A reader emailed me in response to my last newsletter, explaining her frustration in trying to change how she approaches eating and exercise. And I know she is not alone in this.
Changing eating and exercise behaviors is challenging! Not just because of their deeper, and sometimes unconscious “I-have-to-lose-weight-through-exercising-more-and-dieting” meaning. It’s also because of the sum total of individual memories we’ve had with each behavior.
Consider this: At the moment of each decision regarding eating or exercise, it’s not about this cake sitting in front of us today, it’s the wonderful, warm feelings that come up about the delicious cake mom baked for our sixth birthday and the last time we celebrated with friends — and we reach for that feeling. It’s not about the run we planned to take in five minutes, it’s about that time in the seventh grade we were taunted for coming in dead last or the resentment we felt every time we tried to run regularly following New Year’s resolution time — and we follow our natural human tendency to avoid that pain.
No wonder change around eating and exercise is so hard! But fortunately for all of us, research and theorizing about eating and exercise is becoming much more sophisticated, permitting a more accurate and nuanced view of what we truly bring to each and every choice about eating and exercise. Yes, eating and exercise are in a change class of their own, as discussed in the last newsletter. But they are also very different behaviors from one another, and they need their own theories.
Why we avoid exercise
More like-minded theories have since been proposed, but the first one (published in 2017) is the affective-reflective theory (ART) of physical inactivity and exercise by Rolf Brand and Panteleimon Ekkakakis. While the ART addresses both choices to exercise and not, it pays special attention to the forces that lead us to choose to NOT exercise. (Most exercise theories have traditionally focused on getting us TO DO exercise.)
Understanding what is truly thwarting the consistent decisions that underlie sustainable behavior is fundamental to behavior change, and the ART does just that! It explains the unconscious processes that influence our decisions, and contends that distressing past experiences and memories “tag” (that is, “brand”) exercising in negative ways, decreasing our desire to do them and driving our decisions to NOT exercise when we are the point of choice.
Our decisions about whether to exercise are not just situated in the current circumstances of the moment; they are embedded in decades of past exercise experiences and memories. Even when we hope to follow through on our planned exercise, these intentions are often no match for the negative memories encoded in our brain.
This might feel overwhelming, but it’s actually the key we’ve been searching for! Without this knowledge, these memories easily manipulate our choices outside of our awareness. With awareness, we can finally take back the reins of our own behavior choices.
Why we reach out for tempting food
But it’s not just new exercise theories that we need to know about. The emerging theory of eating that I am drawn to is the called the grounded-cognition theory of desire by Esther Papies, Lawrence Barselou, and Dorottya Rusz. The name says it all: Our thoughts about eating are grounded in our feelings from previous specific experiences and memories of eating.
These researchers propose that our memory from a single eating episode includes a LOT of information — how the food looked and tasted, its texture, who else was present when we ate it, the prevailing mood, the context of the meal — now mixed with our current state of hunger and/or stress. Below the surface, our brain does the calculus, which often results in a strong desire to consume what has made us feel good in the past. And we consume.
To keep this newsletter short, I simplified these wonderfully complex and nuanced theories. But the takeaway is actually simple: Each choice we come to with eating and exercise is about much more than what’s in front of us. When we feel challenged at these choice points, the real challenge is frequently not the run or the cake that is staring us down in the moment: It’s the strong pull of the memories and past experiences inside of our brain.
When it comes to understanding how our choices really work, knowledge is powerful.
Behavior change is starting to change
To date, virtually none of the change approaches and apps have been designed out of this newer thinking about what really drives our eating and exercise decision making. So it’s no wonder they haven’t worked for most of us, or for the clients, patients, or members we work with. And while shifting systems thinking and approaches can be slow (in any area), things are starting to change in behavior change, and for the better.
And this is the perfect moment to formally announce that I have a new book coming out in April that will explicitly help you navigate these moment-of-choice waters in new, exciting, and fun (yes, fun!) ways. Stay tuned for more on this soon.
Feel free to share this post with others who share your interest in the science-based how-to’s of creating lasting changes that can survive in the real world.
Copyright © Segar, Michelle.