three

HABIT 1:

MAKE CONTINGENCY PLANS

Have you heard the saying “The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry”? How about “When we make plans, God laughs”? Both of these well-worn expressions are trotted out when we try and fail to control the circumstances of our lives. It’s as though we’re saying we just shouldn’t bother trying to influence what is out of our hands. Fair enough…if you’re talking about the weather or the economy or other people’s behavior. You can’t control those things and you’d be foolish to try.

But you’d also be foolish not to plan for how you will deal with even the most uncontrollable and unexpected things. There’s a whole universe of things you can and should plan for, things that make your life easier and the world easier to navigate, especially when the going gets tough.

Like things you don’t want to be surprised by: emergencies. Would you agree that it’s wise to have batteries and candles in an easy-to-reach place in case you lose your power? And that it’s prudent to have a jack and some flares in the trunk of your car so you’re prepared if you get a flat tire? And it’s smart to back up your hard drive, right? You can’t control the storm or the nail on the road or the hacker who is intent on sabotaging lots of computers. But you can control your readiness for and reaction to these events.

Or you might plan for events that are a long way off, like your child’s college education: even if you can’t control where she’ll get in, you can do a few things to improve her chances, like making sure she takes the SAT and gets some advice from her high school counselor on the kinds of schools to target. And though you can’t know how much her college will cost or what portion of the tuition you’ll have to cover (fingers crossed for that athletic scholarship!), you can and should at least try to save some money for the day when you do have to write a big old check.

You’re with me so far, right? Making plans and thinking through contingencies in advance of their arrival is not futile. It’s smart thinking.

So whywhywhywhy is it that when it comes to your health, you tend to drop the ball?

Does this describe you?

• You throw up your hands in defeat when you encounter a buffet table at a wedding or company party; you gorge yourself because “it all just looked so good” and you couldn’t pull yourself away. Do you need a psychic to tell you there will be decadent food at those events? There’s a time and place for being indulgent (see my Skinny Rule 20—you’re allowed one splurge meal a week!), but every time you hit a buffet? Every single time? No! Believe it or not, there were plans you could have put in place that would have helped you go through the line only once.

• You don’t get any exercise on vacation because, gee, you “forgot” your sneakers. Really? It was a surprise to you that there would be a gym at the hotel and/or that Florida in February would provide great walking weather? Again, there are times when you should cut yourself a break, and vacation might be the time to drop your regular workout routine and just relax. But that assumes that you have a regular workout routine.

• You regularly swear you’re going to start to eat better and exercise more. Regularly, as in every New Year’s Eve, right? How’s that working out for you?

THE POWER OF CONTINGENCY PLANS

But of course, some people do have self-control and they are able to go through the buffet line only once (and pick the healthiest options), and they remember to bring sneakers and workout clothes when they travel (and use them while away!). On the outside—visible to you and me—they have willpower. And, no surprise, they are where they want to be, weightwise.

So what’s the difference between you and them in the willpower department? What really explains a thin person’s ability to keep temptation at bay?

As we discussed earlier, part of the difference lies in their mindset, their belief that they do have willpower in the first place. But in addition, it’s the architecture of their thinking—which has been manipulated through their contingency planning. They have planned specifically and repeatedly and have made healthy decisions a habit; they’ve figured out the scenarios when they’ll need an automatic response so they don’t even need to think about what’s best. That is, they don’t have to stop and think or “exercise” self-control. It’s become their default behavior.

Remember our lesson about the brain, fuel, and memory? Recall: the brain is stingy and would like to expend the least amount of energy possible. To save energy, your brain will always seek out the path of least resistance. And habits are the path of least resistance. They switch your behavior to default—for better or for worse—which conserves precious energy.

The operative phrase? For better or for worse. Obviously, there are good habits (habits that serve your higher goals of losing weight and getting in shape) and bad habits (habits that make you fat and unhealthy). If you are in the habit of going out to get a sugary snack in the late afternoon, your brain deals with your afternoon boredom (or your need to catch up on gossip with your sugary-snack-loving office-mates) by putting it in your head (literally!) that you should do what you always do: go on out and get that cake!

