[0:00] Hello, Change Academy listeners. Hey, like many of you, I am taking a little vacation time this summer, a little time away from work and podcasting to recharge my batteries. So today I am resurfacing a conversation that I had on the podcast with behavioral researcher, Dr. Michelle Segar, because this conversation was just so good. Now, in my last episode, the one right before this one, I happened to mention the summer book club that I do with members of my Wayless community. And Michelle's book, The Joy Choice, was our summer book club selection in 2022. And Michelle even very generously came and did a private author chat with the Wayless community members, which we all really enjoyed. But you know what? The concepts and the tools that Michelle talks about in this book still pop up in our conversations in the forum two years later because they really did have a lasting impact on our efforts to better understand our behaviors and to better align them with our goals and with our values.
[1:11] So seeing as I am on vacation this week, I thought it would be the perfect time to reshare this conversation for anyone who may have missed it the first time or could just use a little refresher. All right. All right. If you want to take your seats or lace up your sneaks, we're about to get started. Welcome to the Change Academy podcast. I'm your host, Monica Reinagel. 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 wellbeing or promoting healthy
[1:46] behaviors is your your job. We're going to talk about what works, what's hard, what's needed, and what's next. Let's jump in. I first learned about Dr. Segar's work last year when her publicist sent me a copy of her new book to review. It's called The Joy Choice, How to Finally Achieve Lasting Changes in Eating and Exercise. Now, I get a lot of books about diet and health and wellness sent to me for review. And as you may have noticed, you very rarely hear me do book reviews or author interviews, and that's because I rarely like the books. A lot of them are promoting approaches that I simply don't agree with, while others are relatively harmless, but I just don't feel like they have anything particularly new to say. And that was not the case with The Joy Choice. Not only was I 100% on board with the approach.
[2:39] I really felt like it offered some valuable new insights into our behavior and how we can make lasting changes. So I'm so delighted to welcome Dr. Michelle Segar to the Change Academy podcast to talk about all of this. Welcome, Michelle. It's great to be here, Monica. Now, Michelle, this book is packed with a lot of really important insights into how our brains work and then how we can use that knowledge to help us create more sustainable behavior change.
[3:08] So that we're going to have to pick and choose just a few themes to explore. And I just want listeners to know that to get the full benefit of Dr. Seeker's work, you really need to read the whole book.
[3:20] But one of the things that struck me about the book, which is about how to finally achieve lasting changes in eating and exercise, that's your subtitle, is that there's actually very little advice in here about what to eat or how to exercise. Size, you're sort of assuming that people know more or less what they need to do, but they struggle to do it for various reasons. Is that fair to say? It is fair to say. There are so many different ways to exercise and so many ways to eat that my goal with the book wasn't to guide people to specific programs, but to help them learn how they can finally stick with, approaches that they feel work the best for them. Fair enough, because that seems to be where it breaks down. Why is it so hard for us, do you think, to consistently follow through on our good intentions, even when we know that they are in our best interests? You know, that's the question, right? That is what everyone always wants to know. And it's because of what I call the old behavior change story. And this old behavior change story gets us all pumped up when we get started. We are motivated and driven and committed whenever we start a program.
[4:44] Whatever the underlying motivator is, is it New Year's resolutions?
[4:49] Is it swimsuit season? Is it an upcoming wedding? Whatever the reason, we are pumped up with motivation and I call it a motivation bubble. But what happens is, is that this initial highly motivated, highly committed period, it's as if we're pumped up on adrenaline, but it's this fragile bubble. And as soon as this bubble, which our exercise plan or our eating plan lives within, as soon as it bumps up against anything in our regular daily life, something unexpected and a work deadline that gets moved up, a sick kid that has to get picked up from school, it bursts. And so what we haven't learned yet, and I think it's because it's just not sexy, we haven't learned... What it takes to navigate these things that burst the bubble. But it doesn't mean that what's inside the bubble has to go down the drain if we know how to navigate and manage it. That's so right, because often when that happens, and I think everybody listening is going to recognize the motivation bubble, right? And how it feels when something bursts that bubble.
