The result of promoting exercise for these medically-based and practical reasons is that we’ve turned it into one more thing to check off our daily To Do List (a “should” or “chore”), instead of something we DESIRE TO DO.  This is one of the reasons we haven’t been more successful in helping Americans adopt physically active lives that they want to sustain. (See also: Make It Stick and Switch, great books by Heath and Heath.)

Think about how this translates into actual behavior. Consider someone who thinks of exercise as a “chore” but has made plans to exercise. When some type of barrier arises to prevent them from doing their planned exercise, how motivated do you think this person is to overcome this barrier? Not very! In contrast, imagine someone who considers exercise “a gift they give themselves” confronting the same barrier. This individual will feel much more motivated to overcome this barrier. Why? Because that barrier is getting in the way of giving themselves their gift of physical movement!! People who exercise with a gift-based meaning of exercise are much more motivated and capable of identifying creative solutions to overcoming their barriers.  Who is inspired to use creativity to overcome barriers to EXERCISE THAT FEELS LIKE A CHORE?! Some are, but not most of us.

A great deal of this is a branding problem, so we need to incorporate research on marketing to solve this public health issue. Research by Bagozzi et al., shows that having desire toward the actual behavior AND having desire for one’s behavioral GOAL are key for that behavior to occur over time. There has been an under emphasis on the role people’s exercise goals play in motivating or undermining sustainable  participation in physical activity. There is a personal goal hierarchy that is also relevant to this conversation, but I’ll save that for another post.

We can easily see how women who exercise with goals to lose weight may feel toward their exercise goal.  Women have been socialized to initiate exercise with this goal. But an implicit driver underneath is the idea that her body isn’t good enough or valuable as is, and she needs to fix it partly through exercising.  Thus,  exercise becomes a weapon of war AGAINST her body instead of a gift we give our self.  Can you see how this easily turns exercise into one big psychological YUK!?  It turns exercise into one big self-objectifying experience (Barbara Fredrickson et al.,) It also focuses women on selecting physical activities that will burn calories instead of that feel like gifts.  Who’s likely to keep that type of yuk up for long?  How draining and not fun! But even making the analogy that ‘exercise as medicine’ isn’t giving exercise an emotionally-compelling meaning. The data on medication adherence shows that it is a HUGE problem too. So, why are we asking folks to start considering exercise as a medication to take daily?  These are logical but not compelling reasons to exercise. These reasons WILL get many people to start exercising but not to maintain it for the rest of their lives. By now, we know that logic does NOT work to produce sustainable behavior. It’s time for us to start getting more creative with marketing exercise to Americans.

There are many other reasons/goals that women and men can claim for pursuing physically active lives. They just need to be educated about them through better marketing of physical activity.  HEY BUSINESS, HEALTH CARE AND GOVERNMENT:  You can get Americans to move more by creating a more emotionally compelling BRAND OF exercise!

BOTTOM LINE: We need to actually feel friendly toward our goals for exercising. The reasons we initiate exercise may be as important as the type of physical activity we decide to do if we are to create life-long sustainability. Only through sustained behavior can people reap the numerous mind/body/spirit benefits from physical movement - so we need to transform it into something that feels compelling to do on a DAILY basis. See Jane Brody’s discussion of this issue.

]]> http://www.essentialsteps.net/2010/03/jane-brody-agrees-with-me/feed/ http://www.essentialsteps.net/2010/02/saying-%e2%80%9ci-should%e2%80%9d-might-be-getting-in-your-way/ http://www.essentialsteps.net/2010/02/saying-%e2%80%9ci-should%e2%80%9d-might-be-getting-in-your-way/#comments Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:23:27 +0000 Michelle http://www.essentialsteps.net/?p=744 How often do we say to ourselves “I really should do that”?  We hear others saying the same thing.  On the surface, this might not seem like a problem.  After all, as human beings, we want to do what we think is “right”. This is a good thing!

We get into trouble, though, when our orientation to living becomes focused on accomplishing things and checking items off of our ever growing “To Do” lists.

Having this type of external focus too easily leads us to spend our daily lives doing things based on what we think we “should” do rather than what we “want”, “need” or mindfully decide to do. Do you resonate with this?