We humans aren’t always rational (see Habit 3 for more on the irrationality of human decision making, especially at buffet tables!). We frequently make decisions that don’t serve us well and take risks we shouldn’t. But if you want to get or stay thin, you’re going to have to override that irrational default behavior more often than not; you’ll have to be more deliberate about planning in order to make good decisions easier for that tired old brain of yours.

But also remember, you are not at the mercy of your current bad habits. When you plan for challenges and situations—when you think about how you want to behave in situations that have always seemed to break your will in the past—you can create automatic new behaviors. You can plan in ways that will create new, good habits! Before you know it, choosing healthy, weight-loss-promoting behavior will become automatic, routine. This is what thin people do. They put their brains on weight-loss autopilot through contingency planning. Their consciously planned new routines override their bad ones.

YOUR BRAIN ON PLANS

Meet Peter Gollwitzer, a professor of psychology at New York University and probably the leading thinker when it comes to brain wiring and the psychology of motivation. He’s done all the relevant studies on the complex attributes of habit formation and, more specifically, why most people make the wrong kind of plans. We have much to learn from him!

As a young psychologist, Gollwitzer became fascinated with the subject of goals, decisions, and intentions: How do we form them? Why do we act on them sometimes, and not others? Why do they seem so hard to alter?

For decades, psychologists who studied such things believed that the attainment of a goal was a reflection of just how badly one wanted the goal. But as Gollwitzer began experimenting, he soon saw that simply having a goal and really wanting to reach it just ain’t enough. You know this all too well, right?

So he asked: What do people who do reach their goals do? What’s their pattern? What do they do differently that makes them more successful than others?

Gollwitzer had a hunch: it was all about clarity and detail in one’s goal plan. He saw that most people tend to focus on their big goal, without thinking through the subgoals and plans they’ll need to get themselves there.

In one elegant experiment that tested his idea and proved his thinking, Gollwitzer and his fellow researchers recruited a group of college students who were getting ready to go on Christmas vacation. Before they departed for the usual sloth-a-thon of lounging at home, having mom make meals (and do laundry), and generally catching up on long-lost sleep, all of the students were assigned the task of writing a report on how they ended up spending Christmas Eve. They were told to complete the report within forty-eight hours of Christmas Eve and send it back to Gollwitzer’s team.

But…before they took off for vacation, half of the students were also asked to make a detailed plan for completing their report. They were instructed to write out how, when, and where they would complete their essay. In other words, they were asked to think about how they planned to implement their intention to complete the assignment.

The other half—the control group—were not asked to do the detailed planning.

The results were eye-opening: when the deadline arrived, three-fourths of the “implementation intention” students had written their reports; only one-third of the students in the control group had done so.

IF/THEN STATEMENTS

Gollwitzer and his team had pinpointed the helpfulness of “implementation intentions.” That’s kind of a mouthful, so I call this helpful planning strategy the creation of if/then statements. An if/then statement is basically a deal you make with yourself. As in: If I’ve got to go to the holiday party, then I’ll hang out near the crudités; if I’m staying at a hotel, then I’ll leave the key to the minibar at the front desk; if I’ve got a late morning meeting, then I’ll tell the front desk to ring me early so I can go to the gym downstairs first.

You get the idea—you’ve got to think through and plan in ways that you know will help you reach your goal just as thoroughly as you would any other major endeavor in your life.

And the more specific and measurable, the better. Making vague, long-range plans like “I will drive across the country one day” is nice for daydreaming or creating a bucket list but is of dubious value when it comes to altering your day-to-day brain activity. As you saw above, all the science points to the effectiveness of shorter-term, specific plans.

Consider the office party you’re heading to after work tomorrow. Which would you say is more specific and measurable? And which plan takes more brain energy to implement?

A: “I will not overeat at the office party. I will not get drunk, either.”

B: “If there is a buffet at the office party, I will go to the cut-fruit platter first and fill up there at least three times before I eat anything else. I will also limit my alcohol intake to two glasses of white wine.”

You know the answer! Plan B is certainly more measurable and specific. And though you might initially think the focus on counting drinks and plates of fruit takes more brain energy than the general admonition to behave, plan B is less work for your brain because it’s a clear action plan. It gives you marching orders. No guessing. No brain straining.

The brain, ever the contingency expert, prefers already-mapped-out specific actions for specific situations, remember? It can conserve energy through an if X then Y thought pattern. An overly vague, contingency-free plan requires you to constantly reassess (meaning many times over the course of the evening, in the office party scenario), and that is a serious drag on your brain energy. The lower your energy (the more mentally exhausted you become), the less reliable your healthy decision making.

