Categoriescoaching Motivational Nutrition

Carrots and Celery and Priming People to Kick-Ass

Do you recall a few years ago when (then) NYC Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, initiated a proposed ban on the sale of large-sized sugar-sweetened beverages such as sodas, sweetened teas and coffees, as well as energy and “fruit” drinks?

The Big Gulp Experiment

The idea was that by prohibiting restaurants, delis, sports arenas, movie theaters, and food carts from selling sugary beverages larger than 16 oz – with a hefty fine of $200 for failing to downsize – people would be less inclined to drink copious amounts of said beverages.

What’s more, they’d be healthier, happier, smile, and say “good morning” as they passed one another on the street1

It worked, right?

People stopped drinking those ginormous ‘Big Gulps’ and instead starting crushing almond milk kale smoothies laced with organic acai berries harvested from a unicorn’s rectum (<– I’ve been told they’re super delish).

Um, no…it didn’t work.

First: We’re talking about NYC here folks. A lovely city by most counts, full of diversity, sports, art, music, fashion, food, and an obsession with hip-hop loving dead Presidents.

Second: People in general, whether we’re referring to NYC or not, hate being told what they can and cannot do.

When this happens, we revolt.

Just look at teenagers. We tell them not to drink alcohol and not to have sex and we usually end up with more costly and less than ideal consequences.

In much the same way, the soda experiment didn’t work.

Consumption of sugary beverages DOUBLED!

Why?

It’s a topic I first heard a handful of years ago from Dr. Gnel Gabrielyan of Cornell University’s PHENOMENAL Food & Brand Lab.

In short, he brought up a litany of valid points with regards to our food biases and how (ir)rational we tend to be when it comes to the decisions we make.

Let’s just say the food industry is sneaky and shady as f*** when it comes to marketing their products. Portion distortion and how that interplays with recommended serving sizes comes to mind here.

Likewise, ever notice how many sugary cereals have their characters looking down?

Do you know why?

It’s to target the kids looking UP at the shelves. They feel the character on the box is looking at them.

“Tell your mom to buy me little Johnny. No, beg her. Fall to the ground and scream and flail your legs until she submits. Do it. DOOOOOOOOO It.”

I mean, talk about brilliant marketing.

However, one point I remember Dr. Gabrielyan highlighting – which I felt helped explained the phenomena of what happened during the soda experiment above (and why it failed so miserably) – is the concept of REACTANCE.

“Reactance is a motivational reaction to offers, persons, rules, or regulations that threaten or eliminate specific behavioral freedoms. Reactance occurs when a person feels that someone or something is taking away his or her choices or limiting the range of alternatives.”

Basically, you tell someone that they can’t do “x” or that they have to do “y,” and they’re going to get a little irritated.

Possibly punch you in the face. Who knows.

Framing

Another point Dr. Gabrielyan touched on was the idea of framing.

“The framing effect is an example of cognitive bias, in which people react to a particular choice in different ways depending on how it is presented; e.g. as a loss or as a gain.”

A quintessential example of framing would be the North Dakota Wine Experiment.

  • 117 Diners; Pre-fix meal of $21.
  • All diners given the SAME wine, but with two labels. One marked “Wine from California” and one marked “Wine from North Dakota.”
  • Post Meal Measures: People rate “California Wine” as tasting better than “North Dakota” wine and believe that the food served with the California wine tastes better too.
How we “frame” a product or service can absolutely effect its perception by the consumer.

Priming

Another Jedi mind-trick to consider when attempting to change people’s perceptions or behaviors is the concept of priming.

“Priming is an implicit memory effect in which exposure to one stimulus (i.e., perceptual pattern) influences the response to another stimulus.”

While a bit sensationalistic, here’s a good example from the Will Smith movie, Focus:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwS68ixemAQ

 

Another great example of priming people is a well-known grocery store study whereupon the premise was this: Can exposure to healthy samples lead to healthier shopping?