“Should-based” living often translates into living on autopilot as we rush to get one more thing done. When we do things we think we “should” do, we believe we are being our best selves, fulfilling our responsibilities well and serving others. However, living this way can be extremely stressful, unhealthy and often undermines living purposefully.  I’ve also come to believe that daily decision making and behavior based on “shoulds” can let us off the hook of taking personal responsibility.

When we say “I really should do this”, what we often mean is “I’m doing this because it’s something that I think I’m supposed to do”. It doesn’t matter if we are doing this because culture tells us to, our doctor tells us to, or we are striving to be “good” daughters, friends, wives, parents, or professionals. Making decisions primarily to fulfill shoulds prevents us from mindfully evaluating the task at hand based on its merits and whether or not it helps us achieve the things that we most value.

In essence, should-based living neglects and starves our unique sense of self.  Maybe this is why so many of us feel hungry all of the time.  Maybe we are craving our own essence, our sense of WHO WE ARE.

“Should-based living” breeds imbalance.  Living on autopilot, living as “human doings” instead of human beings is, ironically, often the path of least resistance. It is often easier to do what we feel is expected of us than it is to do the hard work of figuring out what it is we want to get out of life.

Every one of us is unique.  But if our daily behavior only fulfills what we think we’re supposed to do, we miss the opportunity to fully express our uniqueness. Should-based living comes easily to most women.  We have been socialized to be good mothers, wives, and friends.  To be conscientious employees.  To volunteer in our communities. And much more.  As we contemplate the decisions that fill up our days, it is important for us to understand why we might be inclined to live a should-based life. But, the most important thing, is to evaluate if the manner in which we live and make those decisions is taking responsibility FOR our life or abdicating it?

Taking responsibility for living life on our own terms can be scary stuff. But, from my perspective, the alternative is scarier. Feeling detached, drained, and unmotivated on a daily basis. Of course we want balance in our lives and we get balance, in part, through serving others and fulfilling our responsibilities.  But if most of your energy is consumed by the “shoulds” you might be missing out on inner peace and a sense of balance.  You may be endangering your well-being and health.

We all deserve to become our best selves and to lead fulfilling and meaningful lives. It’s our right as human beings.

Your EssentialSteps Coach,

Many of us have been worn down by societal images that depict beauty as coming only in small sizes. We’ve spent thousands of dollars in pursuit of this narrow and culturally-synthesized ideal. So many moments of our daily life have been spent bemoaning our lack of will power and loathing parts of our bodies.

Some women have been lucky to have escaped the quagmire caused by our obsession  with what food we want to eat compared to what we think we “should” eat. They either never felt pressure to diet or lose weight or just decided they were not going to let someone else’s rules dictate their eating.

But most women are not so lucky. Most have succumbed to cultural pressures and yearn to fit the one-size-fits-all mold. This yearning has led women to spend 20 to 30 years of their lives cycling through diet and exercise programs, eventually giving up when results don’t match expectations. The most unfortunate part of the diet/exercise cycle is that it  causes too many women to loathe their bodies and feel that they have failed INSTEAD OF recognizing that they were set up to fail. The aim of this cyclical paradigm has been to produce consumer behavior, not sustainable lifestyles. Once this fact is recognized, women can start forging their own unique paths to healthy and satisfying lifestyle behaviors instead of buying another “magic bullet” that will set them up to fail.

A great way to start this new mindset and approach is to recognize with gratitude what our bodies actually do for us. Instead of focusing on the most superficial aspects of our bodies (literally and figuratively), such as subcutaneous fat, let’s focus on its core abilities and functions; the things that make our bodies incredible.

- The ability to move our bodies by our sheer will.

- The energy to work on projects that are meaningful and exciting.

- Well functioning digestive and elimination processes. We don’t appreciate these until we learn that when they don’t work well our daily quality of life is drastically reduced.

- The ability to see the exquisite colors fushcia, orange, and violet.

- The ability to wrap our arms around our loved ones and express to them our appreciation.

- Resilience to breakthrough tough times and come out on the other side.