When you get specific about your plans—I will do X when confronted with Y—you allow the brain to conserve energy because you’ve decided your course of action ahead of time. When you do this repeatedly, you create a kind of neurological path that prompts automatic behavior, which conserves more energy. In other words, when you’re in the habit of doing something, you don’t stop to think, you don’t hesitate. If you have worn a neurological path of instructions for what to order at your favorite Chinese restaurant, you don’t have to read the whole menu. You are now in the habit of ordering your usual—chicken and vegetables, hold the rice, please!

Dr. Gollwitzer’s research—in particular a recent meta review of ninety-four studies (some his own, many by others)—has found that the “if/then” habit-making process works with just about every kind of problem behavior in modern life, from smoking cessation to chronic lateness—even to recycling! Again, the more specific you can be in setting up if/then thinking, the better. It really works. Get ready to plan!

HARNESSING THE SUPERCOMPUTER BETWEEN YOUR EARS

Now meet Heidi Grant Halvorson, a researcher at what I like to call the “laboratory of willpower,” also known as the Motivation Science Center at Columbia University.

Like Gollwitzer, Halvorson and her colleagues have come to a similar and interesting finding: the brain basically operates in the way a supercomputer does as it sorts through the ones and zeros of a software program to make sense of it (and run it); your brain is an if/then contingency computer.

From the moment you were born, your brain has been taking in information, interpreting it, issuing an appropriate response based on past experiences (and past reactions to your behavior), and then filing the interaction away, saving the solution (your behavior) for use the next time a similar scenario presents itself. This is the essence of “learned behavior”—our kids learn from us what’s expected and appropriate and file that away for future use. (Of course, as any parent who has ever sworn in front of a toddler knows, they can just as easily learn inappropriate behaviors—leading to an embarrassing situation when the toddler repeats mommy or daddy’s colorful language in “similar” circumstances!)

As you grow and mature, you file away more and more if/then options, and you draw on them all the time. Over time, the brain gets better and better at “scanning” your environment for the if—a very specific cue—and faster and more efficient at implementing your new then routines.

And voila! Pretty soon, the if/then practice gives you a new habit—a powerful and unconscious connection between your own specific situation and your own specific response. Slowly but surely, as you apply your new thens to those old, familiar ifs, you benefit from a kind of mental pause. As with any change—your new thens—there’s a tiny halt of energy; this gives you an extra moment to inject your new tactic before you automatically shift to the old one. Call it an “Are you sure?” button. Let’s use it!

THINK SMALL

Another way of thinking about being specific is to think small. I’m not talking about a smaller pant size (though I understand you want that too). No, I’m talking about breaking your BIG goal into smaller, more manageable—and measurable—ones.

Here’s an example. On January 1 every year, thousands of people pledge to lose weight. Maybe that was you last year. You said: “I’m going to lose fifteen pounds by this time next year.” That’s a good goal. But if you didn’t achieve it, it’s probably due to the fact that beyond wanting to lose that weight, you didn’t really make a plan to support that goal. You should have broken the goal down into subcomponents.

A little more detail might yield these statements to support the overarching goal: “I’m going to exercise more” and “I’m going to eat fewer carbs.”

But of course, each of those intentions can be further broken down and addressed by another implementation intention. Consider exercise: one subgoal could be “I’m going to take 10,000 steps a day,” which could be further broken down to “I’m going to buy a pedometer and take the stairs at work.”

You see what you’re doing? You’re creating a series of smaller steps that will lead to the bigger goal. Then, for each of these you’ll write out an if/then plan.

Let’s look at your weight-loss goal as a flowchart of goals and subgoals:

I’M GOING TO LOSE 15 POUNDS BY THIS TIME NEXT YEAR.

(GOAL)

To do that…I’m going on a low-carb diet.

(subgoal)

To support that…I’ll eat at least one vegetable at every meal.

(subgoal)

To be prepared for that…I will buy at least one fresh vegetable over the weekend and rinse, chop, and store it for use at meals throughout the week.

(subgoal)

To make use of those veggies…I will try one new no-carb recipe a week.

(subgoal)

Now you’ve really got a plan to reach your goal!

