the very substances you “abuse,” and then stop eating while you still crave more.
Why is that? Why does the human body crave sugars and fats in the first place? You’d think the body would crave things that are good for it—say, baby carrots dipped in a fat-free dressing—you know, the stuff early humanoids found in the back of their caves. (Just kidding.)
Thousands of years ago the craving for fats and proteins served our ancestors very well. These cravings propelled them out of their caves and across the savannah in pursuit of game. Unfortunately, those same cravings now put us at a terrible disadvantage as we drive from our sedentary jobs to markets that are chock-full of delicious fats and sugars—already harvested, trapped, and prepared for us.
Then, when we bite into these sugary, fatty foods, they cause the primitive parts of our brains to light up—throwing us into that desperate gorge-now-or-die mode that drives us to consume far more than we know we should.2 All of this eating would be fine if, similar to our ancestors, we then roamed the savannah for several days hunting or gathering our next meal. But we don’t. Our markets are open every single day. Hunting is no more taxing than choosing a brand, and gathering involves merely toting bags to the trunk of your car.
To make matters worse, the kinds of foods we find in our markets and restaurants are now designed by clever scientists at the molecular level to match our deepest cravings. Foods are “purified” in much the same way as drugs are, so that they can deliver their effects more efficiently to the brain. Our ancestors ate whole grains; we eat white bread. American Indians ate corn; we eat corn syrup. All of this “purification” led Gene-Jack Wang, MD, the chair of the medical department at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, to state, “We make our food very similar to cocaine now.”3
Yikes! No wonder our cravings for food can be so difficult to bring under control. Our world is perfectly designed to get us to eat, eat, eat—but with no counterbalancing call to the gym. Miss this fact and you can easily underplay your cravings for chocolate and fall into the willpower trap. “It’s just food,” you think to yourself. “Cut back a little here and there—you know, show a little strength of character—and you’ll soon be trim and fit!”
Two out of three adults in the United States are now overweight, and other developed countries are catching up fast. For the first time in history, obesity is a greater threat to health worldwide than hunger.4 And what about those of us who try to escape the force-feeding frenzy? We spend forty billion dollars a year on diets, but nineteen out of twenty of us lose nothing but our money.5
Before we get too depressed, let’s travel to Stanford University’s medical school, where scholars examined the commercial diets people most often use for weight loss. As we saw in the chapter “Be the Scientist and the Subject,” these researchers found that every one of the most popular diets “worked.”6 It turns out things aren’t so bad after all. We now have carefully crafted plans to help us counteract our inborn cravings.
And now for the not-so-good news—the news you already know—the diets worked only for people who stuck with them, and pretty much nobody did. Bummer.
So the secret to wellness isn’t in the diet or exercise program itself. Any approach that causes you to eat less and exercise more will lead to weight loss and improved fitness. Balanced diets and well-crafted exercise plans—along with shortcuts, secret ingredients, and fat-burning gizmos—all work (and work only) if they result in fewer calories ingested and more calories burned. And they work only if you keep them up—because tomorrow you will be eating again. Several times.
So, this chapter isn’t about creating novel recipes or new kinds of jumping jacks. Instead we’ll help you create a healthy living plan you can live with—forever. If you don’t eventually find a way to enjoy both the food you eat and the exercise you choose, you won’t stay with it over the long haul. Diets don’t work. What works is creating new habits that lead to the results you want for the rest of your life. You have to stop thinking in terms of short-term campaigns and start thinking about the life you’re willing to live. And that can change everything for you.
We’ll begin by reviewing the common sense of fitness by examining the three vital behaviors that, as reported by thousands who have lost weight and kept it off, are most likely to lead to success. Later we’ll look at what you’ll need to do—your very own vital behaviors—but for now, answer the following question. What should your change program include if your goal is weight loss and fitness?
1. Before You Begin a Diet or Exercise Program, Assess Your Overall Health. This one everyone knows. Visit with your doctor to make sure your plans are safe, and don’t take on too big a challenge all at once. Make sure you’re healthy enough to start a weight-loss and fitness program.
2. Eat Better and Eat Less. Most people already know this. Exactly what foods you choose is constantly debated, but one fact isn’t. You’ll need to eat fewer calories than you burn. There are thousands of diet tips and recipes to consider to help you do this. But let’s cut through the fads and keep the simple truth in mind—take in fewer calories than you burn and you’ll lose weight.
How you do this will involve customizing a change plan to yourself.