  • 118 participants at a large grocery store.
  • Conditions: Apple sample, cookie sample, no sample.
  • Amount spent on fruits and vegetables then recorded.
  • No surprise: people receiving an apple sample spent more money on fruits and vegetables.

Note to self: Figure out ways to “prime” my wife into buying me an Xbox for Xmas this year.

Even cooler (and bringing this whole conversation full circle), another well-known and relevant study to bring to light is one where participants were given a carrot prior to sitting down to eat at a restaurant to see if it would increase the likelihood of them making “healthier” good choices.

It didn’t go quite as planned, because, as we learned above, people don’t like being told what to do, and more to the point, people like CHOICES.

Not many people accepted the carrot(s).

The next layer to the study was to then offer participants a choice of either a carrot or celery.

Ding, ding, ding…..success.

More participants grabbed a vegetable prior to sitting down to dinner and subsequently were “primed” to ingest more vegetables at dinner.

How Can We Frame & Prime Our Clients?

As personal trainers and coaches, anything we can do to set our clients up for a higher rate of success and enjoyment in their training, the better.

Some Suggestions

1) Allow your clients to choose their main lift of the day. Squats or deadlifts?

2) Allow them to choose the variation of the lift: Back Squat vs. Front Squat? Sumo Deadlift vs. Trap Bar Deadlift?

3) Allow them to choose their mode of exercise: Barbells only? Kettlebells?  Maybe they dig Landmine exercises?

4) I often like to give my clients a window at the end of their training session to do whatever they heck they want. If they want to thrash their biceps, go for it. Add in some additional glute work? Go! Push the Prowler around (you psycho), have at it. Turkish get-ups dressed as He-Man? Whatever floats your boat, dude.

4) Here’s a cool trick I did with one of my female clients this week to “prime” her into lifting more weight. After a “top set” of deadlifts I was like “that looked awesome. Easy! Wanna maybe add 5-10 lbs and up the ante on your next set?” 

I gave her the choice to stay put or go heavier. Either way it was a win, but she chose correctly…and added weight.

[Cue evil strength coach laugh here]

Giving your clients a sense of autonomy and control over their own training is a powerful tool in their long-term success.

Don’t get me wrong, you should still be the boss. They’ve entrusted you to coach them and write programming that best fits their needs and goals.

However, it’s never a bad thing to give them a little of what THEY want.

Even better: Provide them a sense of choice.

CategoriesMotivational

What Moves You?

Today’s guest post comes from my fiance, Lisa Lewis. Dr. Lisa Lewis (EdD, CADC-II, Licensed Psychologist).

We’re currently down here in Florida (her home state) visiting some family and friends along with chipping away at some good ol’ fashioned wedding planning. I.e., “discussing” whether or not I can finish our vows by saying “one ring to rule them all” when I place the ring on her finger.

I.e., and by “discussion,” what I really mean is “not a chance in hell in happening.”

Anyways, knowing we were going to be away for a few days, and the likelihood I’d have a lot of time to do any writing pretty slim, Lisa was a champ and wrote this post on exercise and motivation. She’s kinda smart. And the internet loves it when she writes for my site. I suspect this will be no different.

Enjoy!

[Seriously babe, Tiesto, blacklights, smoke machine, first dance, what’s not to like?????]

Take an Intention Inventory:

Let’s go: grab a scrap piece of paper, a napkin, or open a “post-it” on your computer, and write down 10 reasons why you work out (or “lift”, “train”, “exercise”, ect) … Don’t think too hard or too long… just jot them down as fast as you can.

Give yourself about 2 minutes…

Alrighty. Now put that aside for a moment, and consider the construct of motivation.

As complicated, ever-changing, growth-directed creatures, we humans are separated from the rest of the animal kingdom by our psychology – and specifically, our innate desire to grow, improve, and gain mastery over our environment(s).

In a word, we are motivated. We pursue careers, follow dreams, take up hobbies, and aspire to be better than we are. Since you are reading Tony’s blog, you are motivated to be one of the following: fitter, faster, stronger, smarter, beastly-er, better. Motivated to enhance your fitness, you have most likely adopted behaviors and developed habits that others would consider “extreme”, “impressive” and “disciplined”.

