“Unless you puke, faint, or die, KEEP GOING!” -Jillian Michaels, “The Biggest Loser”

Reality TV has presented a harrowing view of the weight-loss process. Researchers have found that people watching such shows tend to see exercise as a torturous activity that they want to avoid, and view obesity as the result of laziness and gluttony. Simultaneous increases in a bias against obese people and against exercising? Hardly helpful, methinks.    

But what about the end result of all that yelling, sweating, crying, and dieting? Well, that doesn’t look so great either. Turns out that the vast majority of former contestants on reality weight-loss shows have gained back 80-90% of the weight within a few years. So while shaming, anger, and extreme physical conditions might make for compelling television, they are most certainly not the ingredients of a successful weight loss program.

Much like great musicians, artists, or athletes, very fit people commit a lot of time to practice. To be truly healthy you must dedicate thought, effort, and hours to that end. And also like great musicians, artists, and athletes, a love of that practice is what will keep you coming back.

Yes, I just said you have to love losing weight.

The good news is that your body is ready to love it, you just have to uncover its ability to do so. We have a physical drive toward health that, for many of us, has been dulled by an onslaught of modern technologies like the drive-thru and television. But it can be unearthed and awoken! And once that drive is in place, the hard work is over. I’m not saying that a healthy lifestyle doesn’t require work, but when done in a positive way, it’s work that is enjoyable. In the same way you might work on designing an adorable holiday card or planting flowers in your yard, fitness can feel like a fun hobby, one that you look forward to and feel excited about. And anyone can make the change from hating fitness to loving it.

I liken the patterns in our mind that prevent us from enjoying fitness to a computer program. Every time we eat a ‘healthy’ food that has no flavor, push ourselves to complete a work-out that we don’t enjoy, or tell ourselves that if only we weren’t so lazy or weak we would be thin, we are building a negative program about fitness. When we think something is unpleasant, we tend to avoid it. So most of the time when we try to live healthily through coercion, we give up and go back to poor health choices.

The alternative to this cycle of beating yourself up and then giving up is to build a new program. This takes time. It’s like building a whole new engine for your car instead of just continuing to put gas in one that keeps breaking down. But once built, this engine will drive itself, and you won’t have to constantly fight to live well.

Remember this mantra: If it ain’t fun, it doesn’t get done! Now, I know this isn’t completely true. We do things all the time that are not fun (emptying the diaper pail comes to mind). But when something isn’t enjoyable, we will naturally look for reasons not to do it. So if you want to repeatedly make healthy choices (which is what it takes to stay healthy), you have to enjoy those choices. This means that your healthy food MUST TASTE DELICIOUS. If it doesn’t, don’t eat it. Your workouts MUST FEEL GOOD. If they don’t, stop doing them. Now I know this might sound crazy, but there are actually lots of healthy meals that taste great and lots of activities that feel great. Just not if you try to change too much too fast. Slow change is lasting change, and changing in a positive way will keep you coming back for more. Sound intriguing? Let’s talk about it. Join the conversation at EatingForOurFutures.com.

A primary goal of developing intrinsic motivation in children is to help them function as responsible adults in the future (as opposed to entitled adults who shy away from the hard work it takes to achieve success). Grown-ups who have learned the rationale behind decisions are typically good decision-makers themselves, and are likely to have an easier time achieving in school, finding a good life partner, and succeeding in a career. But if that long-term view seems a bit far off, focus on how much better behaved your children will be now if you help them develop their intrinsic motivation, and how much more you can enjoy parenthood when you aren’t the only one doing the hard work.

A great way to start incorporating the intrinsic in your parenting is to focus on effort, not performance. We’ve all learned that giving your child lots of praise will boost their self-esteem and make them happier and higher-achieving. But the common practice of telling our children that they are “smart” or making a big deal out of their skills is not always the most effective way to empower them. As a classroom teacher, I can’t tell you how many times I worked with students who were very intelligent, but who struggled to complete assignments or maintain their grades.

You may indeed have a child who is fabulously smart and does amazing things. Congratulations! But if you want her to become an adult who reaches her potential for success, you may want to draw more attention to her EFFORT than her smarts. Future success is actually correlated less with raw intelligence, and more with the ability to stick with difficult tasks. Whatever passion your child will grow up to pursue, he will probably need to work at it a lot to be excellent, even if he has lots of innate talent. The folks who can put in the time without being discouraged (or worse, expecting it to come easily because they are so “smart”), are those who tend to go the farthest in life.

