Transcript #442 The Joy Choice – How to Finally Achieve Lasting Changes in Eating and Exercise with Michelle Segar
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- Find out what’s in store for this Myers Detox Podcast with Michelle Segar, who joins the show to explain how you can finally achieve lasting changes in eating and exercise by using an easy and proven method called, The Joy Choice. As many of us know, it’s easy to fall off the wagon when it comes to dieting and exercise. We put so much pressure on ourselves to keep up with the plans we set in place, that often times it backfires, causing us to give up on the things we originally set out to achieve. Well in this podcast Michelle explains exactly how to prevent this from happening, explaining the main emotional and psychological TRAPs, and the amazing tips and strategies used in her Joy Choice.
- Learn more about habit formation, how it works, and some of the main assumptions surrounding it.
- Learn about how to develop a system that supports the part of our brain that’s in charge of making conscious choices.
- Find out how to create lifelong healthy habit sustainability through the choices we make when things don’t go to plan.
- Find out how to break down an unhealthy all or nothing mentality through choosing perfect imperfect options.
- Learn how shifting our thinking about eating and exercise away from weight loss, to vehicles for wellbeing in our day, can greatly improve their success.
- Learn about the two key things that can help you stay motivated.
- Learn about the decision tool Michelle created called POP, and how you can utilize it when things don’t go to plan.
- Learn about the four primary emotional and psychological “TRAPs” Michelle outlines in her book The Joy Choice.
- Find out where you can take Michelle’s TRAPs quiz, that will tell you the four decision TRAPs that are most likely getting in your way, and tips on what you can do.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Hello, everyone. I’m Dr. Wendy Myers. Welcome to the Myers Detox Podcast, and on today’s show, well, it’s really good. We have my friend Dr. Michelle Segar, and she’s simply talking about The Joy Choice: How to Finally Achieve Lasting Changes in Eating and Exercise. And this is what so many people struggle with. They know they have a diet they want to follow, or they’re committed to an exercise plan. And then they just, they fall off the wagon and just throw the towel in. And just drive by their favorite pizza place, and they snap, and it’s all over. And then people just don’t continue with their plan. Dr. Segar has pinpointed that part of this issue is perfectionism, people having this all-or-nothing, black-and-white thinking.
Dr. Wendy Myers: So, Dr. Segar, she’s written a new book called The Joy Choice, which I love the name. And she talks about how to anticipate those imperfect choices. Or how to anticipate falling off the wagon or making the perfect imperfect choices is what she terms it. So she gives a lot of tips and strategies in this show. And all the pitfalls, or what she calls TRAPs, that are emotional and psychological TRAPs that prevent people from pushing through and carrying through with their health goals. So a really, really good show today.
Dr. Wendy Myers: And I know you guys are listening. You are concerned about your toxic body burden. Heavy metals and chemicals you may be exposed to or in your body, and you want to remove those to be healthier and live a happier, healthier life. So I created a quiz called heavymetalsquiz.com. It’s a two-minute quiz you can take. You answer a few questions, and it will give you your results about your relative level of toxins in your body. So go check that out. heavymetalsquiz.com. And after you take the quiz, you get your results. And then you get a free video series that answers all of your most frequently asked questions about how to detox your body. So go check that out.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Our guest, Dr. Michelle Segar, she’s a Ph.D., and she has a master’s. And she’s an award-winning National Institute of Health-Funded Sustainable Behavior Change Researcher at the University of Michigan. And she’s a lifestyle coach. And for nearly three decades, she has pioneered methods to create sustainable, healthy behavior changes that are being used to boost patient health, employee wellbeing, and gym membership retention. And as a psychologist who aims to contribute toward societal level change, Michelle was honored to be named inaugural chair of the United States National Physical Activity Plan’s Communication Committee and an advisor of the Department of Health and Human Services. And she’s also a speaker for the World Health Organization and a director of the University of Michigan’s Sports, Health, and Activity Research and Policy Center.
Dr. Wendy Myers: So she’s an advisor to leading global organizations and is frequently interviewed in major media outlets like the New York Times, NPR, Prevention, Real Simple, and The Wall Street Journal. Michelle is a sought-after speaker and trainer and lives with her husband and son in Ann Arbor, Michigan. So you can learn more about Michelle and her work at michellesegar.com Michelle, thank you so much for coming to the show.