[6:11] But a new program instead of just trying to figure out, wait a minute, how do I make this bubble a little bit more resilient? Because the next bubble bursting thing is just around the corner, right? That's exactly right. And that's, you know, part of the reason I think we have come to just restart with a new approach or a new program is because, you know, we live in a society where there's a lot of programs being sold, right? And so we're constantly, just like we're in an an environment where there's all so many foods that we have to choose between. There are all these programs. And so what we've been taught without even conscious awareness that, oh, it must be the program.
[6:55] So let me try something else. I see people on social media talking about that program. So, well, the last one didn't work. Well, why not just join the bandwagon and try it aspects that allow people to stick with a self-care behavior like regular physical activity or healthy eating, we have to understand how to harness these things because it's the underlying process and systems and especially belief systems that we have about what is going on and what's getting in the way and what we need to do, in fact, that ultimately determines whether we stay the path or not. Well, and this was why your book appealed so much to me, because I really believe that what you're saying is true, that it's not about the program that we've chosen. It's because we have not yet developed the skills to navigate these challenges. And one of the things you point out in the book is that people who live with ADHD...
[8:02] Often struggle with things like prioritizing tasks or procrastination or time management. And all of that obviously makes behavior change particularly challenging for folks with that. But then you go on to say that the chaotic environment in which we all live, and I'm going to quote you here, you write, overloads our thinking and disrupts our focus in ways that could be considered to be mimicking the attention scattering thinking caused by conditions such as ADHD.
[8:32] So I'm curious, how has research into ADHD influenced your work on behavior change in the wider population? Is there some crossover there? That's a really great question. And in fact, I have been very interested in ADHD and it was the ideas. You know, ADHD is talked about a lot in the culture and it's in conversations. And it was something, you know, a while ago that I didn't know that much about. I didn't know that much about executive functioning. And I got very curious about how what has been learned about helping people with ADHD manage big long-term projects like school and professions and families. Life. Right? How does that relate to and what can we harness from that to help people manage other long-term goals that are related to healthy lifestyles. And so you're absolutely right. It was very interesting to me. You know, there is an emerging scientific literature on how executive functions impact.
[9:43] It's mostly in this direction focused on healthy eating and it's focused on the other direction with exercise, which is really interesting. So in the exercise literature, it's very clear that physical activity does benefit in very significant and important ways people's executive functioning. In the eating literature, they look at how people's levels of executive functioning actually impact their eating choices and weight. And so it's very relevant, but I don't believe, I haven't seen it anyway. It could be in the mainstream where regular Joe and Jane are learning, hey, these are your three primary executive functions when it comes to healthy eating. And this is how you can support them so that you can make the choices. They may not be the exact choices that you hope to make and plan to make every single day, day in and day out, but they're the choices that enable you to continuously support your greater eating and exercise goals. Right. So I want to go a little bit deeper into what you just brought up with executive functioning, which is something that people with ADHD struggle with, but really play into all of our attempts to regulate our behaviors and make long-term plans and reach long-term goals. And one of those aspects of executive functioning is inhibition or self control.
[11:11] And I feel like when it comes to sticking to our health habits, this is the one that gets all the attention, right? We all think that the problem is we just don't have sufficient willpower, but it's, Not only is inhibition only one of many aspects, as you point out, that go into our ability to prioritize and focus on our long-term goals, I feel like it also has gotten a very negative, connotation because we think it's just about we need to get better at saying no to the things we actually want. And I love how you flip this into saying yes to what we want more.
[11:46] And I'd love it if you could talk a little bit about the concept of goal shielding. Yes. So is it okay if I tell you the story that's in the book? Yeah, I wish you would. Oh, great. So for your listeners, I had an experience that I put in the book and here's how it went down. We were changing our insurance to a new company and it's a drag and it takes time. And we were at the final end where it was time to pay for the new insurance policy, you know, across home and cars and all that. And my insurance agent emailed me and basically said, okay, ready for your credit card. And I said, oh, great. You know, can you give me a call?
