2 Keys to Health Motivation: Who Cares About Your Health?

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Do you? Should I? Well, of course I do. But that doesn’t matter, you need to as well. All the tips, tricks, or insights may not get you to move a muscle unless it is important to you. So far the BehaviorFit blogs have quickly jumped to recommendations and how-to’s when it comes to improving our own health. However, a key ingredient has been missing: Motivation. By reading this blog or absorbing other bits of information, your motivation related to healthy behaviors is more than likely impacted. Could be for better or worse, hopefully for the better. Not trying to be sneaky here, that is just the nature of how human behavior works.

Motivation is common term that helps explain why people do things. Let’s quickly review a few definitions:

• From Merriam-Webster: the act or process of giving someone a reason for doing something

This is a straight-forward definition, one that we are all pretty familiar with and makes sense.

• From The Paleo Manifesto (by John Durant), looking at the root word of motivation, motive  – producing physical or mechanical motion

This definition is given in the context of moving and eating. As humans evolved, they had a motive to go to new places in search of food. This definition also matches nicely with a behavioral definition of motivation…

• From behavior analysis – environmental events that affect our behavior by doing two things: changing how meaningful a certain outcome is and if you are going to do something about it (adapted from Laraway et al., 2003).

Taken with the definition from the Paleo Manifesto, environmental events pop up all around us that make us move towards or away from things (and for various reasons). We usually call these MOs, and people often ask, “What’s your MO?”

The key to motivation can then be summarized as:

Motivation is the result of events or things that we experience, changes in how we value particular outcomes, and whether or not we do something about it.

So with this summary and set of definitions in our back pocket we can begin looking at what environmental events (or MOs) are around us all the time, influencing our day-to-day decision making. Let’s begin.

How Motivation Affects Our Health

If you are like me, you may read blogs, watch Netflix documentaries, or check out the occasional health magazine article. Reading or hearing about how “sitting is the new smoking” or that you should “take 10,000 steps each day” can impact your behavior. How so? Well, let’s break it down using our definitions and with a couple examples

Example 1: Learning about New Health Recommendations

If learning about health recommendations is a motivator for someone…

• Changing a meaningful outcome: Prolonged sitting is associated with many bad diseases (previously discussed here: Exercise isn’t Everything) so avoiding these risks become more valuable to him or her after learning more about it.

  

• Doing something about it: He or she may start doing a lot of things to prevent these risks from happening such as standing up more or building a standing desk.

On the other side of the coin, for somebody whose behavior is unaffected by learning about certain health risks…

• Changing a meaningful outcome: Learning about health risks may not change this person’s values towards this health concern.

• Doing something about it: The person does not change physical activity levels in any way, shape, or fashion.

Example 2: Seeing Fit People and Emulating Their Success

For the person motivated by the images and successes of others…

• Changing a meaningful outcome: Today’s health and fitness industry has very attractive, and fit people all over. Sex sells and it can be a powerful motivator. Seeing the latest tweet, Instagram post, or snapchat of somebody’s physique or performance milestone can push somebody to a higher level of motivation…but as a result viewing successful* people’s information.

• Doing something about it: He or she may train harder, tweak one small meal plan, or switch exercise and training programs altogether (example: try this 6-week fat burn program…IT REALLY WORKS).

Example 3: News from the Doctor

Unfortunately for some, a doctor’s visit results in bad news and serves as the ultimate environmental event or motivator to get someone’s behavior to change.

For the person affected by the doctor’s visit…

• 

  Changing a meaningful outcome: Doctors provide us all with critical information (blood pressure, cholesterol readings, blood sugar) on our potential quality-of-life outcomes. When doctors tell individuals that they are a “ticking time bomb” because they drink (soda) pop, eat junk food, and do not exercise, then these visits may start to change people. As a result, living a healthier life becomes meaningful.

• Doing something about it: He or she now gets off of the couch, buys new training shoes, throws junk food away, and learns how to better plan meals each day.

In conclusion…

In the examples above, the two important effects, or keys of motivation were discussed: how environmental events affect what is important to us and how we change our behavior because of it. Motivators are all around and are different for everyone. One MO may not be next the person’s MO. A doctor’s visit may not do anything for me, but could for another person. Reading research articles may motivate me, but listening to friends and family members may be more powerful for someone else than any breakthrough in science. Understanding everyone’s individual motivation is key for meaningful change.

Motivation is more than just saying it is just this “thing” that gets people out of bed in the morning. You either have “it” or you don’t. Sometimes it may be difficult to figure how people stay so motivated all the time, but we know that motivation can be developed, and is susceptible to the changes in the world around us.

Maybe now how you value your health has changed…or maybe not. I still care about your health. Do you? And what are you doing about it?

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References:

Durant, J. (2013). The Paleo Manifesto: Ancient Wisdom for Lifelong Health. Harmony Books.

Laraway, S., Snycerski, S., Michael, J., & Poling, A. (2003). Motivating operations and terms to describe them: Some further refinements. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 36(3), 407-414.

Notes:

*Everyone’s definition of success will vary from losing X number of pounds to feeling great everyday

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