Dr. Michelle Segar: It’s a pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Let’s talk about some of the assumptions about habit formation when it comes to diet and exercise.
Dr. Michelle Segar: Yes. So habit formation, or forming automatic habits that we don’t have to think about, is a very popular strategy that we’re told if we can do this, we’re going to be golden, right? Let’s offload our thinking. No willpower is needed. And in theory, it sounds really great. But the reality is that there are assumptions underlying successful habit formation that a lot of people don’t meet when it comes to healthy eating and exercise. And so, for example, one of them is that we can form automatic habits for any. Actually, let me take a step back. And I explained that habit formation is this automatic decision that we don’t have to think about.
Dr. Michelle Segar: But what I want to explain also is that successful habit formation is based on what’s called the habit loop. And there are three parts to the habit loop. There is the cue, and I’m going to use flossing as an example. There’s the cue, I finished brushing my teeth, and that is the cue that I reach for the floss. And when you do that enough times, supposedly, it works for me, but I’m not going to assume it works for everyone. You have this association in your brain that you don’t even have to think about. You reach for the floss. The second part of the loop is the behavior, which is then flossing. And the third part of the loop is some reward. Whether it’s having a clean mouth or feeling proud of yourself, whatever it is.
Dr. Michelle Segar: And the logic goes that when we do this enough, our brain develops this automatic habit, if you will, to floss. So that’s the background. And like I said, I do have a flossing habit, and it works for me. But one of the assumptions is that automatic habits will work as well for complex behaviors, like exercise and healthy eating, as it does for simple behaviors like flossing. And it’s just not true. If we think about what it takes to floss and where we do it. Where do we tend to floss? The bathroom, right? Not a lot of people, not a lot of disruptions. But if we think about where we exercise or our healthy eating practices, it’s not just one behavior, right? There are a lot of steps. There are a lot of spaces involved. There’s planning involved. There are other people that might get in our way.
Dr. Michelle Segar: So all of a sudden, the simple habit loop that might work really well for flossing in the bathroom just falls apart when we get to the more complex behavior. So that is one of the assumptions. Another assumption is that if we have any internal conflict with eating in healthy ways or with exercising, like if we don’t like exercising or it feels punishing, or when we try to follow a healthier eating plan, it feels like a should, and we just want to rebel against it. These types of things don’t actually impact our ability to form automatic habits. But let’s go back to that habit loop for a minute. The third part was the reward, right? Some positive experiences that we get from it.
Dr. Michelle Segar: And if we impose or superimpose these conflicts that so many of us feel with exercising and eating in healthier ways, well, those aren’t very rewarding. And again, the habit loop has trouble holding up under those circumstances. So those are just two examples of some assumptions that underlie successful habit formation that, when we take a step back and examine them, actually may not hold up for many of us.
Dr. Wendy Myers: How can we set up our brains to form or successfully make better conscious choices?
Dr. Michelle Segar: Right. And so that’s the question, because if we can’t count on automatic habits to set us up for sustainable success, what can we count on? And we need the opposite. We need to be able to make conscious choices strategically that work. And so let’s, again, let’s take a step back and think about the scenario. Whenever we initiate a new plan for eating or a new exercise routine, we do so with the best of intentions. Full of commitment, inspiration, belief, or hope that this time we’re finally going to do it. And then we make our plans, right? But inevitably, something is going to bump up against those plans. Just like they do for habits, they do for conscious choices too.
Dr. Michelle Segar: But when it comes to conscious choices, what we can do is we can develop a system that supports the part of our brain that actually is in charge of making conscious choices. And that’s referred to as executive functioning. And just for a little context, we’re used to thinking about the term executive functioning in terms of deficits. So people who have ADHD have deficits in executive functioning, the brain-based system that is involved in problem-solving and management and planning and pivoting when we come up against a conflict. Or aging is a time when also our executive functioning starts to weaken.
Dr. Michelle Segar: So those are two life areas where the term executive functioning is used a lot, but we’re not used to thinking about it with our healthy eating and exercise choices. But in fact, we use that too for these. So the way we can set ourselves up for success is to understand that when our plans are going to go awry because of unexpected conflicts in our day, or what I call choice points, we can learn to support our executive functioning just at that time so that we can make better choices. So that’s a global answer, but not too specific.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Where is the real place of power for lifelong healthy habit sustainability?