3. Include a Mix of Stretching, Strengthening, and Cardiovascular Activities. These can take a million forms—including walking, vacuuming, taking the stairs, yoga, Pilates, push-ups, sit-ups, and lifting weights. Again, there are thousands of exercise tips and regimens to consider. They may give you ideas for ways to make your exercise more fun and effective and can certainly provide you with a good starting point. Find one or a combination that you can actually enjoy and keep up over the years.
So much for the generic steps. It’s now time to tailor a plan to your unique needs and circumstances. All of the popular diet and fitness plans work—if you stick to them. So let’s see what it takes to stick.
1. Flowchart Your Day, Week, or Month. Describe your typical “eating day” in half-hour increments. Then look at patterns over the course of a week or month to see when challenges occur (e.g., when you travel, on weekends). The strategy here is to map the flow of your day and then look for crucial moments or times when problems occur—when you overeat or skip a chance to exercise.
Mary S., a Changer from New York City, was able to drop fifty pounds in eight months. She began tracking her eating day. She woke up to her alarm at seven a.m. and would lie in bed for a few minutes listening to the news, then shower, get dressed, and eat a bowl of whole-grain cereal with a side of fruit in season. That was the first half hour of a typical day. Then, from seven thirty a.m. until eight a.m., she’d quick-walk half a block to the subway, take the subway downtown, and then walk two blocks to her office. So far, so good.
However, as Mary continued mapping, she found she rarely moved from her desk between the hours of eight a.m. and noon and one p.m. and six p.m. And, when she did move, it was either to eat or to sit in a meeting room. So, she added some exercise breaks to her day. Once in the morning and again in the afternoon she’d walk down the stairs, around the block, and back up the stairs to her fifth-floor office. It took her about fifteen minutes each time, for a total of thirty minutes’ extra exercise each day.
2. Focus on Temptations, Obstacles, and Excuses (Crucial Moments). Write down all the tasty temptations you’ve given in to during the last week, and add in the obstacles or excuses you’ve used to avoid exercising. Then look for patterns. Mary examined her temptations and realized the biggest were hot cinnamon rolls. When she returned home from work she would snack on them. Then, being tired after work was her biggest obstacle and excuse for not exercising. By the time she got home she was physically and emotionally exhausted.
Finding your crucial moments helps you shrink an all-day, every-day kind of problem into an hour-or-two-a-day kind of problem. You can now target the behaviors that get you out of trouble in just those crucial moments. These are your vital behaviors.
Once you’ve found your crucial moments (and they’ll change as you solve certain problems and new ones emerge), create the rules you’ll follow during those high-leverage moments. Create the rules now, when you’re not being tempted and you’re thinking clearly. These rules, or vital behaviors, should spell out exactly what you’ll do when faced with a crucial moment. Here are three examples from Mary S.
Mary set herself a baked-goods rule. When baked goods were around, she would stick to fruit or eat a granola bar from her purse—and nothing else.
Mary would go to bed at ten p.m. so she wouldn’t be too tired to exercise in the morning.
Often, a vital behavior is the simple reverse of what failure looks like in the crucial moment. If the failure looks like a five-hundred-calorie cinnamon roll, then the vital behavior is to not eat it. At other times the vital behavior is one that helps prevent the problem to begin with—such as eating a two-hundred-calorie alternative before you start craving the cinnamon roll. If failure is eating too much of the mashed potatoes at dinner, the vital behavior could be eating larger servings of the healthy foods before you start in on the potatoes. Filling some of your gastric real estate with the good stuff before the bad stuff moves in can keep you from temptation.
At other times your vital behavior isn’t the simple opposite. It calls for an entirely new behavior. In these cases you can discover them using a powerful tool known as positive deviance. Find a time when you succeeded against the odds in one of your crucial moments. For instance, if your norm is to snack after work, then focus on a time when you didn’t—when you deviated (positively) from the norm. Ask yourself what was different that day, what it was that enabled you to succeed. Were you busy with errands? Had you eaten a different lunch? Were you involved in some activity? Once you discover exactly what you did, you can make doing it a new rule—a new vital behavior.
Here’s an example from another Changer, John H. One of John’s crucial moments came at Sunday brunch. He couldn’t resist piling his platter high with eggs and bacon and sausage and blintzes and hash browns and sometimes even the pickled herring. Then he’d drown it all in Hollandaise sauce. It wasn’t pretty and usually sent him home in a stupor. But one Sunday John found himself with a plate that was only moderately filled, and with a tasty selection. What was different? He’d been busy talking with a visiting niece, and his wife, Louise, had filled his plate for him.
