Conventional wisdom has it that anyone who wants to become fit, to speed up metabolic rate, or to increase longevity should exercise. Go on a brisk walk or ride a bicycle to strengthen your core muscles that would lead you to achieve a good posture. Elsewhere, lift weights or consider strength training because not only lean muscles give you shape, they also help you to preserve your health for decades to come after you hit 30.
However, when intrepid scientists began asking if those traditional beliefs somehow prevented people from recognising the psychological perspectives in the habit of exercise, they found that people who resist exercising are keeping a mix of rather profound secrets from being exposed. Not because they don’t want to, but simply because they might not even realise it. And this group of secrets reveals astounding insights.
Regardless of what your reason is that has led you to view exercise as dreadful, in this article, we will be unveiling all that you need to know, from countless times of disappointment and backsliding that compound self-loathe, holding back a person to even try anything at all that’s related to exercise, to behavioural factors that critically affect exercise motivation.
Your Hidden Brain: The Mind’s Eye
It’s not some science fiction horror film we’re referring to.
The mind’s eye is what you use to view the world so vividly that you trust it more than you would trust your natural eyesight, albeit what it provides you with might not always be the accurate representation of reality.
In other words, you see the world as you are, and you would act on the presumption based on what your mind’s eye illustrates for you. Did you assume we’re speaking metaphorically? Let’s delve a little deeper.
We’re all familiar with the distinction between seeing something and merely visualising it. If you were in Kuala Lumpur now, you could see the KL Tower; but if you were somewhere in Penang, all you could do is to visualise. Although there’s no organ in the brain with a cornea or a lens, you’re still able to generate images in your consciousness because past information captured by your body’s eyes is fed to the brain, activating a pattern of neurons unique to an object. The human brain has pathways that lurk outside our awareness, forming the mind’s eye. It’s an eye that never sleeps even when you’re drifting off to sleep. From bold colours and tints of the hues of small objects to conscious thoughts, feelings, and actions that are predicated on — these are what create your vision as a whole, along with distinct perceptions catered to you through the help of the transition from sensory to cognitive imagination.
Why do some people find exercise harder than others?
Setting New Year’s resolutions is popular folklore or a modern movement that many people would participate at the beginning of the year — with good reasons of course. Maybe you’ve recommitted to your goals with conviction, or maybe you’ve vowed that this is the year you get your productivity under control. Whatever your aspirations, one truth remains: Change is hard, even more so if it’s to commit to a major life change such as sticking to a new exercise regime or to achieve a desired number on the weighing scale.
Simultaneously, a failed attempt to exercise isn’t something new. Across the world, people are struggling to manage their weight. There’s a variety of strategies that we have to help us shed the kilos off. For example, some of us set the best of intentions to exercise after the holidays, but the majority of Malaysians find their New Year’s resolutions are broken by Chinese New Year, Hari Raya Aidilfitri, or Deepavali. Festive seasons are also food seasons, won’t you agree?
We talk to ourselves in very encouraging ways, that this is our year to get back into shape, but that’s not enough to bring us back to our ideal weight.
Social psychologist and associate professor of psychology at New York University, Dr. Emily Balcetis argues about one very important reason that hinders healthy diet efforts, that is — the mind’s eye.
In 2015, Dr. Balcetis and her team found that people’s physical states, such as body sizes and weights, change how they perceive the environment. Consider the following experiment.
She gathered a group of 127 participants whose waist and hip measurements were taken to indicate each person’s waist-to-hip ratio. After that, they requested their participants to walk to a finish line in the form of a race. Before the race began, they asked the participants to estimate the distance to the finish line, guess what did they find?
Note: Waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) is a quick measurement that compares the size of your waist to the size of your hips in inches. According to clinical studies, a higher waist-to-hip ratio is an indicator of being less physically fit than a lower waist-to-hip ratio.
Unfit people saw the distance to the finish line as further away than people who were in better shape. In conclusion, the waist-to-hip ratio predicted people’s perceptions of distance. That led us to think that maybe people with strong motivations and strong goals to exercise might see the finish line as closer than people who have weaker motivations.
Furthermore, she also found that people who believed that they were capable of making it to the finish line saw exercise as easier. And when this happens, one would be able to execute the activity with higher spirit and mental positivity as compared to someone who views it as the opposite.