A second rule worth following if you want your children to start managing themselves is to stop helping them so much. All children have a need to achieve. It’s called “mastery motivation” or “development of competence” in research on child development, but most parents know it as pride. The priceless grin on your child’s face as he gets that tall block tower to stay standing for the first time needs no theoretical explanation. But in our need to feel needed, many of us sabotage opportunities for more pride-building experiences by doing too much for our kids. Many two and three-year-olds can learn to put on and take off their shoes or other articles of clothing, spread peanut butter or cream cheese on a cracker, use a napkin and mirror to clean their face, carry a small bag of groceries, load or unload small plates in the dishwasher, put wet clothes from a basket into the dryer, etc. Not only do such activities provide a valuable lesson in all the work that goes into running a household, they develop motor skills, concentration, and PRIDE! Children who can do lots of things for themselves tend to be happier and more engaged in learning. So take account of all the little tasks that your children can learn to do around the house. It will make everyone happier if the parents relinquish some responsibilities and the children take them on.

We all do things in the moment that we aren’t proud of, during those times when parenting feels like survival. But changing the pattern of those little moments can be a very big change in the life of your child! Shifting motivations away from wanting treats and prizes, and toward wanting to feel good about doing the right thing is a dramatic change in the kind of person you are helping to create. And when we help our children become better people, we can’t help but become better people ourselves along the way.

Most of us do it, even though we know it’s not the best parenting technique. But is bribing, rewarding, and threatening really all that bad? And if we can’t use rewards to motivate our children, what can we do?

Before we understand the pros and cons of bribery, we need to be clear on some of the basics of human behavior. There are essentially two ways that behavior can be managed in humans: external systems of control, and self-control through intrinsic motivation. When parents use bribes or punishment to enforce behavior expectations, we are applying an external system of control to our children. I do not think this is always a bad thing, although some other writers and researchers (Daniel Pink, for example) might feel otherwise. But a big problem with bribing that is not always made clear is the opportunity cost. It’s not necessarily that bribes will ruin your child, but every time you resort to a bribe you are missing the opportunity to teach your child the real reason why he should choose a certain behavior. Usually a bribe is the quick, cheap* solution that takes the place of thoughtful child-centered teaching. (I use the word cheap only figuratively here, because the increasingly common practice of bribery has led parents today to spend 500% more money on their children than the parents of only one generation back!)

The thing with small children is that they are terrible feedback machines. It often takes dozens of times of being taught something before they internalize it. So time and again it can seem that what you’re saying is having no impact . But those little ears are listening and (slowly) processing, and learning. If bribes are the main motivator, they are not learning the real reason for the behavior. That’s why even the recent New York Times article critiquing bribery mentioned that if you need to bribe in a stressful situation, do it, but take time later on to debrief and talk about why the behavior was important.

An example: I’m in a store with my 3-year-old and he doesn’t want to stay in the cart. I tell him that he can eat a fruit strip if he stays seated. This is a bribe because I’m attaching the snack to a contingent behavior: sitting in the cart. (If I gave him the fruit strip with no strings attached, it would merely be a snack.) He still has no idea why I want him to sit there. If I take the time then (or later that day) to explain that we need to get some groceries at the store to cook for the meals we will eat this week, and that if he is walking around he might get bumped into by another cart, he might start to understand. It’s unrealistic to expect him to immediately respond with an “OK!” each time I explain something, but it’s a learning process. Every time I expect a behavior I have the opportunity to teach him about why the behavior is important. If I miss too many of those opportunities, he will behave in certain ways only to get a reward, and I will have to constantly control his behavior with those rewards. Taking the time to teach may be more exhausting in the very short term, but it will allow my child to start managing himself, and that will make my job MUCH easier.

Think back to the newborn days for a moment (whether they were years or minutes ago). Newborns learn constantly! It’s amazing to see a little squirming, blinking blob start to smile, suck on fingers, grab for things, mimic sounds, all in the course of weeks. This learning takes place with NO coercion, no curriculum, no rewards, no structure. We don’t have to “train” children to take an interest in toys, start smiling, or try to talk. They do it naturally. This is the essence of intrinsic motivation. It’s achievement without external controls, learning just for the joy of it, not to please anyone else or get any compensation. Young children also have a great deal of this innate motivation…unless we condition them out of it! Providing rewards for an activity that is pleasurable in-and-of itself actually reduces the desire a child will have to complete it in the future. The external reward distracts from the intrinsic enjoyment, and the strongest motivator for any behavior becomes diminished.