At first John felt a bit resentful. Louise clearly hadn’t perfected the Leaning Tower of Eggs Benedict the way he had. But after he’d eaten, he felt good—satisfied, not stuffed. It was a positive-deviance moment for John, and he decided to build on it. His vital behavior for the next several Sundays was to ask Louise to please take charge of his plate.
Don’t expect to be able to identify all of your crucial moments and vital behaviors at the beginning. Your progress won’t follow a straight line. You’ll hit binges and setbacks, but treat these challenges the way any scientist would. Examine your failures with curiosity and concern, not self-condemnation. You’ll quickly discover that you learn more from your failures than from your successes. The times and situations where you fail are your new crucial moments, and each crucial moment you identify becomes a stepping-stone to your success as you create new vital behaviors—tailored to your latest challenge.
For example, you notice that eating at restaurants kills your eating plan. So, decide on new vital behaviors, such as “Always split your order” or “Order just a side.” Then track yourself to see how well your new strategy is working. Maybe splitting orders isn’t ideal for you because you’re often on your own or you find it awkward to ask. If so, then try another rule, such as “Divide your plate in half” or “Eat your vegetables first.” Keep at the crucial moment until you’ve found the vital behavior that works for you. Learn, adjust; learn more, adjust again. Make even your bad days become good data.
Remember, when it comes to personal change, you’re both the scientist and the subject. Subjects stumble once in a while. So scientists learn and adjust what their subjects do.
It’s time to reorganize your world in such a way that it motivates and enables your new vital behaviors.
Here’s the motivation challenge you face: Right now, while you’re reading this book and thinking your best thoughts, you have plenty of motivation to do the right thing. You think, “No big deal; I’ll just tough it out.” Unfortunately, later, when temptation strikes, your motivation will weaken, and you’ll give in—overeating, eating the wrong foods, or ducking a chance to exercise. Human beings are simply horrible at predicting how challenging a future temptation will feel, even when they’ve faced it over and over for years.7
To overcome this motivational mistake, learn how to tap into your existing personal motivation—especially in times of intense temptation.
1. Find What You Love. This obvious tactic is frequently overlooked because people can’t conceive of the fact that eating healthy and exercising regularly could ever be enjoyable. Fortunately, when it comes to food and exercise, you can find options that you actually enjoy. For example, if you dislike vegetables—broccoli in particular—then explore the vegetable world more carefully. Maybe you’d like broccoli if it were prepared differently, or maybe you can find a different kind of vegetable that tastes better to you. In any case, don’t keep suffering through a food you can’t stand.
The same is true for exercise. For instance, Mary S. loathed using gym equipment but found she enjoyed people watching along the bustling streets of Manhattan. She could walk from her apartment to Greenwich Village and back, logging four miles, and having a good time. Be equally inventive. Take the time to find the best of the worst. Keep experimenting until you find options that you actually enjoy. But by all means don’t commit to a plan you can’t find a way to like.
2. Tell the Whole Vivid Story. Ask yourself why you want to lose weight or improve your fitness. Most people spend too little time contemplating the answer. They give themselves generic or vague answers, like “I want to look better,” “I want to fit into my clothes,” or “I want to have more energy.”
While these responses provide a starting point, they’re too indistinct to carry you through moments of temptation—say a delicious piece of chocolate cake goes head to head with your “I want to feel good someday” reason to avoid it. When a murky vision is all you have to conjure, the crystal-clear certainty of the cake will win every time.
Here’s what John H. did to bring his vision into focus. He first described his motivation for losing weight and improving his fitness as “I want to look and feel better. I want to have more energy.” This was not the whole story, nor was it vivid enough to keep his attention. So he went further.
3. Visit Your Default Future. Fortunately, when John looked at what might lie ahead for him, he was able to fill in the details. In his case, he made a mental visit to a rather prominent person who faced similar physical challenges.
“I thought of Larry M.,” John explains. “He was a prominent local businessman, philanthropist, and family man. He built a successful car dealership, owned the Utah Jazz, and was on TV all the time. He was about my age and was also overweight like me. We even had the same body type. For the last several years I watched him suffer through diabetes, a heart attack, and kidney failure. He lost both his legs to diabetes, and then he died—still in his early sixties. Larry’s unfortunate demise was my default future. So now, when I’m ready to order a T-bone steak, I focus on Larry M. I can see him right in front of me. Then I order the salmon instead.”