Through our mind’s eye, we all see the world distinctly-different, and sometimes that might not line up with reality. We can think of days that have gone horribly wrong for ourselves, for example, I’m fed up, grumpy, and tired, and so behind, and there’s a big black cloud hanging over my head. On days like these, it looks like everyone around you is down in the dumps too.
You might be thinking: My colleague at work looks annoyed when I ask for an extension on a deadline; my friend looks frustrated when I show up late for lunch because a meeting ran long; and at the end of the day, my partner looks disappointed because I’d rather go to bed than going to the movies.
However, there might be a completely different reality as opposed to the previous verdict. Consider this: Perhaps my colleague was confused; perhaps my friend was concerned, and perhaps my partner was feeling empathy instead.
Some days, we see the world as a dangerous, challenging, and insurmountable place, but it doesn’t have to look that way all the time.
Self-Efficacy: Your belief in your ability to succeed in a particular situation
The field of cognitive bias is vast and complex. However, the more you understand how your brain naturally operates, the more undisturbed you might be to navigate through change. Now, consider the role that self-efficacy plays in your journey of forming a new habit.
Speaking of which, there’s perhaps no better real-life example than Jesse Shand, who lost almost 140kg after years of battling with obesity. His story of going from 318kg to 181kg has been featured as a mini-documentary on Barcroft TV, a British news agency.
Back in 2012, at just 25 years old, Shand had decided that his body weight and health were already far too gone, “I knew my health was terrible and I was fully expecting I wasn’t going to live very long.” At that point, he let himself down so many times that he truly believed any efforts he made to change would be futile.
Coming from a place of a very dark and hopeless mindset, this is what would go directly into our beliefs. Previous failed attempts at change chip away at our self-efficacy over time. If it dwindles to the point that we no longer believe in our ability to do something, we won’t be able to do it. It’s very much so a self-fulfilling prophecy.
When people try to lose weight, start a gym habit, or quit smoking for the millionth time, most of them are dealing with limited self-efficacy that undermines their efforts in many ways. Maybe they give up too soon, or maybe they're left with nothing but frustration that prevents them from planning anything strategically; they just have hopes that maybe someday miracles naturally occur.
In Jesse Shand’s case, this is until he discovered something so powerful that it allowed him to change everything — the perfect antidote to a lack of self-efficacy.
One day, he decided to post photos of his body to a famous fitness forum, namely Bodybuilding.com. What he got after that was overwhelming positive responses from fitness junkies and like-minded people who wanted to support him to start his fitness journey. The community was flooded with people who provided Shand with practical tips in meal prep, exercise plans, and more. This encouraging response from the community played a vital role in disrupting his belief that it’s impossible for him to change.
Soon after that, the trivial quality of flopping around his seat and eliminating 2 servings of mozzarella cheese from meals is what got the ball rolling for Shand. Small steps might seem like they’re not enough, especially when we have a big problem we’re trying to change. But tiny steps forward set the stage for big changes to come.
They play an important role in sparking momentum and motivation while entering to repair our self-efficacy beliefs.
Rinse, cycle, repeat
In reality, most people tend to start overhauling everything at once when they’re about to begin a weight-loss journey. For instance, you’re going to eat 100% clean starting from tomorrow, hit the gym 5 days per week, or telling yourself that you would have no treats for at least a month. The next day, you wake up and encounter an obstacle you’re unprepared for, and then you would say to yourself: Hmm, I’m not ready. Maybe tomorrow.
Many people are constantly restarting because they set the bar so high for change that it’s nearly impossible to get it right out of the gate. And of course, the solution to this is to lower that bar. An easy gauge on whether your proposed change is a viable one is to ask yourself on a scale of 1 to 10, how confident are you in your ability to execute this behaviour?
If the answer is anything less than a 9 or a 10, you should start smaller.
Setting goal-oriented behaviours
Going back to our textbook example, Jesse Shand, he was then executing action-oriented behavioural goals amid his transformative fitness journey. Firstly, he planned on cutting his food intake by 25% that meant no soft drinks and fast food. The best part of this? He was making sure that it was doable. Secondly, he increased his water intake. Last but not least, he was logging his food intake and exercising in front of a huge community cheering him on. This kept him accountable and spurred him on to find new ways to eat healthier and move more.
Rather than focusing on reaching a particular weight, Shand was monitoring his progress against the goals that he had broken down. Those are concrete actions one could make every day to reach a desirable outcome. Not to mention that having behavioural goals and keeping a log of your progress toward them are essential elements of change.