THINK POSITIVE

How you phrase your if/then statement is important as well. And being positive is the key. When you use negative words (like no, won’t, don’t, or shouldn’t), you are reinforcing/reminding yourself of the behavior you want to train yourself out of and forget. In other words, you want to emphasize the behavior you’re going to add to your repertoire instead of repeating the behavior you need to stop.

That’s why you want to say, “I’ll take the stairs at work” instead of “I’ll stop taking the elevator.” Or, to use the example from the flowchart above, that’s why you’ll say, “I’ll buy and chop vegetables” instead of “I’ll stop eating so many carbs.” This is a pretty simple adjustment—if you start being deliberate about it, it’ll soon become second nature (a habit!).

CONTINGENCY PLANS IN ACTION

Scott Flanary is like a lot of young people who come to Los Angeles—or any big city. He came to get his career going in earnest, to discover new things and new friends. But big cities are also challenging places, and Scott wasn’t the first to have adjustment issues and to have trouble coping with all the changes in his life. He started eating more than he should.

Scott had put on weight before, but now, forty pounds overweight, he fell into the fat-shame-regain cycle. As he recalls, “I was single, unhappy, and fat. Something had to change.”

MAN’S BEST FRIEND

(and Woman’s!)

Dr. Heidi Halvorson is not just some academic with a clipboard who studies motivation in a lab setting. She’s got issues just like you and me.

As she tells it, “2003 was not a good year for me. It was the year that I turned thirty, separated from my first husband, and lived in near-constant dread of not finding a job before my postdoctoral funding ran out…I ate whatever I wanted, gave up completely on exercising, and rapidly packed on the pounds. I went out most nights to bars with friends and drank a bit too much. Some days I slept until noon. My apartment was a mess. My work suffered. I spent money impulsively, thinking new clothes and dinner at fancy restaurants would make me feel better, and blew right through my savings. It was the lowest point in my life, and I was miserable.”

What turned things around? Something that required her to make contingency plans as though a life depended on her…because it did: she got a dog. The dog’s very existence in her life demanded something from her: a new set of if/then plans to take care of him.

She had to make habits out of feeding and walking the little guy. She had to make time to play with him and groom him on occasion. And she had to be vigilant to keep him from chewing on her furniture and “prized possessions.” As she says, “I was exercising a lot of self-control in order to care for this dog.” And self-control in one area of a person’s life—especially when you’re feeling down or depressed about a lot of things—builds confidence, confidence that gives you the strength to take on other tough behavioral challenges. It’s what you might call a “confidence cascade.” You want that!

Think about Halvorson. She stumbled on a way to build healthier habits—even when she was surrounded by unhealthy stuff and temptation. Her if/then equations might have looked something like this:

“Even if I get home from work late, I will take the dog out for a walk.”

“If the dog needs to chew on something, I will take him out to the park and find him a stick.”

Soon, though, that way of thinking began to permeate her decision-making process in other problematic areas of her life. It didn’t hurt, either, that she had a real-life, wriggling, barking bundle of fur reminding her to make him a priority! Using if/then implementations, she got her act together: her career took off again, she got healthy and lost weight, and basically she regained control of her life.

At work, he experienced what so many of us experience: an unhealthy food environment, especially in terms of the local options for eating out. “Going out for a work lunch was impossible,” he says. “It was always to a place with few healthy options—pizza, pizza, pizza!” And Scott likes pizza. Who doesn’t? So, what were his options?

He might have planned this way: “If I go to that pizza place for a work lunch, then I will order a small pizza loaded with vegetables.” Or “If I go to that pizza place for a work lunch, then I will drink two glasses of water to fill up before I take a bite of pizza.”

But Scott was also trying to give up bread. And pizza dough is bread. He needed to formulate a plan not just to eat less pizza, but to eat something else entirely. He needed to get specific and he needed to phrase his intentions positively.

One day, looking over the schedule of office events—and contemplating how he’d get through them without putting on another fifty pounds—he got an idea. He decided what he needed to do was to stop being at the mercy of someone else’s restaurant choice and change the venue when he could. He made a list of restaurants in the area that were healthy, that had menu items that would help him reach his goals. In if/then terms: “If it is suggested that we go to that pizza place for lunch, then I will refer to my list of healthier options and suggest one instead.”