Dr. Michelle Segar: Well, let’s go back to, let’s look at what you asked. You’re talking about lifelong sustainability, which is forever, in a way, right? That’s one way. But another way to think about it is if I want to stick with a behavior for life, if I want to sustain it, that means I’m on a path. And if you think about being on a path, you take a step now, and now, and now, and now, and now, and now. So what determines whether we stick with lasting changes are the choices we make in the moment. And so the place of power for lasting change is our choices, or are the choices we make when our plans aren’t going to work out. Because typically, when we make a plan, what really gets us off the path of lasting change are our plans getting derailed.
Dr. Michelle Segar: And typically, we’ve been taught to get to that place of conflict. Again, I call them a choice point because it’s a point of opportunity. It’s a place of power. But typically, we’ve been taught to think about this place, oh no, I can’t do what I hope to do. I can’t get to the gym to do that class. I can’t fulfill my eating plan for lunch. And what we tend to do is we tend to bring all-or-nothing thinking to this moment, this moment of choice, this choice point. And so we go, we can’t do it all, so we do nothing. And that is just a lose, lose, lose. So what we need to do is learn how to successfully and strategically navigate these choice points. So at each now, now, now, and now, even when a now is about to get derailed, we have the strategy and belief system to successfully do something now, even if it’s not the perfect plan that we had in place.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah. I think there are so many people out there that have tried to do a diet or tried to start an exercise plan, and they just have a moment of weakness, and they cave. They have some fast food, or they have some cake or whatever it is, and then just throw away their diet plant just because they failed once and made an imperfect choice.
Dr. Michelle Segar: And that is the norm. It’s not an exception. It’s the rule. It’s what most people do. And that is why I wrote the book because we need a new paradigm for thinking about these choice points. And these opportunities to navigate and negotiate. Again, we haven’t been taught to do that. We’ve been taught to think of it, I can’t do it right. I can’t hit the bullseye. I failed. Bummer. I’m a failure. I suck. I self-sabotaged. And that just keeps us in a cycle where we start and stop. It’s a vicious cycle of failure. It does not get us on the path of lasting change.
Dr. Wendy Myers: But why does making an imperfect choice beat out trying to stick to your perfect plan or one’s intended plan?
Dr. Michelle Segar: That’s the question. And there’s a lot to say, but to answer that with healthy eating and exercise, I want to first step outside of this arena and think about how do we do this in other areas of our life? So let’s use our kids and eating, for example. We make this perfect meal for our families. And gosh darn it, our kid refuses to eat the very healthy vegetables that we cook that we know are good for them, that we expect them to eat. We want to make sure that they grow and get the nourishment they need. Well, if we brought all-or-nothing thinking to our feeding our children, if they wouldn’t eat the vegetables, we would take away the whole meal. Or we would starve them for a week. We don’t do that. Let’s use another example. We have a dentist appointment, and the day before, the office calls and needs to reschedule our appointment. We don’t fire our dentist or feel like failures because we can’t have the appointment that we had expected to have and that we need.
Dr. Michelle Segar: But when it comes to eating and exercise, we tend to bring this very limiting, narrow, black and white, all-or-nothing thinking that is actually a cognitive distortion. But despite it being this official category of cognitive distortion, it is what most of us have been socialized to do in society. It’s not our fault. So that’s the background to your question. So let’s fast forward into a new world, a new story of behavior change where we do stick with it and where we don’t let the all-or-nothing dragon get in our way. Instead of the all-or-nothing dragon, what we do is make what I call the Joy Choice. And why is it called the Joy Choice? It’s the perfect imperfect option that lets us do something instead of nothing. It’s the antidote to all-or-nothing thinking.
Dr. Michelle Segar: And people might think, well, that’s not good enough. Something isn’t good enough. It’s failing. It’s going to create a bad habit for me if I let myself not do the perfect plan. But there are a couple of answers to that. Number one, for decades, everyone’s been trying not to do that, to hit the bullseye. People have been trying to hit the bullseye and make the perfect plan. And guess what? Most of us can’t achieve it. And it’s not just us who’s seen this fail. This strategy fails. It’s our clinicians, it’s organizations we work for. It doesn’t work for most people. For a few people, it does, but for most people, it doesn’t. The second response to the concern that something is going to set me up for not doing what I need to do. Research actually shows when it comes to eating and exercise, that aiming for the imperfect perfect choice is actually a better strategy than trying to hit the bullseye.