Aren’t these things worth SO much more than any excess pounds we might be caring around?   Do you treat your body with sufficient respect and appreciation for what it does for you?

I hope you might reflect on that question. And if your answer is no, than I offer you this: Now is a great time to start thinking about ONE single thing that you may want to try doing differently as a way to show increased appreciation for your body, a central part of your self.

Appreciating what you have instead of resenting it, is a much better place to be if you want to make changes that will help you feel and live better.

Consider this choice as we approach the holidays and pave our way toward making our New Years Resolutions for 2010.

How do you want to feel in 2010? What health and well-being related goals have you tried to achieve in the past that haven’t been sustainable? Are you going to continue striving for what others tell you that you should achieve, or would you like to start following your own intuition and voice? If the latter interests you, but you don’t know where to start or how to get there, I’d love to help.

If my ideas resonate with you and you’d like to receive emails with my posts (close to monthly), please sign up for the free “My EssentialSteps” eNewsletter, accessible under the “Free Resources” menu.

Please feel free to give this URL to anyone else that you think would benefit from reading this blog post.

Have a wonderful and reflective holiday season.

Your Essential Steps Coach,
Michelle

The first reason women conclude they are lazy is because they are simply tired from successfully juggling and achieving A LOT. Being tired and needing to relax is very different than laziness. The challenge for women who feel too tired to exercise is to learn how to determine when resting and relaxing their bodies is what they most need (something that is really important to do at times) and when they’d be better off doing some form of physical activity to increase their energy and improve their mood.

The second reason that women erroneously conclude they are lazy is because they compare themselves against too high of a standard.  We were told for most of our adult lives that exercise had to be hard and vigorous to be of benefit. On top of that, when we see some of our friends training for marathons or spinning every day, something that confirms our suspicion that we are lazy!

Contrary to what fitness companies want us to believe, newer research shows us that exercise doesn’t have to be vigorous to be of benefit and that all types and durations of movement “count”.  But regardless of science, if intense exercise is unappealing (which it is for most women in midlife, including myself much of the time) we won’t do it anyway.

Bottom line: There is no need to compare ourselves to anyone else when it comes to being physically active or feeling like we need to do it their way.  (That would be like comparing what you like in bed with what others enjoy and then condemning yourself for not being like them!)

The fix? Just change the definition of exercise from what you think exercise SHOULD be (because that’s what others are doing) to one that incorporates the types of physical activities and movement that feels good TO YOU. By the way, what feels good to do will and should change based on how you feel on any given day and time. You will discover that the idea of being laziness becomes much less relevant. Not only will you not feel lazy but you’ll wind up doing more physical activity.

So far, this is what we know: As you might be aware, estrogen, the primary female sex hormone, significantly decreases as women approach and then go through menopause.

Dr. Heidi IglayReger told me about the following new research documenting that the presence of estrogen in female rodents increases spontaneous activity. Though humans and rodents are clearly quite different, estrogen may also influence spontaneous activity in women. While this has not been proven in humans, if it were to be the case, postmenopausal women might be less active than they were pre-menopause because of decreased estrogen. What may be the key is what is meant by “spontaneous activity”.

Naturally, it includes planned activity, such as attending a group fitness class or going for a walk or run. But more likely it has to do with unplanned, and often unnoticed daily activity, such as standing up longer before sitting down, picking up around the house more frequently, or even fidgeting more - things that women (and men) do without realizing that they are moving”. Individually, these small changes in physical activity may not make a significant difference, but overtime, decreased physical activity without a matching decrease in food intake will cause weight gain.

This research suggests that by mindfully adding more brief periods of spontaneous physical movement to your day you might be able to prevent the weight gain that is associated with menopause. The simple solution to move more may appear to be easy. But while coaching women in midlife I have found that many, if not most, women have difficulty believing that these small amounts of lower intensity movement actually “count”. Intellectually, it makes sense, but when it comes to purposefully doing it and fitting it into your life it’s a different story. I advocate to clients that they LET THEMSELVES override the old outdated notion that only vigorous and lengthy exercise sessions are valid, and accept that fact that intentionally taking a parking space father away from the entrance or and taking the stairs instead of the elevator several times a day, among many other types of spontaneous movement, not only count but are extremely valuable.