Teaching children about the reasons behind behavior expectations is key to developing their internal motivation, but another key piece is helping them recognize the feelings that are attached to their behaviors. Babies do things that feel good, and for toddlers and preschoolers we can make this connection explicit. Asking questions like “Was that fun to get all the pieces of the puzzle to fit together?” How do you feel when you use the potty all by yourself?” or “Are you feeling proud that you made your room look so clean?” can put the focus on the child’s emotional experience and help them recognize that doing the right thing makes them happier, and that happiness is the best reward.

To be continued…

One of my biggest “before and after” shifts as a new parent has been in my perception of what family mealtime should look like. Before I actually had  children, I held a Rockwell-esque fantasy in mind: our smiling, well-dressed clan, gathered sweetly around a wooden table; our children filling their growing bodies with freshly cooked gourmet foods, and then thanking their gracious chef/mother with all their hearts… Fast forward to reality, as I wipe sweet potatoes off my shirt, beg my 3 year-old to return to the table, yell for my husband to get off the computer, and dump out the contents of my salad spinner with one hand while the other holds a baby on my hip. PARENTHOOD!

Somewhere in between Rockwell and the mile-long drive-thru line for In-N-Out, there’s my family meal goal: eat together at home, as often as possible, as healthy as possible. And just keep trying! It’s that simple. If I don’t stop trying, I cant fail! Fortunately for you, I’ve had a lot of near fails we can both learn from. And here are some kernels of wisdom I’ve gleaned along the way:

1. Your “good” food is always competing with “bad” food. Obesity researchers talk a lot about the home food environment, because children don’t usually buy much of their own food, so the health of their diet is closely tied to the foods they have access to. A home filled with produce and made-from-scratch foods will likely turn out healthy eaters, so shopping well is a huge step toward family health. But it’s also important to keep in mind that it’s impossible to live in a bubble, or keep your children in one. They will know about cupcakes, fast food, and soda someday, if they don’t already. So try to make it a more fair fight. Focus on taste! So many people throw the baby out with the bath water when trying to shift to a healthier diet and only offer low-fat, low-salt recipes that just can’t compete taste-wise with the highly sweetened, high-fat salty processed foods of the industry. You don’t have to be an uber-healthy cook to improve your family’s health, you just have to be a real cook. Meaning you don’t just open packages and heat things. You use basic ingredients and create dishes. Buy quality, fresh (ideally organic) ingredients, and cook like a real chef would. Use butter and salt (if you don’t have a health condition that recommends abstention). Make it look nice (if you have time). Just remember that you want everyone to WANT to eat your cooking, not just accept it grumpily and count the days until you break down and hit the drive-thru.
2. Someone in your family will eventually adopt a special diet (if they haven’t already), so learn to accommodate with minimal effort. If no one in your family is vegan, paleo, low-carb, or gluten-free, you might be in the minority. Trying new ways of eating is often a positive step toward optimal health, so I don’t discourage new diets, but I do think there’s something important about a family sharing the same meal. The “short order cook” phenomenon, where parents prepare a separate meal for different family members, has had negative impacts on many, enabling “picky eaters” and disrupting the usual communion of meal time. (For a great article on this by Bettina Siegel, see blogforfamilydinner.org) So the goal is to easily accommodate different eating habits and tastes while still encouraging children to try new things. I recommend going for meals with many different dishes (just make them simple ones so you’re not in the kitchen all night) and let people pick and combine as they wish. Encourage tasting of new things by modeling it yourself, and letting kids know they don’t have to have a whole serving, they can just take a bite (or a lick, as my son likes to do). People are often more flexible than you’d think. When prepared with taste in mind, many meat-eaters will go crazy over tofu, many wheat-eaters will devour spaghetti squash in place of pasta, and everyone will enjoy a good sweet potato. Despite my earlier advice to cook like a real chef, don’t be afraid to make mismatched meals, which leads me into my next kernel…
3. Be open minded, dinner is dinner. This is a fairly recent epiphany of mine. As someone raised without a lot of family meals at home, my early days as a home cook were marked by a lot of rigidity. A Mexican-spiced entree could only be accompanied by chips, beans, or rice. Spaghetti was served with salad and garlic bread every.single.time. I’ve finally begun to realize that dinner doesn’t have to be quite that well planned all the time; sometimes it’s really fun to have a mixed up meal! So serve that leftover lasagna with some fajita veggies and a piece of cornbread. You might be surprised at how much everyone enjoys the variety.
4. Don’t overreact when things don’t go as planned. You will get to try again VERY soon! Much like a haircut, the need for another meal will arise before you know it. So don’t let an imperfect dinner make you throw in the towel. Your kids might complain. Your meal might not turn out right. The scene at your table may look nothing like you imagined it. But you are fighting the good fight. And every healthy meal you serve will leave your family stronger to fight some more.