Dr. Michelle Segar: So there was a study with a weight loss registry, and they followed people for over a year. And they wanted to see whether the people who tried to stick to their eating plan on the weekends were more likely to maintain the weight they lost or the people who came at it more flexibly, with what’s called flexible strength. So if someone hands you french fries, maybe you eat five. You don’t try to not eat any and then rebel against it and eat the whole thing, right? And research shows that having this more flexible restraint actually led to a better ability to sustain weight loss. And the same thing has been shown with exercise.
Dr. Michelle Segar: And this is the long way to getting to your answer. In every other area of our life, we have to do the perfect imperfect. It’s just the way life works, right? So we need to do the same thing with eating and exercise. Because life is always going to throw curve balls. And if our eating and exercise plans can’t ebb and flow, and we can’t slice and dice them like we do our parenting and our friending and our working and our daughter-ing or son-ing, we won’t be able to stick with it.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah. And I’ve had this issue with exercise. I always had this thing, if I can’t exercise for an hour, I don’t bother. Because I felt like I don’t really get enough exercise if I don’t do it for a whole hour. In reality, if I just went for a walk for 20 minutes, if that’s all I have time for that day, that’s at least doing something that’s better than nothing. But for so long, I never allowed myself that. I just wouldn’t work out if I couldn’t do the hour.
Dr. Michelle Segar: And so do you do the 20 minute walk now?
Dr. Wendy Myers: I do. Well, I just, I wake up, and the first thing I do is exercise, so there’s nothing that gets in the way of it. It’s just the first thing I do. I found that just for me is how I’m able to successfully work out three or four or five times a week. Just the first thing I do. I don’t think about anything else. It’s just what I’m doing.
Dr. Michelle Segar: And that is a strategy that works for some people. And in fact, that’s what my husband does. And he’s a habit-er. And he’s someone who has a successful exercise habit. He sleeps in his exercise clothes so that he doesn’t have to think.
Dr. Wendy Myers: That’s amazing.
Dr. Michelle Segar: So he doesn’t have to think. I want to make sure that what you’re pointing at is a really important thing to feature. And that people are different. Everyone needs different things. And the most important thing is that we each know what works and what doesn’t work for us. The problem is, and my critique of the old story of behavior change, is that we’ve been read and told a singular story of behavior change that is just based on all-or-nothing thinking. And the need for willpower and assumption-based strategies that many people can’t meet, like we should be putting our healthy eating and exercise on autopilot.
Dr. Michelle Segar: So, in addition to understanding what we each need, we need to know that for those of us who haven’t succeeded to this point, and that’s the vast majority of the population around the world, we have been taught to make these changes in our eating and exercise in ways that set most of us up for failure. So we have to understand that the system doesn’t work for most of us.
Dr. Wendy Myers: I think when people are creating habits when they’re setting goals and things like that, they need to have a certain motivation or a goal or a purpose. So what is the most sustainable purpose or primary motivation for intentional eating and exercise for weight loss?
Dr. Michelle Segar: So that’s the challenge. Because research and decades of experience show that if you are trying to change your eating and exercise more to lose weight, that purpose for those behaviors changes for most people. It’s going to contaminate our motivation. It’s going to create unstable, unsustainable, low-quality motivation. So what do we need to do, and this is a hard task. I’ve been working with people for decades through my health coaching with this. But my research also speaks to this, too, what I’ve done in my academic research.
Dr. Michelle Segar: And what we need to do to shift behaviors from feeling like a chore to a gift, which is what they feel like if we’re using them to if we feel deprived. If we feel that we’re not good enough, and that’s why we’re trying to change our behaviors. We need to shift from a future-logical, especially weight loss goal and reason for doing these behaviors, to trying to feel our best right now. To try to feel our best so that we function as well as we can during the day. So we feel as well and happy as much as we can.
