There’s clearly no shortage of good intentions in the world, and most of them actually have to do with health. People want to get into shape, they want to eat better, they want to lose weight. Unfortunately, very few of these good intentions get converted into reality.
Believe it or not, there’s a technical term for this: It’s called the intention behavior gap. And in this episode, I want to share with you some research-based strategies for bridging the gap between good intentions and healthy habits.
Key Takeaways - We waste a lot of time problem-solving issues that aren’t really what’s getting in the way. - Clarity on goals and strategies is more important than how much time or money we have to spend on something. - Willpower does not exist in a vacuum. It is supported by a range of other behavioral attributes. - Even more important than planning is flexibility when things don’t go according to plan.
Good intentions in health, but not leading to healthy habits.
Bridging the gap between intentions and healthy habits.
The intention behavior gap and common excuses.
Factors predicting success in behavior change interventions.
The gap between perceived and actual barriers to change.
Willpower and stress don't predict success in weight management.
The health action process approach to behavior change.
Pillar 1: Self-efficacy and confidence in actions.
Pillar 2: Self-regulation and defining success.
Pillar 3: Planning for success in action and behavior change.
Coping Planning: Anticipating and Overcoming Obstacles
Checklist for Success: Confidence, Clear Actions, Measurement, Planning
Case Study: Successful 30-Day Nutrition Upgrade Program
There’s clearly no shortage of good intentions in the world, and most of them actually have to do with health. People want to get into shape, they want to eat better, they want to lose weight. Unfortunately, very few of these good intentions get converted into reality.
Believe it or not, there’s a technical term for this: It’s called the intention behavior gap. And in this episode, I want to share with you some research-based strategies for bridging the gap between good intentions and healthy habits.
Key Takeaways - We waste a lot of time problem-solving issues that aren’t really what’s getting in the way. - Clarity on goals and strategies is more important than how much time or money we have to spend on something. - Willpower does not exist in a vacuum. It is supported by a range of other behavioral attributes. - Even more important than planning is flexibility when things don’t go according to plan.
Monica Reinagel has been helping people create healthier lives for more than 15 years through her Nutrition Diva podcast, books, online coaching programs and in-person workshops. As a licensed and board-certified nutritionist, her approach is grounded in science but is also practical and realistic. Monica is also a former professional opera singer.
Editor
Brock Armstrong
Brock has been working in audio since the 1980s (the late 1980s to be sure) and has focussed his expertise on podcasting since 2007.
What is Change Academy?
Learn how to cultivate a more productive mindset, form sustainable habits, and create a lifestyle that supports both your goals and your wellbeing with host, Monica Reinagel. Drawing on decades of expertise and experience, Monica provides guidance on navigating the challenging process of behavior change in a fun and accessible way. Learn more and find show notes for every episode at https://changeacademypodcast.com
Monica:
There's clearly no shortage of good intentions in the world, and most of them actually have to do with health. People wanna get into shape. They wanna eat better. They wanna lose weight. Now I don't know whether the road paved with all of these good intentions is actually leading to hell, but it doesn't seem to be leading to healthy habits.
Announcer:
Alright. Alright. If you want, take your seats or lace up your sneaks. We're about to get started.
Monica:
Welcome to the Change Academy podcast. I'm your host, Monica Reinagle. And in this show, we talk about what it takes to create healthier mindsets and habits in our own lives, As well as how we can create healthier communities and workplaces. Whether you're working on your own health and well-being or promoting healthy behaviors is your job, We're gonna talk about what works, what's hard, what's needed, and what's next. Let's jump in.
Monica:
I just returned from the health Benefits conference and expo that's put on every year by the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans. Had a great time down in Clearwater, Florida. I saw Cassie Christopher, while I was down there and I was there to present on a topic that is top of mind for every workplace wellness professional. And that is how do we bridge the gap between good intentions and healthy habits? And it occurred to me that this is a topic that would be of interest to listeners of the change academy as well.
Monica:
Because whether you are working on change in your own personal life and habits, or maybe you support others in some way as a coach or trainer or employee wellness professional. You no doubt run up against the same sorts of issues. The statistics are, well, they're as familiar as they are pathetic. 50% of all of those people who resolve to start working out have given up within 6 weeks, and you know what? The dieters don't even make it anywhere near that long, and this is what is known in the social science literature as the intention behavior gap.
