In my last article I talked about the missing piece of the weight loss puzzle – the skills of behaviour change. Now, maybe missing is the wrong word, let’s just say – in my experience as a coach and gym owner – it’s often undervalued and overlooked.

With changes to our health, our fitness, or our waistline, there are really two questions: Can I do it? And… Do I want to? It comes down to ability and motivation, so a person could hire a coach – or do some research – and improve their skills and abilities with regards to exercise and nutrition, but without understanding and appreciating that change management is also a skill, the odds of achieving the goal plummet.

So, let’s start with the components of behaviour change and how we can apply it to the desire to transform our health and fitness. The technical term for behaviour change is self-regulation and Dr. Roy Baumeister, a Social Psychologist at the University of Florida, one of the foremost experts on behaviour change (and the researcher responsible for the concept of willpower as a muscle) lists the ingredients of self-regulation as:

Standards

In order to change we need a clearly defined standard, something to align with. Standards can be cultural, political, philosophical or even spiritual. Belching by the campfire is perfectly fine (even a little competitive with my family), but not so acceptable during a classroom lecture, or a sermon in church.

Monitoring

This is measurement. Tracking and measuring the thing we’re looking to change. With exercise, let’s say you’ve decided to walk or run, it could be time, distance, or speed, (the distance over time) If you want to change something you need an initial measure and some feedback to make sure that actions you take are having the desired effect.

Self-Regulatory Strength

Better known as willpower, this is the strength we exhibit in resisting actual temptation and sticking to our plans for change. It’s the power to pass-up something that we want, but that we understand might not be in our best interests. It may, or may not be like a muscle, but there are definitely strategies to boost it when we need it.

Motivation

This is the need to take action. It’s the internal (or external) driver for taking whatever actions we take. When it comes to food, hunger is our motivation to eat, it’s unfortunate that it isn’t always the primary reason… This is where we can really apply our strategies and techniques to stay on task.