“I now have no trouble asking, you know, ‘Hey where are we going? Can we try somewhere else?’ It is a lot of front-loaded work, but it’s worth it,” he asserts. “Something is at stake. Eventually [being the guy to suggest a new spot] became part of my identity. Frankly, these days I have absolutely no problem being the guy who suggests something different and maybe a little less convenient. It’s worth it.”

Slowly but surely, Scott introduced his planning method to other challenges. “If I was going on a vacation, I researched the restaurants in the area,” he explains. He even has a contingency plan for eating associated with dates: “If I’m going on a date, I’ll actually pre-eat some dinner so I won’t be so hungry when we order.”

HABIT HOMEWORK

Get out a piece of paper and write down five or more of your own goals having to do with exercise and with food. Using simple arrows like I showed you earlier in the chart on this page, break your goals down into as many subgoals as you can. Be specific and be positive.

Now that you are clear on your goals, it’s time to imagine and think through the situations that might stand in your way. These are the scenarios for which you need to develop contingency plans. Drawing a blank? See the many ideas (collected from real people like you!) that follow.

Carry your food and exercise contingency plans with you (or on the note app on your phone) and add to them each time you find yourself in a new situation you hadn’t imagined before. If it stands in the way of your reaching your goal, if it gives you trouble, you need a contingency plan for handling it.

If You’re Drawing a Blank

Here are some positive and specific if/then statements to use if you want to eat better and exercise more. Do any of them give you an idea for your own life?

Contingency plans to help you meet your goal of eating better

“If I get invited to a party where I know there will be snacks, I will allow myself to fill one small plate there, and that’s it.”

“If I get a craving for something savory, I will eat a small handful of unsalted nuts.”

“If I go to the movies, I will bring chewing gum and chomp away as I walk straight past the popcorn counter.”

“If I am bored at home and looking for a snack, I’ll do a yoga pose instead.” (See this page.)

“If I’m going food shopping, I will eat a healthy meal or snack before I go.”

“If I am fighting a food craving, I will drink a large glass of water immediately.”

“If I know I am going to be busy all day at work, I will pack small portions of nuts or an apple to eat in the event of salt/sugar cravings.”

“If I am invited out for a drink, I will order a white wine spritzer with lots of ice and drink it slowly.”

“If I know I am going to be busy all day, I will make sure I have a bottle of water next to me at all times.”

“If I have a craving for a sweet drink in the evening, I will dress up a glass of fizzy water with sliced ginger, a squeeze of lime, or chopped fresh mint, or have a cup of hot tea.”

“If I am at a birthday party and find myself holding a plate of cake, I will eat three small bites and put the rest in the trash.”

“If I really must have chocolate, I will allow myself to eat four squares of organic dark chocolate that is at least 70 percent cacao.”

“If I am at the store and considering buying something I shouldn’t, I will read the ingredients label out loud from start to finish before I allow myself to buy it.”

“If I feel sluggish after lunch, I’ll walk to a coffee shop and get an espresso.”

“If I am stressed and thinking about eating, I will close my eyes and take one slow, deep breath.”

Contingency plans to help you meet your goal of exercising more consistently

“If I am driving to meet a friend for a meal, I will park a short distance from the restaurant so that I have to walk before and after the meal.”

“If I am losing enthusiasm for my regular exercise class, I will take one new class a week at the gym for three consecutive weeks.”

“If I am too tired to go to my regular exercise class, I will take a less strenuous one, like gentle yoga or a stretch class, instead of missing my workout altogether.”

“If I’m ready for bed, I’ll put my dog’s chain and collar on the coffee table so I’m ready for a morning walk.”

“If I am standing in line, I will stand on one leg for as long as I can and then switch sides.”

“If I am sitting for long periods of time, I will set a timer and get up and take a short walk every hour.”

“If I am going out for dinner with friends, I will tell them that I am taking up the Italian custom of going for a stroll after dinner, and invite them to join me.”

“If I need to catch up with a friend I haven’t seen in a while, I will find a fun exercise class to try and invite her to join me.”

“If I feel sluggish, I will set a timer and try to hold plank pose for twenty seconds.”

“If I need to have a long discussion with a friend, I will suggest we take a long walk together.”

“If I need to come up with an idea for a date, I will suggest a hike or a walk along the beach.”