In the EssentialSteps program I do with clients, I refer to spontaneous movement as “Opportunities to Move” because embedded in that concept is the value of creating time and space to move. When we move more, we feel better. Moving more accumulates throughout our day. Research suggests that moving more can improve our health.

But I’m more interested in promoting more physical movement as a way to enhance women’s daily sense of well-being. Why? Because my research shows that improving “health” isn’t a very compelling motivator for women in midlife who are, in general healthy. What we mid-life women want is to feel good - about ourselves and about our bodies.

Dr. IglayReger’s bottom line: Even though scientists are still searching for answers, post-menopausal weight gain may not be inevitable and may in fact be preventable through more brief physical movement throughout the day.

My bottom line: Moving more throughout the day will give you more energy, get blood flowing, decrease stiffness, help clear your mind, and will just help you enjoy every day more.

So what’s getting in YOUR way of moving more during your day?

As you know, I’m now blogging for More Magazine. If you want to hear my ideas more frequently than you do through the blog, you can sign up to be alerted when I post weekly on More at my profile:
http://www.more.com/user/profile/1204 . Under my photo just click on “Be notified when member publishes”. (You’ll be prompted to sign up for more.com, and then redirected to click on this option.)

I always welcome your comments, whether you want to share your own experiences or disagree with my perspective. Please tell anyone you think would be interested to check out my blog.

Dr. IglayReger summarized the research above about rodents under the direction of Dr. Peter Bodary when she was a post-doc in the Vascular Biology Laboratory in the School and Kinesiology. She continues research in the area of physical activity and body weight as the the laboratory manager for the Laboratory for Physical Activity and Exercise Intervention Research at the University of Michigan.

1) Go to my first post about how we should exercise more like we eat at More

2) Click on “view profile” (above my photo, on the right)

3) In the area where my photo is, go to and select the 4th option  “Be notified when member publishes”.

4) You’ll get a prompt to join.

5) If you don’t want to join, you can read my *though-provoking* post on the front of More’s Fitness page every Friday.

I invited Maryann Tomovich Jacobsen, MS, RD, to write a follow up to my October blog post, “Why demonizing food often defeats us.”  My former post explained the psychological reasons why avoiding “bad” foods and using “shoulds” for eating often backfires. If you missed my initial post, to get the most benefit, scroll down and read the October 7, 2008 post before reading this one.

Maryann is experienced as a registered dietitian, and her eating philosophy is very much in line with my approach to exercise. Below she sheds light on her experiences helping women stop demonizing food.

5 Steps to Developing a Healthy Relationship with Food
By Maryann Tomovich Jacobsen, MS, RD

Most of my nutrition counseling sessions begin with confessions. One client says she was doing great until she started eating bread while another admits to sweets being her downfall.

Like many women, I engaged in the good food/bad food cycle for years.  My twenties were all about restricting my naughty favorites followed by overeating them.  But I eventually learned a lesson that changed me forever: allowing myself to eat any food I wanted made maintaining a healthy weight feel effortless!  So I took my experiences, researched the topic and developed helpful strategies.

The 5 steps below will help you develop a healthy relationship with food, eat better and maybe even drop those extra pounds.

1.     Think about the why

My clients usually think they overeat simply because they are weak human beings.  Yet eating habits are not determined by character — instead, they are a learned behavior that starts very early in life.  When you understand what’s really behind your eating habits you can stop beating yourself up and take real action.

While parents are well-intentioned, the feeding strategies they employ often encourage the good food/bad food cycle.  For example, pressuring kids to eat their vegetables makes plant foods seem like a punishment.  Using sweets as a reward makes sweets even more appealing.  (Or they combine these two by forcing kids to finish their veggies in order to get dessert!). And encouraging kids to “clean their plates” or cut back on eating robs little ones of their natural ability to self regulate food.

Every person also has personal experiences and is inundated with popular diets, media stories and magazines telling them what foods are “good” and “bad.”  As Michelle wrote in her piece, no one wants to do what they “should” do.  That is why when women try to follow someone else’s rules of eating they become naturally defiant to it.