[12:28] Thinking, let's just check this off the list and be done with it. And she responded, gosh, I wish I could, but I have to get to the gym. And I was, you know, to be honest, a little put off, But more than that, I was in admiration because she had exemplified what, you know, I teach my coaching clients, which is how to protect or shield your, what you're hoping to do to take care of yourself. And, you know, when I asked her later why she had made that decision, because technically a credit card transfer number would take 30 seconds, right? But she said, I just couldn't afford it not to do that because I just feel so differently when I exercise and when I don't. And so she shielded her need to go to the gym from my immediate need to get this... Complete this thing completed. And when I think about that, over the years I've worked with clients and thought about it, I've always had this imagery of Wonder Woman and those awesome bracelets, boom, boom, here comes something that, and it's this protection.
[13:40] As you know, the frames we put around things have deeply influential effects on how we feel about them, our motivation, our experience of doing them. So think about how different the experience is of choosing to go to the gym when you feel like it gives something really important to you that you care about and that you want to protect versus you should go to the gym and do that because your doctors got on your case again.
[14:14] But again, this gets back to your earlier point, which is that I am coming into this conversation a bit with people with the assumption that people do have a deep, compelling reason for wanting to change their behavior that they can harness at these times when they have to come up against a challenge that has the potential to derail their plans or not. Right. And it's about having that moment of clarity or what you refer to as the pause.
[14:48] To kind of reflect, wait a minute, what am I saying no to by saying yes to this? Or, you know, how am I, am I protecting what's most important to me? Yes. And of course, you know, as, as you know, and the thing that is really the most important, I think the most important thing about the book is part of the old behavior change story has taught us, and it's not our fault. Like it is literally brainwashed us to kind of believe if If we can't do what we plan to do and the perfect option, then we fail, then it's not worth doing at all and until the next time. But in fact, it's that all or nothing thinking, which by the way, ironically, is an official cognitive distortion that derails people's path of sustainable behavior change. And so we can even use the upcoming fall as a relevant example. ample. People all summer, maybe with more flexible schedules, have been really effective sticking with their plans, whether it's eating or exercise on a daily, on a fairly consistent basis.
[15:53] But all of a sudden, maybe there's more carpooling to do. Maybe work demands increase.
[15:59] How do you navigate, how does your exercise and healthy eating stay standing in a perfectly imperfect life, which most of us have, if they too are not imperfect in some way. So that's the goal, is to help people understand how to shapeshift what they do when it comes to eating and exercise so that it can fit into the unexpected needs that arise.
[16:31] Right. Another important aspect of executive functioning is that flexibility, the ability to cope more creatively when life happens. And instead of just, as you say, just abandoning our goals because we can't do it perfectly because things are disrupted, we have that ability to pivot to, yes, that perfectly imperfect option. Absolutely. And the beautiful thing about cognitive flexibility or flexible thinking, which is one of our primary executive functions, I personally believe that if we helped more people focus on that, like in a way, let's stop even talking about inhibition because the goal is to pivot and to reshape so that something can work instead of nothing. And if that's our mindset, there's no need to inhibit, right? Because the The goal is to figure out a workable compromise instead of controlling ourselves. Yeah, it's a good point. And, you know, we have this ongoing debate about whether willpower is a muscle you can strengthen with use or whether it gets fatigued. And the more you use it, the less you have.
[17:44] I do think that that flexibility is something that we get better at when we practice it. Yes. And that's where the fun comes in. Yes. That's where the framing comes in because if it's about, and as you know, I refer to this as play, because it's this thing that we're going to have to do on an ongoing basis really for the rest of our lives. This is something that we, it's playful. It doesn't have to be perfect. The perfect creates pressure and stress, and that's where it becomes very high stakes. And all of that stress is part of what thwarts our cognitive functioning, right? Because we're focused on, how am I going to do this right? This has just happened. Oh my gosh, what am I going to do? Instead of that mentality, it's, okay, we're at a choice point. I can't do what I wanted to do. Let me get curious and think about what are the options here? How can I play with? Do I play with the duration, what I was going to do, or the amount of food I'm going to eat, or when I'm going to do it?