How on earth do you do it?

Anyone can exercise, and while many begin, or begin again, most do not persist over time. We make resolutions that influence behavior for a day, a week, or a month, but what makes it stick? How do we persist in activities that require discomfort, delayed gratification, and sweaty smelliness? Those of you who have struggled with finding – and more commonly keeping – motivation for health and fitness have most assuredly wondered the same.

Motivation drives us – but not just in one direction or toward one outcome. A variety of intentions move us.

One way to conceptualize motivation is along a continuum: at one end we are motivated by 100% intrinsic enjoyment derived from engaging in the activity itself, and nothing else; at the opposite end, we are motivated in order to obtain a reward or to avoid a punishment. My personal favorite theory of motivation, the Self-Determination Theory (Ryan and Deci, 2000) posits a range of motivations from wholly external to entirely internal, and all together, these motives combine, compliment, and conspire to move us to act, work, and grow.

Now, let’s look at your list of results along this “continuum” of motivation to see what helps you to “get after it” at the gym, day after day. Label each one of your answers with the number corresponding to the best description of that motive:

1. Reasons including “getting something” good, or “avoiding something” bad are externally regulated. For example, some people are incentivized by employers to walk (measured with pedometers), go to the gym (proved with attendance records), or join a sports league. Oppositely, you may be externally regulated to avoid something punitive, like chronic pain due to inactivity.

2. If you wrote down anything about “feeling guilty if I don’t go” or “being proud after a great workout!” than you are also motivated by introjected regulation. Partially internalized, this motivation works by either moving you away from shame and guilt, or by pushing you toward pride. (Unfortunately, this is a motivation often used by the media and commercial gyms, which impose guilt and shame for not “getting in your run” or doing regular physical activity… this is unfortunate because this type of motivation often leads to behaviors which become “extinct” over time).

3. Any statements about your identity and your values. For example: “Training hard is who I am!” “I really value being strong and fit, and I make sacrifices to keep myself healthy”, “I’m athletic and I want to look at feel athletic” and “I want a long, healthy, happy life”. If you get to they gym due to “Identified” or “Integrated Regulation”, then you identify with exercise and fitness, and/or exercise behaviors are integrated into who you are as a person. You value the outcome of your hard work, and find the results personally meaningful. It may not be fun, but dammit, you feel that it’s all worth it.

4. Intrinsic motivation. Examples include, “I’m in my zone/happy place/flow when I’m training”. “I love getting in there and working hard”, or “it makes me happy!” Intrinsic motivation is pure, and someone operating under this motive is training solely for the internal state that is created (as opposed to the outcome).

So, what did you find?

Lots of 3’s and 4’s? Hope so! If that’s the case, you most likely have no trouble staying on track with your fitness. If there were mostly 1’s and 2’s, then you might have a harder time… you may stop-start often with workouts or resolutions… you may beat yourself up, have a “good week” or month, but then find yourself back out of the swing of things again.

If you notice a mix of scores 1 – 4 on your list, then you’re regulated by a range of motives that combine and complement one another. For example, someday you may feel excited to get to the gym and happy just to “get after it”. The following day you may be sore and have other things you’d rather do, but you go again because your fitness goals matter to you, and it means a great deal to you that you “stay on track” and hold yourself accountable.

Other days you might feel tired and start to fantasize about skipping the gym to binge watch some Downton Abbey (or maybe that’s just me), but you realize you’ll feel guilty if you don’t go, and “better” once you do, so you drag yourself anyway.

Then other days you might just to because you promised a friend you’d spot or train with her, or because it’s Saturday and you’ll be going out to a big delicious dinner later on that you want to “earn”.

As for the “best” kind of motivation? Research has demonstrated that intrinsic motivation leads to persistence in a behavior over time – but as we all know, you can’t “love” to workout every day… or even once a week.