Creating a vivid and believable image of your default future provides the detail you can draw on during moments of temptation. But it has to be specific and vivid. As John dug deeper into his reasons for changing, he was able to provide the detail he needed. That’s key.
4. Use Value Words. After visiting your default future, distill some of your motivating insights into a Personal Motivation Statement you can use at crucial moments. Be sure to capture the feeling as well as the facts: “I’m doing this for my wife, Louise. It’s the most heartfelt thing I can do to show her my love. It’s like pearls and earrings times a thousand.”
Notice the words John uses in his Personal Motivation Statement when describing what he’s doing. These words shift John’s emotions during these tempting times because they tap into his deeper values. They help John cast the temptation out of his head by helping him envision himself giving a precious gift to Louise, the woman he loves—“It’s like pearls and earrings times a thousand.”
By visiting his default future, telling the whole vivid story, and selecting value words, John was able to craft a statement that, if he meditates on it during crucial moments, can profoundly affect his emotions. To ratchet up the power, he combined this statement with a photo of Louise. The measure of a good Personal Motivation Statement is whether your use of it jars you out of the spell of temptation. If it doesn’t, then it is too anemic. Keep at it until it reconnects you with what you really want when it matters most.
5. Connect to Who You’re Becoming. Some people focus their Personal Motivation Statement on the person they want to become. For example, think of someone or a group of people who do what you hate to do right now but who actually enjoy doing it. Then, instead of dismissing them as crazy, become one of them. See yourself as one of them. As you follow through on your vital behaviors, pause and mentally celebrate the fact that you’re becoming one of them.
For example, if you have trouble forcing yourself to work out, tell yourself (out loud!), “I’m an athlete in training, and this is what athletes do.” Make this identity even more specific. Say, “I’m a hiker,” “I’m a runner,” or “I’m a skier”; then dig into this new interest more deeply. Read a hiking, running, or skiing magazine and imagine yourself in the pictures. Take your eyes off the sacrifice and place them on the accomplishment. Whenever you’re tempted to revert to your old self, dispute the rationalizing thoughts with statements that tie you to who you are becoming.
6. Make It a Game. To finish off his motivation plan, John turned it into a game. He bought a device that displayed his calorie burn rate on a wristwatch. At first John tracked his burn rate; then he manipulated it. He learned that if he got up from his chair at work and walked up and down a few flights of stairs, not only did his burn rate double during the walk, but it took a full two hours to return to his sitting rate. Within two weeks John was posting his scores and celebrating his caloric consumption like an Olympic result. The behaviors themselves became more enjoyable because they were part of his achievement.
1. Start with a Skill Scan. How many of the following are you readily familiar with?
The numbers of calories in different foods—maybe not the exact numbers, but a rough estimate
Alternative lower-calorie options you can substitute for the foods you’re eating now
Tasty recipes to prepare healthier foods at home
How to use the labels on prepared foods at the grocery store
Quick substitutions a chef can make to reduce the calories in your favorite dishes
The pace to exercise at in order to burn the most fat
The steps to take to stop a stitch in your side from hurting
The best way to warm up before working out
The optimal weight and repetitions to use when building muscle strength
The minutes needed to burn fat and improve cardiovascular health
Of course, this list could have been far longer, and you don’t need to know all the material in order to get started. To find the answers, begin with books, websites, or groups that are well established and offer mainstream advice, not quick fixes. Here are three websites that can get you started:
www.nutrition.gov: This website brings together information from across the federal government.
www.shapeup.org: This is the website for the nonprofit group Shape Up America! It was founded by former surgeon general Dr. C. Everett Koop and offers advice to both consumers and medical professionals.
www.nwcr.ws/: This is the website for the National Weight Control Registry, a research organization that shares success stories from more than nine thousand people who have lost at least thirty pounds and kept the weight off for at least a year.
For local information, check with a local hospital. Often they will have free outreach programs on weight loss, fitness, and wellness.
Of course, fitness and dieting skills may not be all you’ll need to change your life. It may well be that your eating habits are tied to emotional issues you need to learn to address in better ways. As you study your crucial moments and ponder what keeps you from changing, scan for new skills you need to acquire, and include them in your plan. For example, if eating is tied to loneliness, you may decide to take a networking class at work as a way of developing new social skills.