Monica:
It's actually an official term phrase. There's a whole body of research literature on the intention behavior gap. And in this episode, I wanna share with you some of the insights and the findings from this research that I was just sharing at the conference so that you can put them into practice in your own life and work. And you'll probably want to grab something to take some notes with. We're going to be putting the academy in Change Academy in this episode.
Monica:
But before we jump into the intention behavior gap, I want to talk about another really interesting gap, And that is the one between what people think is getting in their way and what actually is getting in their way. So the International Food and Information Council does a survey every year of consumer beliefs and attitudes around food and nutrition. And in one of these surveys, they asked people. What is getting in the way of you making good on your good intentions? And what did they say?
Monica:
Lack of willpower, lack of time, lack of money. Those are the top three answers. The Harris Polling group did a similar survey, except Their question was what is keeping you from making good on your fitness goals? And the people in that survey said the workouts were too difficult or I stopped. And then once I stopped, I couldn't get restarted again, or I just didn't have enough time.
Monica:
We've all heard these excuses. We've probably made these excuses ourselves. These are the reasons that we've all been trained to accept as true. And so we actually spend A lot of time troubleshooting and problem solving these problems when they may actually not be the true thing that is getting in our way. So what does science have to say about this?
Monica:
A group of Dutch researchers recently did a meta analysis of 67 different behavior intervention studies to see if they could source out which factors predicted success. And in this case, They were looking at interventions that were working on weight management. They were defining success as long term weight loss maintenance. So guess what did not predict success? Willpower, The amount of stress in people's lives, socioeconomic status, the money that they had to throw at the problem, These things did not statistically predict whether these people succeeded and reached their goals.
Monica:
So what did matter? Having some way of monitoring their progress because we cannot manage what we don't measure. This was a very strong predictor of success. Another thing was habit formation, their success in adopting small healthy habits, like choosing more fruits and vegetables, like being a little bit more active throughout the day, exercising some portion control. Those were the things that actually predicted success and not their ability to stick to some really strict regimen.
Monica:
And then finally, their mindset, And this included things like their confidence in the ability to make a change, clarity on their goals and their strategies, and also a feeling of positive self worth that they were worth the effort because we cannot hate ourselves healthy. Right. So these are the things that actually predict success in our ability to convert our good intentions into healthy habits. And these findings Map perfectly onto a model of behavior change known as the health action process approach. So now we're getting into the science.
Monica:
This model was proposed by Ralph Schwarzer of the Free University of Berlin back in 2,005, And since then, he's collaborated with a lot of other researchers to test and validate and build on this model of behavior change. Got your notepad out? Okay. There are 3 pillars to this model, 3 pillars that bear up Our ability to close the intention behavior gap. Number 1, self efficacy number 2, self regulation and number 3 planning.
Monica:
And each of these three pillars has 2 or 3 sub elements, and I'm gonna tell you what they all are, but guess what? We have talked about every single one of these in previous episodes, but today I want you to see how they all fit together. So let's start with that first pillar of the health action process approach. It's self efficacy, and this one has two components to it. The first one is our confidence that whatever this set of actions is, That is going to have a beneficial result.
Monica:
And the second thing is confidence that We have the ability to execute this set of actions. And this sets up a really interesting tension. So let's say that my gym is offering a super intense boot camp. I could look at that and think, yeah, I'd definitely get in shape if I did that. But if I don't have a lot of confidence that I can actually do that, I'm not going to be terribly motivated to participate, but we can go too far in the other direction too.
Monica:
There might be another class, let's say Chair yoga for octogenarians. I feel pretty confident I'm going to be able to do that class, but not as confident that it's actually going to have a whole lot of impact on me. So again, I'm not going to be terribly motivated. So the key here is to thread this needle. And honestly, I think this is where at least 75% of diet and fitness efforts falter.
Monica:
We have to choose something that we are confident of the benefit and confident in our ability to succeed. And when we do that, It greatly increases our motivation to exercise self regulation. Self regulation is the second of those 3 pillars in the health action process approach. And now we're building on the work of Roy Baumeister, And this pillar has 3 little sub components. The first one is that you have to be clear on what constitutes success.