Dr. Michelle Segar: And so we know that when we eat in healthier ways, more fruits and vegetables, there are associations with better mood. With reduced stress. With reduced depression and anxiety. With improved energy. We know when we move our bodies, we reduce our risk factors for depression and anxiety. We actually reduce our symptomatology if we are depressed and anxious. We know that we have more energy. We know that we are more creative and we focus better. Exercise is a known evidence-based strategy to improve our executive functioning. So what we want to do is we want to start to shift thinking about eating and exercise away from weight loss, as counterintuitive as that is, to vehicles for wellbeing in our day.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah. I totally identified that. Because whenever I have just felt like I need to punish myself to lose weight, which I think people can have that mentality, you’re just not as motivated. You’re setting yourself up for failure. It’s very easy to get discouraged if you fall off the wagon. But for right now, my goal is just, I just want to be fit and healthy.
Dr. Wendy Myers: And I just considered exercise. This is my lifestyle. This just is what I do. This is how I live my life. I just woke up, and I exercised. That’s what I do. And I don’t think of it as, and I want to lose weight, of course. But I’ve shifted away from wanting to focus on the scale, and the results on the scale to this are just my lifestyle. This is just what I do.
Dr. Michelle Segar: And research shows that focusing on process instead of outcome is really important. So, I mean, I want to ask you, let’s say, for whatever reason, you can’t exercise first thing in the morning, and it’s a beautiful day outside. Would you give yourself permission to say to yourself, you know what, 20 minutes is better than nothing at all today?
Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah, for sure. And I definitely do that now, when in the past, I just wouldn’t even bother. And if I can’t do it in the morning for some reason, sometimes I’ll take a break and go do it, just because I feel good. I feel good when I do that exercise in the sun or go for a walk or something. Even if it’s not a really heavy workout, 20 minutes, it feels good.
Dr. Michelle Segar: No, that’s great. Because that’s the new mantra, is that something is better than nothing. And helping people truly believe that is really the task at hand today.
Dr. Wendy Myers: And so when people do fall off the wagon, and they have these unanticipated hiccups, how can people stay motivated? Is it possible to stay motivated and consistent despite those?
Dr. Michelle Segar: Yes. Well, we want to think about them as hiccups. We want to think about them if we have a motivation that’s truly driving us. Like, this is just part of my lifestyle. This is how I take care of myself. This is who I am. Those types of motives are such drivers that they connect to our values. They connect to our sense of identity. So on the days when there’s a hiccup, it’s a hiccup. If there’s a week where there’s a hiccup, it’s a week where there’s a hiccup. We have our whole life to do this. And so a lot of times, people look at professionals who talk about this stuff as doing it right all the time. People might assume I get my exercise plan right every time because I’m a professional and a psychologist. This is my field, but guess what? I don’t.
Dr. Michelle Segar: And what keeps me going is having a motivation that is really about the same thing that you said; it’s who I am. It’s what I do. And when things are super busy, like my new book, The Joy Choice, which recently launched. I’ve had so many interviews. I’ve been traveling so much. And it has impacted my ability to do my ideal walk. My primary exercise is to walk outside. And you know what? It’s not a big deal. One night with my family, we were taking a walk outside. And my very astute son and this was like six weeks ago, I think. He said to me, It was after dinner. We were taking a walk around the block, not a long walk. He said, mom, is this a Joy Choice for you? And, of course, he knew that my suggestion to take a walk after dinner wasn’t what I typically did. But it was a way for me to get something in instead of nothing. And it made me feel like you said, you feel better.
Dr. Michelle Segar: And so what we want to do, the way you stay motivated, number one, is truly to have a high-quality motivator, like the kinds that we’re talking about. And if people don’t have it, if your listeners don’t have it, I talk about that in my book. It’s very important for us to have the right motivators. The second thing is reframing the hiccups. Hiccups is actually a fine word, but it’s just the ebb and flow, the slicing and dicing of life. Like every other area, we have to remind ourselves. And, of course, that’s why I developed the POP decision tool. So I don’t know if it’s too soon to go there, but I developed a decision tool to help people think through this. So they have the right frames on it that will lead them to make the most strategic choices and stay motivated.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah. Well, tell us about that.