Recording observations about your eating style and movement patterns reveal crucial insights because you can only take control over behaviour that you’re fully aware of. At the same time, this also keeps you focused on what you’re striving for as journaling shows you immediate evidence of your ability to improve.
Rewards and Intrinsic Motivation
“I was so excited that I was able to do this; it doesn’t seem significant, but I was building strength in my legs, and suddenly I was seeing these benefits coming and it snowballed from there,” Shand shared as he began to notice the positive switch in his body and attitude while hitting milestones that he previously thought were impossible.
He didn’t focus on doing everything perfectly, instead he opted to celebrate each subtle improvement. And this gave him a huge boost of morale; it gave him hope. Little did he know, that was him building little rewards for himself, making the entire diet process bearable as well as sustainable.
When it comes to losing weight, most people put most of, if not all of the emphasis, on the rewards of the lower number on the weighing scale, or smaller body size. This focus can sometimes blind us from not noticing the more subtle rewards that are built into the process of striving to live a healthier lifestyle.
However, the rewards of changing are what give us the strength and drive to keep pushing towards our dreams. Rewards can be anything at all, from noticing that your pants are a little loose, to being able to do more than you previously could, or hitting a string of special milestones, like Shand.
As he progressed, those rewards signified a powerful motivational force. Suddenly, Shand found that he wanted to push himself more than ever before while finding deep satisfaction as he completely dedicated himself to the process. He was moving towards intrinsic motivation, which was doing something for the joy of doing it.
When a person unleashes one’s intrinsic motivation, he or she will become deeply connected with the process of change while finding fulfillment from it. And the best rewards are those that contain a certain degree of emotional significance. Emotion is what truly creates change.
Emotion creates habits and makes the entire process enjoyable.
Some people naturally feel more emotionally rewarded for their efforts than others, a behavioural scientist, Dr. BJ Fogg who leads the Behavior Design Lab at Stanford University describes it as “shine.”
You surely know how shine feels. You feel shine when you spend a pleasant, emotionally fulfilling evening, sitting on the sidewalk with a dear friend after periods of self-isolating at home. You immerse in wide-eyed excitement, and for the company of people, you haven’t seen in ages. You feel shine when you finally find your me-time. Soaking in a hot, deep bath as you take a break from your hectic lives filled with emotions that are permanently nervous and strained. Or perhaps you feel shine when you finally get a call from your dream company after going through countless rounds of interviews.
According to Dr. Fogg, it’s not repetition or fairy dust that triggers a person to change firmly and indefinitely, it’s “shine,” which is what he likes to refer to when describing a shot of positive feeling and emotion, or a dose of celebration. Indeed, celebrating is a great way to reinforce small changes as it paves the way for big successes.
To create a real lifelong habit, he explains that it’s the power of celebration that wires new behaviours into our lives because no one could resist the amazing feeling that helps to gain confidence. The key is to create your own shine the moment you remember to do a good habit, when you’re doing it, and immediately after you complete it.
It could be a “Yes!”, a fist pump, a big smile, or you could think to yourself “Good job” or “I got this”. Your celebration doesn’t have to be something that you say out loud or physically express; the only rule is that whether it’s done internally or externally, you do feel good and create a sense of worth and gratitude for your actions.
Also as the author of “Tiny Habits: The Small Changes that Change Everything,” Dr. Fogg cracks the code on how human behaviour works without tricks, hacks, or willpower. He believes that one should focus on training the brain to succeed at small adjustments and gain confidence from them. For instance, instead of having “get in shape” as a vague and intimidating goal, do two push-ups every time you make your morning coffee — that’s your “tiny habit”. After a while, you can increase the number of push-ups and expand into different exercises.
In a nutshell, one needs to design behaviour changes that are both easy to do and can be seamlessly slipped into your existing routine. As you aim for small changes and celebrate baby steps, the process creates a set of positive emotions that would wire new habits into your brain. These are both a specific technique for behaviour change and a psychological frameshift — and that’s what we’ve been doing here in Naluri.
We’re passionate about helping millions of people to achieve transformative and clinically significant health improvements, by providing personalised healthcare more conveniently and affordably. People make visible progress along with good recovery from stressful health conditions, and you could witness it by yourself.
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Pictures via: Behance, Getty Image, TED Youtube. “Why Some People Find Exercise Harder Than Others” by Emily Balcetis, Jesse Shand, Unsplash
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