I recently finished reading and reviewing Michelle Segar’s latest book The Joy Choice. I am a big fan of her first book No Sweat: How the Simple Science of Motivation Can Bring You a Lifetime of Fitness. This book does not disappoint.
It is a really interesting read and explores the real day to day conflicts we face when trying to change exercise and eating habits. Michelle Segar is a behavioural change expert who has spent decades researching how to achieve lasting changes in eating and exercise and other self-care behaviors. She believes most of what we’ve been taught about creating change in eating and exercise is simplistic, outdated, and for many, misguided.
Why do our eating and exercise plans so often fail?
Decisions around healthy eating and exercise are often much harder than other in other areas of behavioural change because they have to be taken in the context of our chaotic lives.
“If home life is generally chaotic and it’s taking lots of attention and effort to manage the basics…like getting up and out the door, it’s hard to layer on “extra” effort, like having the ingredients for a healthy meal on hand- not to mention enough time and cognitive space to plan and prepare it. Furthermore, if the chaos is also causing stress, it may be even more tempting to eat comfort foods as a strategy to regulate your emotions.”
Alison Miller, University of Michigan quoted from The Joy Choice by Michelle Segar
Our life space gets in the way
Our thoughts, feelings and emotions are continually getting in the way of our rational and logical plans to eat healthily or exercise. Social psychologist Kurt Lewin calls this our life space. As Michelle Segar notes, this internal world “influences how we interact with the people, events, and tasks we encounter in daily life, and the choices we make…Life space is inherently dynamic”. We all have our own individual and unique life spaces each with our own identities and roles.
Derailing conflicts
There are many potential derailing conflicts we face each time we embark on exercise or healthy eating. Segar refers to these as “choice points” which are the in-the-moment conflicts we face which can easily derail eating and exercise goals. In The Joy Choice, Segar outlines 4 types of decision disrupters we must overcome when facing choices around exercise and heathly eating: temptation, accomodation, rebellion and perfectionism. I’ll write more about these in a post soon!
This is a truly insightful book delving deeply into the psychology of why we struggle with sticking with healthy eating and exercise intentions. The first step towards enacting successful behaviour change is to become aware and this book certainly helps to with thsi concept. It also provides a practical and simple framework for how to start to breakdown some of the internal barriers we face and move towards a healthier and happier relationship with food and exercise. I will certainly be embracing some of the concepts in this book in the coaching work I do!
