What We're Reading Now

Set Yourself Up for Success from the Start

4 December 2012

Allison read Promiscuous Fitness from the November 2012 O, The Oprah Magazine and enjoyed a good chuckle and a great reminder about how to make difficult changes just a little easier.

Tags: allison read, balance, change, self-compassion

Last week I wrote about giving up fear of failure and learning to take the kind of risks that might lead to something great. This week I find myself thinking of all the times I could have just avoided failure if I didn’t set myself up to fall down in the first place.

In her article, Promiscuous Fitness, Alissa Nutting, gives a hilarious overview of her on-again, off-again relationship with exercise including her tendency to start a grueling program, stick with it for a few weeks, and then give it up altogether for a return to Ben & Jerry’s and her elastic pants. This pattern started in the 11th grade with Richard Simmons and only ended last year when she finally lowered the bar for her fitness goals and aimed for new behaviors she actually had a chance of achieving. Nutting found the insight she needed from two leading psychologists in the change management field. She combined Roy Baumeister’s suggestion in the book, Willpower, to “Set the lowest goal I could feel good about, then try to exceed by as much as possible,” with Suzanne Segerstrom’s advice in the book, Breaking Murphy’s Law, that “When forming a new habit, choosing a sustainable behavior is critical.”

Nutting outlines how High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) helped her to finally design a fitness routine that worked for her life and inherent disdain for exercise. She started with exercises that didn’t require her to go to a gym (running and sit-ups) and did them for 30 seconds and rested for 30 seconds aiming to keep the pattern going for 10 minutes, three to four times a week. On days she felt particularly good, she tried to keep going for 20 minutes. I’ve seen a lot of clients have success with this kind of training so if you’re looking for a new program, I certainly recommend it. However, that’s the not reason I think everyone should read this article.

First, I’m always on the lookout for a good giggle in the self-help department and Nutting certainly delivers on that promise. But second, and more importantly, in just two pages she explains some of the psychology behind why it’s so hard to change our habits and includes some excellent advice that will help you with any change you’re trying to make in your life. There’s a great sidebar with six tips for the workout averse:

1. Set minimal goals;
2. Keep a record;
3. Beware of willpower drains;
4. Value initiation instead of endurance;
5. Forget failure; and
6. Leverage your lifestyle.

I’ll let you read the explanations for each of these tips and discover how the suggestions can help you with your workouts or other difficult changes you’re trying to make. All six can be applied to any goal you’re trying to achieve. And if you’re looking for a little more help with making change manageable, Rachel blogged about our favorite book on this topic, Switch, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath.

p.s. This morning during the cardio portion of my workout, I tried the HIIT recommendation of “short burst of exertion over continuous exercise.” Instead of my normal 45 minutes on the elliptical machine, I warmed up for 10 minutes and then for the next 15 minutes I went as fast I could for 30 seconds and then pretty slow for the next 30 seconds. I plan to keep up this experiment for a few weeks and see if I can get better results by actually working out less.

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