Scanning the internet for relevant advice on losing weight post-baby could anger the most blissfully-content new mother. Such phrases as, “…but if you gained more during pregnancy than your doctor advised, you may struggle to get back to a healthy weight ” have made my blood boil. Apparently my body did not listen well enough to my doctor! I must have done something wrong! I exercised nearly everyday of my pregnancies, avoided sweets, NEVER ate fast food, and still gained an obscene amount of weight each time. But much like the other challenges of new motherhood (sleep deprivation, colic, breastfeeding difficulties…), getting angry about it will do very little to make my life better.

Losing weight takes a lot of thought and hard work, and if there are two things new moms are short on, it’s mental and physical energy! Focusing on caring for a newborn (and healing from delivery) while getting little sleep is hard enough without trying to figure out an eating and exercise regimen. And while you’re wishing for the sleepless nights to end as soon as possible, you might also be wishing for a timely end to the stretch panels and drawstrings.

Well I’m here to suggest that you stop wishing for anything to happen quickly. A big part of losing weight is waiting!

As new parents, we all hope to teach our children the value of patience. But our culture is a huge pusher of instant gratification. We shop online for things we don’t want to wait to buy at a store. We receive calls in our cars because we don’t want to wait until we get home to talk. And no aspect of our lives has been changed by our instant culture more than eating. America is the birthplace of “fast food”–both the technologies and the philosophy. We don’t like spending hours preparing a meal…heck, we don’t even want to wait more than 20 minutes at a restaurant for someone to prepare it for us! America is fast. And America is fat. And in grandly ironic American style, we want to lose the fat…quickly!

Research on weight loss has shown time and time again that short-term “diets” don’t do much for long term health: weight lost quickly is usually gained back within a year. The best solution is to slow down, and make small changes that you can stick with forever. Fortunately, the struggle between instant gratification and long-term goals is not a zero-sum game. It is possible to feed your need for short-term enjoyment while also supporting a change in lifestyle. In fact, it’s likely that acknowledging and attending to short-term desires is the only way to stay on track to your bigger goals! Humans are emotional beings, whether we like it or not. Making the decision to change some aspect of our lives is enough of a shake-up, so really sticking to a plan requires sensitive handling of our feelings. For any delayed-gratification goal, from weight loss to getting a college degree, some of the following strategies can help manage the emotional challenge of change.

Celebrate small victories.

If you are attempting weight loss through reasonable lifestyle changes, you will likely not see huge leaps forward to your goal. Remember, good progress is slow progress; but it is PROGRESS! So celebrate it. Weigh or measure yourself every couple of weeks and visualize success for the next check-in. Don’t expect to be buying a new clothing size right away, but appreciate yourself for the hard work you are doing.

Accept applause.

Tell people about the changes you’re making so you have a supportive audience, and then keep them in the loop as you move forward. They will probably notice improvements even more easily than you notice them yourself. They may even join you by making a positive change in their own life!

“Cheat” without giving up.

Typically folks making a change in the way they live feel great about it at the beginning, and then start to break down slowly. The old ways start to sound appealing again, and since their goal is long-term, it fails to motivate them enough in the moment. As good as the old ways may sound, the reality is that they aren’t really all that great. If they were, you wouldn’t have decided to change them! But sometimes a reminder is in order. Set a date to live the old way for ONE DAY. Then write down how you feel throughout that day. I’m willing to bet that the junk food doesn’t taste as good as you remember and you miss the clean feeling (you didn’t realize you had) when the chemicals kick in and your healthy edge starts to dull.

Read and relate.

Do exactly what you are doing right now! Read books, blogs, forums, articles, etc. about folks doing what you’re doing. Change is hard! But like all hard jobs, it is easier if we do it together. So many of us are fighting an onslaught of negative food messages, careless marketing, toxic eating environments, and our own insecurities about our ability to live a different life. If we can be honest and relate to each others’ struggles, we can find new strength. And remember, much like parenthood, being a healthy weight isn’t a race. It’s a journey.