2. Employ Deliberate Practice. Suppose you have a problem with snacking in the late evenings after dinner. For you, these hours have become a crucial moment. You can master this time period using deliberate practice. Here are the steps to follow:
Break the skills into bite-sized chunks and practice each skill in short intervals. For example, take the time that includes dinner until bed, and break it into half-hour chunks. Then within each half hour, experiment with different eating, activity, and distraction options to figure out how to beat the strongest temptation within each half hour.
Get immediate feedback against a clear standard and evaluate your progress. For example, once you’ve created a calendar that shows each evening in half-hour units and set some goals within those time frames (for example, twenty minutes of exercise and no more than a hundred-calorie snack), evaluate your progress each evening.
Prepare for setbacks. Use your setbacks to adjust your plan. Maybe you went to a movie and ended up buying buttered popcorn or candy. Adjust your plan. Maybe next time you’ll eat an apple on the way to the theater.
3. Learn the Will Skill. Many people believe that fitness and exercise are all about willpower—whether you have it or not. Will is important, but people forget that willpower is a skill with its own rules and tricks to practice.
For example, recent research shows that if people can distract their attention for just a few minutes, they can suppress negative urges and make better decisions.8 Sharman W. used this idea to help her avoid cheating on her diet. She listed the ten reasons she wanted to lose weight and created the following rule: She could cheat on her diet, but only after reading her list and calling her sister. This extra step introduced a delay and brought in social support from her sister.
Other strategies our Changers use include taking short walks, repeating poems they have memorized, and drinking a glass of water. The key is to be aware of the impulse and to focus on something different until the impulse goes away.
When it comes to personal fitness, here are two tactics Changers employ as a means of making the best use of social forces.
1. Add New Friends. Research in the Change Anything Labs shows that adding friends to your cause can improve your chances of success by as much as 40 percent.9 This is especially true for weight loss and fitness.
For example, professor of medicine Abby King conducted an experiment with 218 people who were struggling to get enough exercise. All were encouraged to commit to walking at least thirty minutes a day. After the orientation, one group received phone calls every three weeks from a live person asking how they were doing with their goal and congratulating them for any success they had. This simple periodic nudge from a complete stranger resulted in a 78 percent increase in exercise (significantly more than those receiving similar reminders from a computer). The calls continued for a year—but even after the calls stopped, the new habits continued.10
Find a coach who can both motivate and instruct you. For instance, John H. actually hired a coach at his gym to supervise his workouts for his first month. They’d meet at six thirty a.m. three times a week. The appointment itself guaranteed that John H. would be out of bed and at the gym. He didn’t want to waste his money or disappoint his coach. And his coach was able to show him the best way to use the different fitness machines and weights and how to build up his fitness without creating excessive soreness or injury.
Another kind of friend that’s especially important is a partner in training—someone to diet or exercise with. This could be your life partner, a family member, or someone new. One of our Changers worked out with his brother, even though he lived in Seattle and his brother lived in Los Angeles. They followed the same exercise routine and texted each other every morning at six. The feeling of community and accountability that gave him was a huge source of motivation to get out of bed and to stick with his commitment. Having at least one other person who is on your same weight-loss and fitness program will do wonders for you both.
2. Hold a Transformation Conversation. There is one accomplice who absolutely must become your friend. It’s the person who is your “nutritional gatekeeper.” This is the person who does most of the food shopping, cooking, or other eating choices in your home. Of course, it might be you, in which case you’re already in control. But if it’s not you, or if you share this role, then you need to make your nutritional gatekeeper your weight-loss ally.
In some cases this person is just waiting for permission to help. Unfortunately, weight loss and fitness are sensitive topics, and people will usually wait for an invitation before stepping in. That means you’ll have to make the first move. Ask the people who routinely influence your food and exercise decisions for their help. Explain what they can start doing to help you—for example: “Please buy more fruits to keep out and available.” Share what they can stop doing—for example: “Please stop baking such delicious and tempting cookies or placing treats in highly accessible areas.”
Finally, don’t forget to let them know what to continue doing—for example: “I really enjoy and benefit from our evening walks together.”
Don’t limit transforming discussions to your nutritional gatekeeper. Most of the accomplices in your life would be shocked to discover they are hurting rather than helping you. They will welcome the chance to join in on your side.
The existing economy often works against our fitness goals. As we suggested earlier, many packaged foods (especially items full of fats and sugars) have dropped in price, while prices of fruits and vegetables have gone up. Plus, you can get real deals if you supersize your purchases—leading to large purchases and servings. Many people believe that throwing away food left on their plate is criminally wasteful. These are just a few of the ways that outside incentives encourage us to eat and grow heavy. It’s time to invert this.