Monica:
And this is where things like clean eating kind of fall apart. Nobody really knows what that is or whether they're doing it well enough. So we need to have a clear definition of what constitutes success. The second subelement is the ability and the willingness to compare what we are doing against that standard, are my actions consistent with this definition of success. How am I measuring up against this standard?
Monica:
And the third part of the self regulation pillar is impulse control. Okay. Finally, We get to something that kind of looks like willpower, right? That's what impulse control is. It's willpower.
Monica:
And it is an important part of this ability to regulate our actions, but I just want to point out That willpower isn't sitting here in a vacuum. It is buttressed by all of these other elements, My confidence in my ability to make a change, my conviction that this is going to benefit me, my awareness of the standards, my ability to compare my actions Against those standards, all of these support my ability to exercise impulse control. So we can't just lay the whole thing at the door of willpower. Willpower is in there. It's a it's in the mix, but it's part of a larger network of behavioral attributes.
Monica:
And then the third part of this health action process approach Is planning, and this too breaks down into a couple of different categories. The first one is action planning, and you'll remember us talking about this in the past. This is where we are preparing and planning for success. We're going to figure out exactly which classes we're going to take this week, and we're going to schedule them into our calendar. And then while we're at it, let's figure out who's going to watch the kids so we can actually get to the gym.
Monica:
Or let's sit down and put together a meal plan, but then let's also make the shopping list that will support that meal plan, and let's schedule in a couple of hours into the weekends to do some batch planning. So this is planning for success. It's really important, but the other facet of planning is one that we sometimes overlook, and if anything, this appears to be even more essential, and this one is coping planning. Coping planning is anticipating the barriers, the obstacles that we might encounter in executing our plan and coming up with strategies to overcome those obstacles. I like to think of this as planning for failure or maybe better said planning for success in failure.
Monica:
And this is super important because it acknowledges from the get go that nothing ever goes exactly according to plan. I might show up at the gym at the scheduled time, but my spin class is canceled because my instructor is sick. Well, that doesn't mean I go downstairs and order a muffin. It means I'll go to a Different part of the gym, and I'll do a different workout today. Coping planning provides flexibility and resilience in the face of those inevitable things that are not going to go according to plan.
Monica:
So this is extremely important because it helps us prepare ourselves for the fact that things will go awry and that this is not an excuse to abandon ship. We have to learn how to roll with those punches. So those are the 3 pillars And the 8 elements of the health action process approach. And we can use these elements as a sort of checklist for whatever it is that we have cooked up here to see if we have set ourselves up for success. So here are some questions to ask.
Monica:
Are you confident that what you've undertaken is both achievable and beneficial worth doing. Are you clear on what actions will constitute success? And do you have a way of measuring your own actions against those standards? Have you planned for both success and failure, because if so, you are harnessing the full power of the health action process Approach. Congratulations.
Monica:
And if not, hopefully you now have some very specific ideas of where the gaps are in your plan. So my presentation at the HBCE also included some case studies that show how these principles look in action. And one of the examples that I like to give is the 30 day nutrition upgrade program that many of you are familiar with. Many of you have done this program with me, which you may not have realized is that it was actually designed according to this framework. And I think that's part of the reason why It has proven to be so successful in helping people create permanent, meaningful shifts in their eating habits and in their nutrition.
Monica:
So if you are not yet familiar with that program, if you haven't had a chance to do it with me, You can check it out. You can do that program and see what all of the excitement is about. All of the details are at nutritionoveasy.com/ Upgrade. Or or if you'd like to find out about bringing this program to your workplace, shoot me an email. I'd love to talk with you about that.
Monica:
Either way, though. I hope that you have enjoyed this deep dive into the health action process approach, and that it's offered you some new insights into what you can do to close that intention behavior gap in your own work or in your own life. If you have questions or ideas or comments, I always love to hear from you. Shoot me an email at hello at change academy podcast.com, or You can go to our website and leave me a little voice mail.
Announcer:
Alright. Thanks, everyone. This has been the Change Academy podcast with Monica Rineagle. Our show is produced by me, Brock Armstrong. You'll find links to everything Monica mentioned in today's episode in our show notes as well as on our website at changeacademypodcast.com, where you can also send us an email or leave us a voice mail.
Announcer:
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