Think about your experiences with food growing up and how it has influenced your relationship with food.

2.     Challenge ingrained food beliefs.

After understanding where your eating habits come from, you can take action by writing down the real triggers to eating: your thoughts about food.  Once you capture the thought on paper, take the time to question it.  If you find yourself thinking “That cookie is bad I shouldn’t eat it,” for example, write it down and challenge it by writing “Why are cookies bad?  They taste good and eating one or two won’t cause weight gain.”  You’ll also want to question the assumptions you make about foods you perceive as healthy or “good”.  For example, if you find yourself thinking “this lunch is healthy so I’m going to eat more” come right back with “don’t all foods contain calories?  Isn’t it a better strategy to eat when I’m hungry and stop when I start to feel full?”

Research shows that people overestimate the calories in foods they perceive as “bad” and underestimate the calories in foods they perceive as “good.”  For example, a 2006 study published in the Journal of Consumer Research showed that individuals ate 28% more M&Ms when they were labeled as “low fat” than when they were labeled as “regular.”

In a 2005 study published in Food Quality and Preference, subjects chose 3 slices of bacon (109 calories) as more weight-promoting than a large raisin bran muffin (460 calories).  Even when calorie content was printed out for the subjects to see, people still judged the perceived “bad” food, like bacon, as more likely to cause them to gain weight than the higher calorie “good” food.

“Good” and “bad” food thinking gives too much power to individual foods and spurs the likelihood of overeating.

3.     Make your favorite foods a priority

Now that you are changing your thinking, you’ll want to go against popular diet advice and make your favorite foods a priority.  This can be a very hard thing to do, especially if you’ve learned not to trust yourself with eating.  Write down your top 5 favorite foods (previously labeled “bad” foods) and make sure to eat at least one of those foods every day.  At first you might eat quite a bit but after a while you’ll notice that a little goes a long way.

Still not convinced it’s acceptable to eat empty-calorie foods?  For the first time ever the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (2005) introduced the idea of “discretionary calories.”  These are the extra calories one can use on whatever food they want as long as basic nutrition needs are met first – check it out (http://www.mypyramid.gov/pyramid/discretionary_calories_amount_print.html )

Bottom line: When you know you can eat any food you want, anytime you want, your desire to overeat dissipates.

4.     Combine the good-and-bad worlds

Now you’ll want to integrate your favorite foods with all the other foods out there.  Instead of categorizing foods as “good” or “bad,” try focusing on the role each item plays.  For example, some foods are great at nourishing your body (fruits, veggies, whole grains, lean meats) while others are simply for enjoyment (cookies, cake, ice cream, fried foods) and others are somewhere in between (pizza, hamburgers, mac-n-cheese, juice).  The goal is to balance your intake of all these foods in a sensible way.

According to dietitians Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch authors of Intuitive Eating, http://www.intuitiveeating.com/ when their clients finally allow themselves to eat any food they want they eventually consume a diet that is 90% nutritious and 10% non-nutritious foods.  I witness this type of behavior all the time with my 2-year old.  She catches on quickly the food she thinks she can’t have.  Once I give her the novel item, she eats a lot of it for a day or two until the excitement fades and then she’s back to eating a variety of foods.

5.     Focus on the “how much” of eating.

According to the International Food Information Council, 6 out of 10 of Americans believe “what” they eat is more important for managing weight than “how much.” One area in which health professionals agree is too many calories result in weight gain – any type of calories.  Yet a culture obsessed with “good” and “bad” foods encourages people to choose sides.

For example, I’ve worked with the elderly for years, many who are losing weight unintentionally.  If we bought into culture’s idea of weight control, you’d think these people were eating only salads and fruit all day.  Instead, they are given high calorie shakes, meat with gravy and rich desserts and they still lose weight – simply because they eat less food.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t pay attention to what you eat (that’s another topic entirely).  But this idea that people have to eat only healthy food in order to lose/maintain weight creates a vicious cycle of getting on the wagon and falling off.  But if women can learn to eat just the right amount that their bodies need, all the time, then they’ll be getting somewhere.