But if love gets you deadlifting once a week, and guilt gets you pressing another day, and your lifting partner pushes you to glute ham raise a third, and the fourth day you go because it’s what bad-asses do – then what you have is a pattern.

A consistent, regular, rain or shine, good days and bad pattern.

The blend of motivations – the drive to work on yourself across a continuum of motives – is the magic elixir to a long, fulfilling life of health and goal-directed fitness.

So: Embrace the guilt that gets you off the couch! Love the “masochist” inside that wants to push the sled and “punish” you. The fun from your run and shame from your shake work together in pursuit a well-meaning, worthy goal.

Run with your reasons to get to the gym, no matter what they are. In the end, you’ll be fitter for it.

CategoriesMotivational Nutrition

A Discussion: Weight Loss vs. Fat Loss

Today I’m throwing everyone a bit of a curve ball, and doing something a little differently compared to what I normally do. To be as succinct as possible, I had an interesting email exchange with one of my female clients last weekend about the difference between weight loss and fat loss, and I thought I’d share the dialogue both she and I exchanged here as I felt it would make for some decent blog fodder.

I think this is a topic that leaves a lot of trainees flummoxed, and it’s something that unfortunately, despite our best efforts, is a message that gets lost in translation – especially within the mainstream media.

If nothing else, I thought my insight would serve two purposes:

1.  I think it’s a topic that a lot trainees (especially women) need to hear more often, and is something I feel pretty strongly about.

2.  Hopefully help turn the tides and help people realize that it’s not necessarily an “education thing” (we all know that pounding beer isn’t the answer), but rather a BEHAVIORAL issue that we need to address.

With that said, below is the email exchange between her and I, which has been edited slightly so that it would “flow” more easily in blog format.

On that note: Bagels suck!

Female Client:  Hey Tony, it’s been several weeks since I’ve seen you and I’m excited to get back to CP to train!  Having said that, while I still have some things I’d like to work on in terms of some aches and pains, and I definitely want to get my strength back,  I would like to work on weight loss, do you have any good suggestions for me in that area?

Me: Hey Kate Beckinsale (name has been changed to protect the identity of the actual client)!  Great to hear from you. With the weight loss issue, I think it’s important to understand that there’s a huge difference between weight loss and fat loss.

Far too often – at least in my experience, and this may or may not pertain to you – women get overly caught up on what the scale tells them. Weight loss can be completely subjective, and the truth of matter is the scale really doesn’t tell you anything.

If I told you to not eat for eight hours, you would weigh less.

If I told you to not drink water for a day, you would weigh less.

If I told you to cut off you right arm, you would weigh less.

In all three scenarios you weigh less, but does that really mean you made any significant progress?

Answer:  Um, no.

Sure, you weigh less……….but all you’ve really accomplished is to make yourself a smaller, weaker, armless, version of your original self.  There’s no shape, form, or contour to the body. What’s more:  now you have to do everything with your left arm.  And that just sucks!

How most women (and I’ll throw a lot of men under the bus here, too) approach weight loss is wrong.  Many would bode well by changing their mindset altogether and start thinking in terms of FAT loss.

More to the point:  to MAINTAIN as much muscle as possible (even better, build some muscle) and focus on fat loss.

One lb of muscle weighs the EXACT same as one lb of fat – well, DUH!! –  the difference, however, is that muscle is more dense than fat and takes up less space.

Stealing a little thunder from my good friend, Nia Shanks, here’s a great example of why it’s often a VERY good idea for women to not only toss their scale into the trash, but to not be skeered of adding a little muscle to their frame as well:

Muscle is more dense than fat, and that’s why a woman who’s been training hard and, despite losing body fat, hasn’t seen the number on the scale change much, if any, because she’s built muscle, too.

This is one reason why building muscle is a very good thing for women.

Here’s a picture to show that you can look better even if you gain weight. This is one of Jason Ferruggia’s clients.

As you can see, she gained 9 pounds but looks leaner, more “toned”, and more athletic because she lost body fat and built muscle. Good thing she didn’t let the number on the scale upset her!