[18:48] But it does take practice, and there's nothing wrong with that. Someone pushed back a little bit in a book club I did recently about that it was hard, that it felt hard to do, that they didn't know how to shapeshift what they did and come up with different options. And what I want people to understand, like anything new, like a new way of thinking and any new skill, it doesn't come easily. You know, when we learn a new language, it's really hard to learn new, you know, how to conjugate a verb in a different language. But this is just something that... The teeniest bit, if you start really small, and let's say someone had planned to go to the gym for 60 minutes. Let's just say that my insurance agent was actually a client I was coaching.
[19:36] And she came to me and said, this client wanted to close the deal, and I didn't go to the gym, and I didn't do anything, Michelle. And I really felt like a failure. I wanted to please my client. what could I do? Now, we won't go into the other issues of the goal shielding that we talked about already, which could be one response. But what I would say to her along the lines of what we're talking about now is, what if, yeah, maybe you couldn't get to the class that you signed up for that you really wanted to do, but did you have 33 minutes or 22 and a half minutes or 14 minutes to go to the gym and do something or walk outside for that period of time or even two minutes. So if we're going to learn a new way of thinking that is going to fit into our life and the actions and the choices that come with that, and it's all about learning with no end date, right? We don't have to pass a test. It's just about getting better and better.
[20:47] There's no reason that we can't start really small and say, okay, I'm not going to go to the gym for 12 minutes, but I'm going to go outside for three minutes and just see how it feels because I'm learning to think more flexibly.
[21:02] Absolutely. And that then becomes a toehold, you know, that we can build on. Yes. Another aspect of executive functioning that you talk about in the book, and this is one that I never really associated with behavior change, is working memory.
[21:17] And I was just fascinated by your explanation of how things like a craving for a certain food or a resistance or an aversion that we might say feel to exercise, that these can be powered more by our memories and historical associations that we've stored away than by anything that's actually happening in the present. That was a really sort of new concept for me. So, How can we leverage that understanding of working memory to help us follow through on our intentions? Right. Well, you know, working memory on its face just sounds so dull, right? But it's this potent space, not physical space, but just resource, cognitive resource that we need. So I think the way we leverage that science, and I'm trying to combine different areas of research here. So the theories, the theory about exercise and the theory about eating, different theories, though they overlap in how our past experiences create these memories that kind of flood us, flood our experience when we're at this point of choice. And if we have an aversive experience history with exercise, then we're going to feel this dread and all this resistance come into our working memory, although some of it might be unconscious too.
[22:43] I think the way that we harness this new science is we say to ourself, this is what's going on. And we say, this isn't necessarily what's in front of me. It's what I've experienced in the past. Or it's not necessarily that huge chocolate cake that's glistening from across the room that's taking all of my desire and pulling me toward it. A lot of what's going on is my past experience with eating chocolate cake. And so I think the very nature of chocolate recognizing that fact. We know from all the people who do research on mindfulness, like wonderful Dan Siegel, that when we speak to ourself like that, we take an observer perspective. And the very essence of doing that helps us have more cognitive control. It takes us out of the pure experience or emotion that might be in the amygdala so that we can have more cognition to say, or more control to say, okay, this is what's going on and I'm going to choose this instead. Yes. Just bringing that upper level of awareness to bear can change everything about that experience. As you like to say, name it to tame it, right? Well, I want to give credit to where credit's due. That is Dan Siegel's saying, but I think it's perfect.
[24:12] And I really think in the moment when we're facing a challenging choice, whether it's feeling tempted by something or that we want to avert something, or even if we're feeling like we need to please someone else rather than follow through on our own needs, noticing it and then naming it to tame it puts us back in control. Absolutely.
[24:37] So in the book, you have cleverly stuffed all of this brain science into a deceptively simple little three-step process that you call POP. And that stands for pause, open your options and play, and then finally pick the joy choice. And I have to say, one of my favorite parts of this is that choice of the word play, to play with the options. Because we so often think of behavior change or lifestyle change as being effortful. And that doesn't feel like fun. But when you think about it, play often involves effort, but it's effort that's somehow made fun. So I think that that's a very powerful word choice that we can apply to this process of playing with the options. I just like applying that emotional tone to the process of navigating all of this, because it does start to allow all of those perfectly imperfect solutions solutions, to feel like choices that are bringing us joy, the joy choice.
