Discovering Your Why
How to Understand and Apply Your Motivation
Listening to Your Own Inner Expert
When I meet with a new client for the first time, the question I always ask them is, ”why? Why are you here seeking out a health coach at this time in your life?” Too often in the fitness and health industry we as consumers are advertised to and sold products/services based on what the seller tells us we “should” be doing. With the influence of social media turning everyday gym enthusiasts into overnight “experts” and the never-ending scroll of information (quantity over quality really applies there), it can feel like everyone has the answer and yet nothing is working for your life when it comes to losing weight and getting healthy. With so many people telling us what we should be doing it can be difficult to remember our own motivations for wanting to improve our health habits- our “why”. There are so many loud voices telling us what to do that it is difficult to drown out all of that noise and listen to our own selves.
Creating real, sustainable healthy changes begins by getting to know and understand your own core values. Being preached to by profit-driven network marketing sales people about the supplements you “should” be taking, or the workout you “need” to do, only distracts us from listening to/recognizing what is actually valuable to us. Take a moment to consider the activities and people which mean the most to you. Is it necessarily important for you to compare and try to achieve the same aesthetic as the Instagram model who is selling some protein powder? We don’t know what that model is doing to achieve their aesthetic- maybe they have a severely dysfunctional relationship with food and they’re struggling with disordered eating, or perhaps they have an effortless balance of exercise and eating that works perfectly for them and aligns well with their beliefs and values- who knows! And that’s exactly the point: what works well to make one person feel great about their health and their body may not necessarily work as well for another. We must all do the work to identify our underlying beliefs and values so that we can create a meaningful lifestyle of healthy habits that support our core values system. Instead of trying to transplant someone else’s values and habits onto our lifestyles, we can instead create sustainable changes by forming habits that work according to what we value as important. That is why behavior change will not stick for the long run if we are attempting to change our behavior according to what others tell us we “should be doing.” An added benefit to discovering your “why” is that this core value will help to keep you motivated when your discipline to remain accountable to your new health goal is wavering. A key component to lasting change is cultivating the discipline necessary to remain accountable to yourself and your goals, even when you don’t feel like it. That is called intrinsic motivation: remaining motivated to achieve a goal not because someone else is telling you that you should; but because you are motivated by yourself and the power of your own goals.
The Health Coaching Model: You are Your Own Best Expert
Imagine how terrified the diet industry is in knowing that you already possess the tools necessary for lasting weight loss and healthy behavior change. The diet and fitness industry spends billions of dollars each year selling us products that they advertise as being “just the thing” we need to lose weight/look great/feel better. But consider this: what vested interest does the diet industry have in any of their products actually working? If diet products worked and people were able to lose weight and keep it off for a lifetime of health- how would the diet companies make any money? The diet industry has a huge incentive (billions of them, actually) to continue advertising and selling products that will ultimately fail consumers. Am I selling you something? Sure! But what I’m selling you is the knowledge that you already have the power to make meaningful, lasting changes to your life! All of the tools for change are already within you, you may just need help bringing them out!
The qualified health coach will work with clients to make them the experts of their own bodies and health. The goal of the coaching process is to work with clients so that they develop the autonomy (or the independent ability) to make the healthiest decisions for their bodies. No diet company will ever sell you that! Coaching is a method of “unlocking a person’s potential to maximise their own performance,” and the health coaching model encourages clients to acknowledge their own skills and strengths and use those attributes to develop their own unique solutions (Ammentorp, et al, 2013). According to a 2013 research article on the benefits of health coaching for weight loss, health coaching was proven as “a method to improve healthy lifestyle behaviours” which resulted in healthy weight loss and weight maintenance. This same study describes health coaching as being derived from “…the core assumption that people have an innate capacity to grow and develop, as well as a focus on constructing solutions and goal attainment processes…directed at fostering the ongoing self-directed learning and personal growth of the client” (Ammentorp, et al, 2013). The health coaching model tells us that we already possess all of the resources necessary for success, and we don’t need to be fooled or distracted by the false advertising of the diet industry. No diet product will ever be as powerful a tool in creating permanent behavior change as YOU.
In fact, science shows us that when we are motivated by our own internal factors- rather than the external pressures of other people- we are more likely to achieve our goals. Studies have shown this to be true in weight-loss patients. A 1996 study followed a group of participants through a weight loss program which consisted of weekly meetings to learn strategies to stay healthy and manage their weights. This study found that “participants whose motivation for weight loss was more autonomous (independent of others’ influence) would attend the program more regularly, lose more weight during the program, and evidence greater maintained weight loss at follow-up” (Williams, et al, 1996). Having a “why” that is independent of external influence and linked to your own personal core values will make any behavior change feel like a natural extension of you and your essential values. When our motivation to change- our why- lies within ourselves and is not tied to outside influences, we are more likely to succeed with making that change permanent.
Your Why=Your Motivation to Create Change
Here’s what the science tells us about long-term behavior modification:
What does not work for long-term behavior change:
Attempting to make a change because a doctor told you to do so
Attempting to make a change because your spouse/close family member told you to do so
What does work for long-term change:
Spiritual epiphany
Hitting rock bottom, or
Working with a health coach.