Dr. Michelle Segar: Okay. So earlier in the conversation, we talked about how we could support our brain’s self-management system, what’s called executive functioning. And so I designed the POP decision tool to do that. So here’s how it works in the new story of behavior change. We anticipate, we assume that our plans are going to go awry. We don’t assume things are going to go perfectly all the time. For those of us who the perfect doesn’t work for, which is the majority of people. With that assumption. When it happens, we are ready for the strategy that’s going to support our executive functions. Our plan can’t work. So instead of letting life burst our bubble and everything go down the drain, we POP our plan. So there’s this metaphorical action where we are taking charge instead of letting life burst our bubble.
Dr. Michelle Segar: So we imagine our plan is a bubble. Then POP isn’t just a metaphorical action where we go. I’m popping this bubble. No, it stands for an acronym, which is the steps we need to go through to think about this in a strategic, tactical way. So what do we do? Your plan in the morning isn’t going to work out. I don’t know why. Can you tell me something that maybe would get in the way?
Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah. Just like I hurt my back.
Dr. Michelle Segar: Okay. So you woke up, and all of a sudden your back hurts, and you’re like, oh geez. I can’t do what I planned to do because I know it’s going to exacerbate my back. Now the pain is a little bit different because there are extra constraints, but let’s just go with that. So you’re like, I could either do nothing because my back hurts right now, or I could POP the plan that I had. And what does that mean? Well, we pause. We pause, and we go. Okay, let me just take a couple of deep breaths. And oh, there’s all-or-nothing staring me down. That’s one of the decision TRAPs that we might have time to talk about. There’s perfection steering me down. I’m going to name it to tame it. That’s a strategy that Dan Siegel says helps our brain take back control and helps us focus our attention.
Dr. Michelle Segar: Then we go onto the second part of POP, which is the O. That opens up our options and play. Well, in this step, we’re not evaluating good and bad options. We’re just saying, well, what else could I do right now? Could you stretch? What else could I do today? Could I take a walk outside? A lot of times, taking a walk outside helps back pain. You have to know what’s going to work for you. So you generate some options. When could I do it? What else could I do? What activity, how long? Maybe five minutes instead of the hour you had planned would have been good for your back. So we generate options and come at it with curiosity because curiosity is a positive emotion that generates expansive creative thinking, which is what we need in the second step.
Dr. Michelle Segar: And then, the third part of POP is the second P which is to pick the Joy Choice. And if you remember from talking about it before, the Joy Choice is the perfect imperfect option that lets us do something instead of nothing. And what that does is it helps us stay consistent. And consistency affirms that, you know, how you said, this is just who I am. This is what I do. This is part of my lifestyle. So we continuously reaffirm that value and sense of identity. Also, research on the physiology of exercise shows that the benefits disappear quickly after we do it. So consistency is what keeps getting us the benefits that we know are derived from exercise. So we POP our plan, and we pick the Joy Choice, and we stay on the path of lasting change.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Yes. And so you mentioned when we were talking before the show that there are TRAPs that people can fall into. So there are four primary emotional and psychological TRAPs that people fall into again and again when trying to sustain lasting eating and exercise habits. Can you tell us what those are?
Dr. Michelle Segar: Yes. What I’ve found is that there are four TRAPs. The first one, and by the way, TRAP is another acronym. Why am I using acronyms? Well, thankfully, the TRAPs actually are an acronym, but acronyms support our executive functioning. They support our working memory, which can only work with one or two pieces of information at the same time. So if we want to support optimal decision-making at these choice points when we’re facing a challenge, we need to have easy-to-remember terms that are precise and get us thinking in the most strategic and tactical way.
Dr. Michelle Segar: So let’s talk about the first TRAP, temptation. Who doesn’t resonate with that notion of feeling tempted to not go exercise and get on the couch with our remote? Or to succumb to the seduction of that glistening piece of chocolate cake across the room that our friend is bringing over to us. So the temptation is not an addiction. That’s a different issue that needs its own solution that we’re not talking about. We’re just talking about this visceral pull to do the opposite of what we had actually wanted and planned to do. And the mistake people make, by no fault of their own, is that we think that what’s tempting us is the couch or the cake.
Dr. Michelle Segar: But the emerging theory and research show that what’s tempting us are not those things, actually. It’s our memories of our past with those things. And once we understand that, we can say, oh, there’s temptation. And I think it’s the cake, but it’s the last time I had cake and the fun family gathering and the feelings of connection I had when I had this cake for my son’s birthday party. So noticing that isn’t just a more precise understanding of what’s actually going on when we feel tempted. But when we bring our prefrontal cortex online, when we start thinking about things, we actually offset the emotional reaction that’s in the amygdala part of our brain. So that’s a temptation.