I could write an entire book on what type of training one should follow in order to elicit similar results (Note to Self:  write a book), but I don’t really want to get into that here with you.

This might come across as beating a dead horse, but when it DOES come to fat loss, almost always, nutrition is going to be the biggest determining factor.

So, with that said, we need to come up with some “system” that starts to change your behaviors. I’m sure we can sit here and figure out a multitude of things that you need to change from a nutrition standpoint (eating more veggies, stressing protein with every meal, increasing healthy fats, food prep, etc), but that’s not going to help you.

Instead, and this is a concept I “stole” from another buddy of mine, Mark Young, who has a lot of experience in these sort of things,  we need to figure out a way to fix/change your behaviors one at a time. As an example, on a scale of 1-10 (one being “I’d rather swallow a live grenade and ten being “I could do that in my sleep”) how confident do you feel about omitting fast food or weekend brunches out of the mix?

If it’s not at least an eight or above, then we need to take a step back and figure out a better approach.  It’s only when we can figure out a way for you to be successful and to carry that over into a CONSISTENT behavior that things are going to really make a difference.

If you don’t feel overly confident about eating protein with every meal (using another example), then what about two meals?  Once you start making two meals a day a habit, then we can push the envelop to four meals per day, so on and so forth until it becomes standard procedure.

You go girl!

But remember:  YOU CANNOT OUT TRAIN A POOR DIET

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ In case you were wondering, I used capital letters so that you’d understand that this is kind of an important point

You. Can. Not. Out-Train. A. Poor. Diet.

It’s just not going to happen.  I can write you the most kick-ass fat loss plan in the history of the human race – training 4-5 times per week, throwing in any combination of circuits, finishers, or anything else we can think of that will make you hate life – but it’s not going to matter if we don’t tackle the nutritional side of things.

Using an analogy I’ve used in the past, if we KNOW that fat loss is (more or less) determined by calories in vs. calories out, which seems to be a more efficient use of our time:

A) Spending upwards of 45-60 minutes (maybe) burning off 350-500 calories (depending on the mode, intensity, duration) exercising ?

Note to Everyone Reading: trust me when I say this, despite the machine telling you otherwise, you DID NOT just burn 700 kcals walking on the treadmill for 30 minutes at a 5% grade.  Those machines are WOEFULLY off and not remotely accurate.

Seriously, think about it. Unless you’re walking with Volkswagon on your back, you’re not burning that many calories.

OR

B) Electing not to eat that bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios before bed?

Ding, ding, ding, ding.

If we were to take the simple equation that a lb of fat equals 350o of excess kcals (which I know can be argued, but bare with me, I’m trying to make a point), we can surmise that subtracting 500 kcals per day (whether through diet or exercise, or both!) leads to a lb of fat loss per week. Give or take.

Again, from a time efficiency standpoint, and with FAT LOSS as the goal, nutrition is going to trump exercise in terms of better use of our time no matter what.

Here’s the rub though:  as I noted above, it’s not an education thing.  You know that it’s not the best idea to crush Doritos (or whatever) or to forego preparing a home cooked meal in lieu of hitting up McDonald’s on your way home from work.

You know that eating a boatload of highly processed carbohydrates on a day where you’re less active probably isn’t the best idea.  You know ALL of this. So what’s holding you back?

It’s all about behavior change.

We need to have some sort of default “path” to help you succeed.  So,  instead of McDonald’s, maybe you hit up Chipolte Grill and order a meat salad with a heaping pile of guacamole on top?

While still not the best option, it’s a heckuva lot more conducive to your goals, and a step in the right direction.

The same can be said for trying to include more veggies, healthy fats etc.  We need to find a “spot” where you feel confident you can be successful. Going back to the scale suggested earlier: how confident are you that you can include five servings of vegetables per day?  Is it an 8 or above?

If not, then what about three servings? Two?

Hopefully this all makes some sense, and more importantly sheds some light on why I feel weight loss is not where your head should be at at the moment.

Still think cutting off that arm is a good idea?…..;o)