1. Use Both Incentives and Loss Aversion. The good news about incentives is that they work. But there are conditions. Your weight-loss goals need to be short-term, one pound a week, for example, not four pounds a month. You need to take the system seriously—no cheating. And the rewards need to matter to you. Changer Deb W. created a star chart. Every time she lost a pound, she put a star on her chart. Whenever she got ten stars up, she shopped for new clothes—and threw away her old ones. Notice how the incentives worked. She got the new clothes she wanted and locked herself into her new size by throwing away the old ones.
2. Use Incentives in Moderation and in Combination. The best incentives are actually fairly moderate in size, and they work in combination with our own personal and social motivations.
Here is an example incentive plan one of the authors used. David wanted to lose twenty pounds in twenty weeks and bet two hundred dollars on himself. He gave the cash to a friend for safekeeping and set a weekly goal. David began at two hundred pounds, and his target weight was supposed to drop by one pound every week. Each Friday David would stand on his scale and take a photo to document his weight. He sent this photo to his friend Joseph because he believed Joseph would hold him accountable.
Any week that David missed his target cost him ten dollars, his self-respect, and the ribbing of his colleague. This simple incentive, when combined with all six sources of influence, worked. David lost twenty pounds and has kept the weight off for two years now.
1. Build Fences. Create barriers that keep bad stuff out and good stuff in. For example, once our Changer Mary S. realized she was the nutritional gatekeeper for her family, she tended the gate carefully. In fact, she conducted a food audit that looked like a search-and-destroy mission. Mary went through her refrigerator, cupboards, and pantry and around the apartment, removing junk food. She gathered up ice cream, candies, frozen pot pies, whole milk, chips, cookies, and even the cookie jar and gave them to a neighbor. She admitted that some of the items she gave away, like a perfectly good package of bacon, hurt her penny-pinching pride. But her motto became “We don’t have to eat our mistakes!” Within thirty minutes her apartment was a safer place to eat.
Next, Mary made a shopping list of healthy alternatives to keep around the house. She put a fruit bowl on the table and kept it full. She also vowed to shop the outside edges of the grocery store and to avoid the aisles as much as possible. (The aisles are where the fat-filled engineered foods are kept. The perimeter is where fresh foods are stocked.)
Mary also put a mental fence across the middle of every restaurant menu. She discovered that appetizers and alcoholic drinks are the most calorie-dense items on a typical menu, so she also made the decision to stop ordering appetizers and alcohol in restaurants.
2. Manage Distance. John H. used distance to improve his fitness. He made exercising closer and more convenient. He purchased an extra pair of running shoes and a change of clothes and kept them at his place of work so he could work out right after work. He also bought a set of dumbbells and an exercise band and kept them by his desk. At home, John moved a TV into a spare room so he could work out while watching his favorite shows. Together, these little changes nearly doubled the time he spent being active each day.
3. Use Cues. We live most of our lives eating without noticing what or how much we’re eating, and we also fail to see opportunities to add in a bit of fitness. Well-crafted cues can jolt us out of our routine and remind us of the options we have. A good one will catch your attention but won’t embarrass you if others notice it too. It could be a personal saying like “Nothing tastes as good as healthy feels.” It could be a photo of you being active or of a loved one who inspires you to be healthy. Often these cues not only remind you to eat right or exercise—they rekindle your personal motivation to do the right thing.
Remember, these cues should be placed so that they’ll remind you during your crucial moments. If you tend to snack, then put some reminders on your fridge and cupboards. If your routine is to eat while you watch TV, then put a cue on the remote.
4. Use Tools. You can now find a whole host of high-tech tools that can help you eat right and exercise. Here are a few more examples of the kinds of tools that are hitting the marketplace:
Accelerometers, pedometers, and even GPS systems you can use to measure and track your fitness
Smart-phone apps for tracking your calories
Armbands that track your calorie burn rate
Here are a few examples of simple, low-tech, but powerful tools.
A paper calendar hung in the bathroom to chart your weight
Smaller pans, serving bowls, utensils, and plates to help you reduce your portions
A book of trail maps to help you explore your world
These are just a few of the things you can do to control your space. You’ll need to find and use your own methods. You have to, because if you don’t, you’ll be surrendering to all the other people out there who are trying to control it for you.