Dr. Michelle Segar: The second big TRAP decision I see in my clients is rebellion. And we talked about this already. We talked about when you are changing your eating or getting on a restrictive diet to try to lose weight, we feel controlled by the diet rules. We feel resentful when we’re at a party, and we can’t have that glistening cake. But actually, this is where rebellion and perfection come together. Because we bring all-or-nothing thinking into the situation. So it’s like, I can’t have any of the cake. And what we usually do is rebel against that all-or-nothing thinking, and we have it all and five more pieces, right? Because we’re reactionary like a screw you diet. You’re not going to tell me what to do, right? And so that’s rebellion.
Dr. Michelle Segar: Accommodation is the third TRAP, decision TRAP. And this is when we always, not sometimes. When we always subsume our own self-care needs for the needs of others or our work. So I’m going to give you an example. I was doing a talk at a healthcare system, and I’d been hired by this leader. And after my talk was over, of course, I made all kinds of assumptions. He had seen me talk before. He knew what I talked about. So I assumed he was a regular exerciser. He took really good care of himself. He pulled me aside at the end of my talk, and he confessed to me. He said, Michelle, I’ve got to tell you something. I don’t give myself permission to exercise in our new club that’s free. But when I do decide to go, I try to hide behind the pillar so that no one sees that I’m choosing exercise over my work.
Dr. Michelle Segar: That is one version of accommodation, where he was accommodating his need for exercise, most of the time, for his work-related needs. Now, if we always do that, we’re never going to take care of ourselves, right? So that’s one version of accommodation. There are others related to eating too. And then the fourth and final decision, TRAP, is what we’ve talked about a lot already, which is perfection. And feeling like we have to hit a bullseye. Like, if you can’t do your morning exercise in exactly the way that you plan and want to do, you chuck everything out the window, you feel like a failure, and then you stop because you’re unmotivated. So perfection sets the stage, really, for all of the other ones to be worse than they need to be.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah. And so you have a quiz you created about these decision TRAPs that people face. Can you tell us about that?
Dr. Michelle Segar: Yeah. So if people are curious about which of the four decision TRAPs are most likely getting in their way and with some tips about what to do, there’s a free quiz on my website, which is my name, michellesegar.com. And it’s on the homepage and The Joy Choice book page. Where they can just take it and figure out, this is what’s getting in my way. I’m currently working with people on these new ideas. And when people think about these issues, these decision TRAPs, they develop a new awareness. And again, precision is key.
Dr. Michelle Segar: And once people understand, oh, I’m planning to eat this thing that I actually don’t even want to eat because I feel like I need to fulfill the caring needs of my friend who’s offering it to me. Once you can really know what’s going on, then you’re able to name it. Oh, there’s accommodation. And that doesn’t have to get in my way. Then from there, we can start popping, right? We can start opening up our options. Well, maybe I want to take some of the cake. Because I do want to taste it, and I do want my friend to know that I’m willing to taste it, but I’m just only going to take two bites or something like that. We need to expand our options, and through knowing again, what is really getting in our way and being able to name it, that gives us cognitive control over it so we can develop the most adaptive tactic to address it.
Dr. Wendy Myers: So where do we get the quiz again? What’s the name of your website again?
Dr. Michelle Segar: It’s michellesegar.com.
Dr. Wendy Myers: So S-E-G-A-R dot com.
Dr. Michelle Segar: Yes.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Perfect. Well, Michelle, thanks so much for coming to the show. And that was so helpful. There were so many insights there and tips to help people create this lasting change that everyone wants. I mean, so many people have problems sticking to a diet, sticking to exercise plans, and so really helpful tips to help people to stay on track. So thanks for coming on the show.
Dr. Michelle Segar: Thanks for having me.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah. And everyone, thanks so much for tuning into the Myers Detox Podcast. I’m Dr. Wendy Myers, and every week I bring you the world’s experts to help you get on track with your health and stay on track because you deserve to feel good. And I like doing it. I love doing the show to help you make those distinctions that you need to make to create the healthy, lasting change that you want. So thanks for tuning in, and I’ll talk to you guys next week.
