Trouble Sticking With It? Blame Your Brain

If you’ve followed my work for any length of time, you probably know how I feel about the scale.

That opinion was largely developed from my first six months of working at a training gym, where a scale innocently sat in the corner of the bathroom.

We used the scale, along with a handheld device to measure body fat, as a way to help clients get a baseline of metrics for when they started with us.

But what I was seeing on a daily basis wasn’t people using the scale as a starting point to gauge progress. I started to see clients coming in, looking defeated. When I inquired further, I found that when they went in to the bathroom to change for the workout, they’d hop on the scale.

Because it was there.

And if the scale didn’t reflect the change their brains felt it should, based on the effort they were putting in, they were walking in for a workout wondering why they should even bother.

So that’s when I took the scale out of the bathroom and ran it over with my car, and took a sledge hammer to it.

What can I say? I had feelings.

But over the years, I’ve evolved a bit.

If there is one thing that I’ve come around to in my time as a trainer, it’s the understanding that people need a way to gauge progress on this journey. Without it, staying the course can become incredibly difficult. There is a part of our brain called the ventral striatum that kicks in during decision-making to weigh the costs versus the benefits of our physical efforts.

I'm going to re-name this part of our brain Judge Judy. We'll just call her Judy for short.

According to research from Emory University, Judy weighs in on three phases of effort-based decision-making — the anticipation of initiating an effort, the actual execution of the effort and the reward, or outcome, of the effort.

Have you ever started...well....anything and decided it wasn't worth the effort? Recently I did a Facebook post asking where people get stuck in the process. And here is one of the answers:

If this sounds familiar to you, it's not your fault. It's Judy's fault (with apologies to everyone on this list name Judy....)

So how do you get around Judy?

Going back to my comment on measuring progress, this is where I think it's incredibly helpful to differentiate between process goals and outcome goals. Losing weight is an outcome goal. Dropping two pant sizes is an outcome goal.

Making a commitment to walk 7,000 steps at least five days a week is a process goal. Going to the gym twice a week is a process goal. You have complete control (for the most part), over whether or not your process goals happen.

But if your goal is to lose 10lbs in a month, you have less control over whether or not that happens. Sleep, stress, and hormones, just to name a few, can have a dramatic effect on whether or not you lose those 10lbs. So even if you follow a nutrition plan to the letter, you might not hit that goal.

And that's when Judy's all like "FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS HOLY I WILL NOT EAT ANOTHER PACKAGE OF TUNA DUMPED IN COTTAGE CHEESE!"

I mean, that combination of food might gross you out just thinking about it, but it is jam-packed with protein.

In order to get around Judy, you need to trick her by changing the way you measure progress. So I highly encourage you to not only choose some process goals, but find a way to track that process. In order to hard wire a habit, our brains need a little hit of dopamine. That's where habit trackers can be helpful.

If you decide to set a step goal, perhaps your tracker is your watch. My Garmin First Avenger watch buzzes and gives me a giant Captain America sign when I hit my step goal, my weekly activity goal (minutes of activity), and as ridiculous as it sounds, I love getting my shout outs from the Captain.

I have my clients track their workouts through an app - they track everything, from walking, to stretching, to hitting their water goals. Sometimes just being able to check a box is all you need. Another popular habit tracker is the Jerry Seinfeld "don't break the chain" technique, of printing out a blank calendar and making an "X" every time you do your habit.

Whatever your technique is, just realize that it's not your fault if you hit a wall with progress and find it difficult to continue.

It's Judy's.

You're welcome.