You can accomplish this feat by tuning into the amazing hunger signals you were born with but got lost along the way to adulthood.  Eat according to your appetite, take time to enjoy each bite, eat satisfying food and stop when you start to feel full.  After all, the best diet is the one created by you — always honoring your personal preferences.  Yes, it’s really that easy.

Maryann Tomovich Jacobsen, MS, RD is the creator of RaiseHealthyEaters.com, a website/blog aimed at helping moms raise healthy and happy eaters while conquering their own food issues.

In case you need a boost to uplift your spirits as Winter winds down, a short interview with me was just posted on womensradio.com that should do the trick. The link is below.

http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=PAaal&m=1cW_Pzwn4dq_V9&b=QPKORIDNy6G9Siq24KQIZQ

I am happy to respond to any thoughts or reactions you have.Just shoot me an e-mail at michelle@essentialsteps.net.

As Winter winds down, try to be conscious about how you want to enter the next season and the contributions you want to make to yourself, your well-being, and health.

Be on the lookout for an upcoming post detailing the specific strategies women use to prevent demonizing food and the negative things that result from this harmful stance toward eating.

Warmly,

Michelle

As we enter February, a month after our New Year’s Resolutions, a study came out to remind us that most exercise equipment ads are fiction and there are no quick fixes for changing our bodies drastically.

Instead of re-summarizing the study in this eNewsletter, I’m going to give you the link to a column about this written by Gina Kolata, the New York Time’s fitness writer. In general, her article was very good. Despite the fact that Kolata only used examples of men and didn’t address women’s additional barriers to changing their bodies, the research reported offers an excellent reminder that fitness is an on-going process instead of a quick or drastic outcome.

To access Kolata’s article:

http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=PAaal&m=1dmBLeKNcdq_V9&b=I784_t6G0m7USg1w0_zUBg

I hope you all are doing well. Remember, that these Winter months are the MOST challenging to be physically active all year. The cold weather and gray skies can easily de-motivate and be discouraging.

If you find that you are barely moving your body and feel guilty about it, give yourself a break. Remember, physical activity ebbs and flows with life’s currents and contexts. I find that some women who decide to do “less” physical activity in Winter, often do MORE. Why? If less physical activity is what is realistic for someone, then that’s what they should aim for now. When the weather starts to improve, women who don’t guilt themselves out, naturally discover that they want to move more. The only caveat to this is that moving one’s body is a natural mood elevator. So, if Winter is accompanied by the blues, creating Opportunities to Move, even for 3-10 minutes might really help.

I am currently living in Toledo, Spain with my family. While I wish it were warmer, finding Opportunities to Move here hasn’t been an issue! I’m enjoying the frequent (but hilly) walks to get groceries and do errands.

Exercise equipment can be one tool you use when the weather is bad or just to add some variety to the other physical activities you use.

Try many of the suggestions below to make your experience more enjoyable, at least, more palatable:

The equipment is in a room you enjoy being in

The equipment is by a window where you can watch people or animals passing by outside

You don’t have to move the equipment at all, or very little to have it in the place where you get on it

You listen to music that makes you want to dance while exercising on your equipment
(And preferably change it with a remote when an “uninspiring” song comes on.

You multi-task at the same time (Some would argue this subtracts from the experience.)
-watch TV (news, your favorite program…)
-read a book or magazine you enjoy (might need to get larger printed texts for this.)
-talk on the phone
-visit with someone

You feel confident and relaxed while using the equipment (This is very important. Often, dislike of home equipment is really due to a sense that we are not doing it right. We can find people to teach us.)

You do intervals (e.g., 1 minute of higher intensity and 3 minutes of less intense, repeat, this makes the time go very quickly.

Don’t feel that you have to exercise intensely for it to “count”. Do the pace that is most appealing to you. Toss out the gold standards! You won’t do things for long that don’t’ fit into your needs and personality.

You vary exercising on the home equipment with other physical activities on a weekly basis (Although some people enjoy working out only on home equipment.)

You give yourself permission to get on your machine for only 5,10,or 15 minutes when you really don’t feel like exercising (This will truly help you remain consistent.)

Your purpose for using the equipment is to claim an Opportunity to Move or give yourself a “gift”