[25:41] I'm curious to know when you arrived at that as the title of your book. Did you start with that or did you arrive at that as you worked through this process? What a playful question. I love that. The title was the result.
[25:58] Of the key solution in the book, which is the culmination of pop, which is the joy choice. The joy choice is defined as the perfect imperfect option that lets us do something instead of nothing. And when I've been speaking around the country about this topic and, you know, I get pushback and people say, Michelle, really, do we really need to teach people that something thing is better than nothing. We're adults. Don't we know that? Do we really need to be taught that idea? And the answer is yes, yes, and more.
[26:37] And it's because we've been socialized as a society to have all or nothing thinking and a belief system that is so hardwired into our brain that it's a dogma that people have trouble breaking out of. And we know from decades of other science that logic doesn't motivate, emotions do. So taking those things and putting them together, it's even not enough to teach
[27:07] people that something is better than nothing. We need to be inspired to want to make that perfectly imperfect choice, right? And that's why it's called the joy choice.
[27:19] So it's not just that it's imperfect. It's the joy choice because A, it lets us be successful because we're staying true to what our overarching goals are. We may not be following through on the perfect plan every day or even most days because it's simply not realistic for most people. So it helps us be successful and that's a joyful experience. And potentially most importantly, when we stay true to these goals, at some level, whether it's a higher order or a deeper level, we are talking about taking care of ourselves when we're eating in healthier and in more intentional ways and moving our bodies through physical activity. And staying in sync with ourselves is the most important thing in order to stay in sync with the rest of our lives and take care of the people and the projects that we care most about. And that, that is joyful. I'm remembering a story that you tell in the book that for me really encapsulated this. And it has to do with recognizing that sometimes we have things that are important in our lives that are actually in conflict with one another.
[28:37] And we have to try to reconcile those somehow and that we're always so quick to throw our own needs under the bus. And the story I'm remembering, maybe you'll remember, is a mom and she had set aside some time, to do a workout. I think she wanted to swim in her pool, but her little boy knew she was home. He was supposed to be with the babysitter and he was kind of melting down because he wanted to be with her. And she was torn between wanting to be a good mom and to be with her child and to have that quality time. And she had promised herself she was going to do this. And just noticing where the conflicts were, where the tension was between these different bottom lines that she was trying to solve for, allowed her to come to a perfect joy choice, which was get the kid, bring him out, play in the pool. It can be as aerobic as you want. It might not be the water aerobics workout that you planned, but it was a joy choice. She got to be with her boy. He got time with mom. She still worked out.
[29:33] And I thought, yeah, that's what we're going for. Bingo. That is exactly. But think about it. When have we been taught that that's the solution for sustainability, right?
[29:44] But you know what? This is what speaks to, you know, this is why I talk about sustainability in the real world. And this is juxtaposed with starting in a motivation bubble, which is all about the ideal. But most people can't stick with ideals. And I was just asked for a quote and I said, if our healthy eating and exercise can't be imperfect, then how can it stay standing in our perfectly imperfect lives? You're exactly right. That motivation bubble is doomed from the beginning because it is a bubble that insulates us from the real world. So let's pop that bubble and not crawl all back into the next one, but start navigating the Joy Choice. I want listeners to know that the Joy Choice is available wherever you buy books. But if you go to Michelle's website, which is michellesieger.com, and that's Michelle with two L's and the last name is S-E-G-A-R, michellesieger.com, you can sign up for her newsletter. And there's also information about training programs and coaching programs. So please do check that out. And Michelle, thank you so much for spreading a little joy here on the Change Academy.
[31:05] Thanks for the opportunity to speak with you and with your community. It's really been fun. All right. Thanks, everyone. This has been the Change Academy podcast with Monica Reinagle. 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 voicemail. If you're finding this podcast helpful, we hope you'll subscribe, or even better, give our show a rating or review in your favorite podcast app. Or, best of all, share this episode with a friend or colleague you think would enjoy it. Now here's to the changes we choose.