We all have enough personal experience to understand that trying to make changes to please others will not lead to long-term success. Humans will work harder trying to avoid pain than they will in order to seek pleasure; this means that we as a species are wired to avoid pain. However, it often takes the pain of a chronic medical condition or the emotional trauma of losing a loved one to a preventable illness for us to feel motivated enough to seek change. I am writing this in the hopes that it will not take the extreme pain of losing a loved one or having a serious health consequence befall you before you take action on creating healthy behavior changes today. I hope that it will not take you “hitting rock bottom” to start implementing more health-positive behaviors into your lifestyle.
That last option, however, is something for you reading this article to consider: working with a professional health coach. Health coaching- while a relatively new field- is an evidence-based (backed by science) practice with proven success. A review of 13 scientific studies on the effectiveness of health coaching for chronic disease management (conditions ranging from overweight and obesity to diabetes and heart disease) found significant improvements in the “physiological, behavioral, psychological and social outcomes of patients” who worked with a health coach (Kivela, Elo, Kyngas, & Kaariainen, 2014). This analysis also found that all studies reviewed showed reductions in the body weights of participants who worked with health coaches. This study demonstrated “health coaching contributed to weight reduction and increased physical activity of overweight patients” across 11 of the 13 studies reviewed (Kivela, Elo, Kyngas, & Kaariainen, 2014). Health coaching has been proven effective across diverse patient populations, meaning that health coaching is an intervention that can be applied to many health behaviors. A 2012 randomized controlled trial testing the efficacy of health coaching on low-income patients’ compliance with taking their blood pressure medication at home found that those patients who worked with health coaches had better health outcomes. This study found a direct link between working with health coaches and lower blood pressure among patients, stating “the more health coach encounters patients had, the greater their reduction in SBP (systolic blood pressure)” (Margolius et al, 2012). Health coaching in this particular case, the study authors explain, “works through improving patients’ diet, exercise, medication adherence, and overall engagement with their disease” (Margolius et al, 2012). Health coaching has been proven to be successful in managing chronic conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease; imagine what a health coach could help you achieve!
Ready to Make a Change?
If you feel motivated to make a change to improve your health I advise you to examine your deeper reasons behind your interest. Are you listening to other outside influences trying to sell you a diet and telling you how you “should” be living your life? Have you been told by your doctor that you need to make changes to improve your health, but you can’t seem to find the will to get started? I encourage you to ask yourself those questions to explore what is truly valuable to you so that you can begin to build your healthy lifestyle around the things that matter most to you. Start by making a list of all of the top 3-5 most important people/things/concepts as they relate to the following categories: spiritual, emotional, intellectual, physical, social, environmental, and financial. Think of this as a free-writing exercise: you are simply listing one or two words or phrases of what is important to your life in relation to each of those concepts. This exercise will help you to get a better sense of what you truly value, and will help you consider what will work best for you to live a life according to those values.
If you have questions or don’t know where to get started when it comes to making healthy changes, ask a health coach! This article is written by a health coach- me. You can seek out my professional advice in the form of a Strategy Session– this free consultation will help you discover your own health goals and how to get started working towards them.
About the author:
As an independent health and fitness coach, Vera has worked with over 200 individuals and several corporations to implement strategies to create sustainable health-positive behavior modifications. Through earning a Master of Public Health degree and becoming a Certified Health Education Specialist (CHES®), Vera is uniquely prepared to help clients work towards their health goals.
Vera educates clients on all aspects of creating and maintaining healthy lifestyle behavior modifications. As a qualified and highly educated health coach Vera is an effective agent of change, helping clients to create sustainable, lasting lifestyle modifications.
Vera owns a personal training and health coaching business in San Diego. Vera works with clients in San Diego and throughout the United States as a health coach and consultant.
References:
Ammentorp, J., Uhrenfeldt, L., Angel, F., Ehrensvard, M., Carlsen, E., & Kofoed, P. (2013). Can life coaching improve health outcomes? – A systematic review of intervention studies. BMC Health Services Research. Retrieved from https://bmchealthservres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1472-6963-13-428
Kivela, K., Elo, S., Kyngas, H., & Kaariainen, M. (2014). The effects of health coaching on adult patients with chronic diseases: A systematic review. Patient Education and Counseling, 97, 147–157. Retreived from https://static1.squarespace.com/static/57f289a2bebafb0ef756b9a7/t/582de08559cc686b2ebf72e1/1479401605746/HC-full+journal+article.pdf
Margolius, D., Bodenheimer, T., Bennett, H., Wong, J., Ngo, V., Padilla, G..& Thom, D. (2012). Health Coaching to Improve Hypertension Treatment in a Low-Income, Minority Population. Annals of Family Medicine, 10(3), 199-205. Retrieved from http://www.annfammed.org/content/10/3/199.full.pdf+html
Williams, G., Grow, V.,Freedman, Z.,Ryan, R., & Deci, E. (1996). Motivational predictors of weight loss and weight-loss maintenance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70(1), 115-126. Retrieved from https://psycnet.apa.org/buy/1996-01707-009