Switch: How to Change Our Lives (warning: very long post)

I originally wrote this as a blog post, but decided to reproduce it here since this could be useful food for thought. It's quite long - I understand many won't read it, but I hope those who do find something beneficial here. If you're going to stick this post to the end, you might want to use the bathroom or get a coffee now.



It originated when I re-read Switch: How to Change Things when Change is Hard (disclaimer: I'm not associated with the book or authors in any way, it's just a book I read for professional growth). I thought about how the principles of the book can be applied to weight loss. I went through the book’s nine main sections and outlined how I am (or can) use each idea to try to make this a permanent lifestyle change, and not just another failed attempt at dieting. I've had quite enough of those.

The Metaphor
The basic metaphor the book uses is that we all have two facets of our personality – an analytical facet and an emotional facet – and that these can be thought of as a man riding an elephant.

The Rider is the analytical, rational part of our personality. The Rider’s main strength is its long-term outlook – the Rider is fine with sacrificing today for a benefit in the future. This is the part of the brain that makes plans for the future. It has a limited ability to control the Elephant for a time, but in a long-standing conflict, it won’t match the Elephant’s strength – the Elephant will eventually get its way. The Rider’s main weakness is decision paralysis – when the goal isn’t clear, the Rider can’t effectively lead.

The Elephant is the emotional facet of our personality. It is very strong, and can be very highly motivated – this is the driving force, the passion, behind what we do. Its strength is its boundless energy and determination. Its weakness is shortsightedness – it tends to seek immediate gratification even at a long-term cost.

The Path is the external world in which we live, and represents the third aspect of successful change.

The overall goal, then, of any successful change is threefold:

1. Direct the Rider
2. Motivate the Elephant
3. Shape the Path

Direct the Rider
The Rider’s key weakness is decision paralysis – when the desired outcome isn’t clear, the Rider is ineffective. The Rider needs a clear direction, and it needs to understand how to be successful.

Find the Bright Spots

What do you do if you don’t actually know the clear direction you need to go? One technique is to find the bright spots. What were days when your diet was the easiest to stick to? What was different about those days? Are there certain foods that you find very satisfying? Are there certain situations where you have an easier time managing your eating? Learn the things that are working well, and apply those lessons. For example, I found a number of meal options that, for me, keep me full for a very long time. These options now form the core part of my diet.

Script the Critical Moves

Another reason the Rider fails is because there are too many competing objectives. If I look at my diet, there are many things I’d like to do. I’ve got ARFID/SED, which means I have phobias that restrict the kinds of foods I can manage to eat. My meal timing and sizes are about the opposite of what a nutritionist would recommend. I eat too much fat and too little fiber. I could go on. In fact, if you look at the USDA recommendations for food intake, it’s a 95 page long document, where even the executive summary’s key recommendations contain between 23 and 28 recommendations depending on your population group! Even worse, many of the recommendations are so vague as to be useless – “reduce X”? To what level? With an overwhelming amount of vague recommendations, it’s no wonder the Rider doesn’t even know where to begin – this document seems designed to ensure decision paralysis!

However, none of these are the really critical pieces. In fact, if I just keep my calories under control, I can lose weight. All the other things can wait for another time. MyFitnessPal helps give me a clear calorie goal. Now the Rider has clarity – all I need to do is keep one number (my daily calories eaten) under another (my daily calorie goal). That’s a direction the Rider can understand and follow without decision paralysis.

Point to the Destination

You need a really clear goal. Sure, I want to be thinner, and sure, I want to be better looking, and sure, I want to be healthier, but none of those are really a great goal I can hold up. So when I was thinking about why I wanted to diet, I thought “What are all the things I would want to do, but can’t because of the limits of my body?” I came up with two of these. The first thing I decided was I want to climb Kilimanjaro. The second was to SCUBA dive the Great Barrier Reef, without running the risk of a pod of orcas mistaking me for one of their own.

Motivate the Elephant
The Elephant is critical to have on your side during any major change. It’s much stronger than the Rider can ever be, and its energy is necessary for a long-term goal. To get the Elephant on the same side as the Rider takes different techniques.

Find the Feeling

You need to feel very emotional about the change. Different emotions can drive change – fear, hope, optimism. Positive emotions are more useful in this case – if you’re as obese as I am, chances are you have enough negative feelings about yourself, you don’t really need more. Keeping optimistic and feeling the anticipation of every little goal along the way is critical.

Shrink the Change

The Elephant can be naturally afraid of big, ambitious changes. Remember, it likes quick gratification and immediate results. Part of shrinking the change goes along with something I mentioned earlier – you need to find the smallest possible change that leads you to your goal. I didn’t make other changes to my diet, even if I want to eventually. Focus on one change at a time. Part of this is setting a lot of smaller goals – I have a belt that is tan on the inside. Every time I can move to a new notch, I take a Sharpie and write the date I first used that notch on my belt. It’s a small success, but it’s important to celebrate every small success, even if the celebration is just writing on your clothing. Every 5 pounds, I have a new goal for the next 5 pounds. The Elephant thrives on a series of tiny, achievable tasks.

Grow Your People (Grow Yourself)

Wait, isn’t the point of this to shrink myself? Part of change is to mentally prepare yourself for the task. You need to realize there will be setbacks, and you need to see these as merely steps on the ultimate path to success. A reporter once asked Edison how it felt to have failed 1,000 times before inventing the light bulb. Edison’s reply? “I didn’t fail. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.” Sometimes I won’t meet my calorie goals. Sometimes I will do all the right things and not see changes on the scale for a time. These are simply part of the 1,000 steps to success.

Another way to grow oneself is to make the changes part of your identity. I am “the kind of person” who works out three times a week. I am “the kind of person” who watches what he eats. I am “a hiker”, in spite of the fact I haven’t actually hiked in the past few months. Making your goals into part of your identity helps make the changes easier for the Elephant.

Shape the Path
The last of the three elements that makes change easier or harder is the Path, that is, the environment in which the change occurs. Specifically, that portion of the environment that you have some control over.

Tweak the Environment

What are ways where you can make it easier to do the right thing, and harder to do the wrong thing? For example, if I look at my previous eating habits, I binged a lot on certain foods. For example, I often would buy a box of donuts (rationalizing that the box is cheaper than the individual donuts) and eat them much faster than I intended. How can I tweak my environment? Well, one thing I could do is not buy donuts anymore. That keeps me from eating any at all. Or, if I wanted donuts sometimes, I can buy one at a time. Or, I could buy a box, take each donut out and individually freeze it. Cravings and binges are the Elephant, not the Rider – and by freezing the donuts (rendering them unusable for instant gratification), their rationing out is now the sole duty of the Rider, which handles the long-term planning like taking food out of the freezer for tomorrow’s meals.

Build Habits

I personally use Habitica to track my habits in a fun, “gamified” way. The more that you make things into habits, the less pressure the Rider needs to use to keep the Elephant in line.

One trick for building habits quickly is preloading decisions – plan in advance what you will do and when. For example, I plan my meals in advance, and this keeps me in the habit of eating within the limits I set. When I get home, and I’m hungry, and I want something to eat, I already know what it’s going to be and I can just start to do it.

Rally the Herd

The last aspect of the path is the people you surround yourselves with. Their attitudes and actions have a big impact on your perspective. I am lucky enough to have a great friend who is dieting with me. Additionally, on this diet, unlike others, I became active in the MyFitnessPal community, so I’m surrounded by people who are doing what I am doing and focused very intently upon it.