Pushkin Hey, Slight Change Listeners. We're back with a new episode of A Slight Change of Plans next week, but today I wanted to share a conversation I had on the show how Too from Slate. Each week, on How To, co host Amanda Ripley and Carvel Wallace tackle listener's toughest questions with the help of experts. I was a guest on the recent episode called hat A Stick to Your New Year's Resolutions. We talked to Emily, a former college athlete and new mom who's been struggling with unhealthy eating and lack of exercise. We explored why so many of us tend to fall off the wagon when reaching our goals, and I share science based strategies with her for staying on track. You can find how To wherever you listen to podcasts. I hope you find this episode helpful as you try to keep your resolutions this year. Join me next week when I talked to science journalists Flora Williams about the unraveling of her twenty five year marriage and what we can learn from the science of heartbreak. Okay, now onto my conversation with Emily. If you picture like whenever you were like a little kid, and you're like, whenever I grow up, I'm going to eat whatever I want. That's what I'm doing right now. I'm living out every kid's fantasy and I'm just eating whatever I want all the time. You're to live in the dream. Dream There. Welcome to how To. I'm Amanda Ripley. We're now about two weeks into twenty twenty three, which means those resolutions that you made on January first might be slipping out of your grasp. If so, that just means you are extremely normal. People don't achieve their New Year's resolutions, which probably means we're doing it wrong. So today we're going to talk about what it would look like if we tried to build healthier habits based on what works for actual humans according to decades of research. Starting with our listener, whom we're calling Emily. I've had this issue for a while now, but I guess it's just really starting to like hit me in the face that I really it's something that I need to fix. I love sugar and carbs, and I think that makes up maybe eighty to ninety percent of my diet, and I'll just snack all day every day and I think like whenever I was in college, I was a student athlete, and so I was like constantly hungry. So I was constantly eating, and it never mattered because I was just working it all off. But I was like still trying to eat more or less. Right, But then whenever I graduated and was no longer student athlete, I think my diet slowly shifted from like average to like really really really bad. As a college volleyball player, Emily used to spend six to seven hours at the gym every day. She stayed active coaching after that, but now, for the first time in her life, she's on the sidelines and her day to day looks really different. Emily works at a bank. She recently got married. She now has a thirteen year old step son and a new baby. Whenever I got pregnant, if I wasn't actively eating, then I felt like nauseous, and so I just all day every day it would just like snack constantly, and then I just never quit that habit. And also, like my youngest son, he'll try to eat whatever I'm eating, and so if I'm sitting there eating a cookie and I'm trying to feed him like organic sweet potatoes and he was like, I actually, no, I'll talk of what you're having. So you had a huge amount of life transition in the last couple of years, and also this huge part of your identity in life of sports has diminished. Are you able to work out with everything you have going on now? Or where is exercise and all of this. Actually this past week I had a really stressful day and it was like eleven o'clock a knife, and I was like in my head and I was like, I can't go to bed like this, and so I told my husband, I'm going to go for a run. So I went to the gym, got on the treadmill, and I realized that I can't. I'm so out of shape and I could not, like I could not even run a mile. How did that feel? It was pretty devastating because my whole life that had been my coping mechanism. If I was like stressed or anything, I could just go for a run and feel better. And then for a vast majority of my life that's been my identity. Like I was, I've been an athlete my whole life, and then now I can't even run a mile. Emily clearly has the muscle memory to dig deep and be disciplined and do hard things, but when it comes to her eating habits, she feels like she keeps coming up short. For instance, a while back, she tried the Whole thirty diet, which requires thirty days of eating whole, unprocessed foods with no sugar, grains or dairy. I completed the whole thirty, So I went the whole thirty days without like all those things. But then two weeks later and I was like right back into what I was doing. And I've tried, like, Okay, maybe I'll just have a cheat day, and so I'll like eat good all week and then on Saturday spurge. And then it ended up becoming Saturday and Sunday and then Friday, Saturday and Sunday, to the point where like Tuesday was my only day that I ate good and every other day was my cheat day. And yeah, it's sort of good. It's gonna be annoying because I'm like questioning the whole premise, But are we sure that this is bad? I get what you're saying about being a role model. I get what you're saying that you just kind of feel out of control and that's not a good feeling. Have you talked to a doctor about this? I mean, are you sure that this is something you should be worrying about at all? I'm pretty sure if I could show you, like what I eat in a week, you'd be like, where's the vegetables, where's the Like it's almost entirely I'm not exaggerating, it's almost entirely sugar in carbs. And I do feel that like tired all the time, like a little like afternoon pitfall. And at first I was like, Oh, it's just because I'm not sleeping because of my son. But now my son's been sleeping through the night for six months now, and so it's not really the excuse I can use anymore. Okay, So it sounds like you want to change your routines, your habits and just feel more in control of what your daily routine is. Is that right? Yeah, that's exactly right. So on today's show, we're going to work on building enduring habits with someone who knows a lot about change. My name is Maya Shunker, and I'm a cognitive scientist by training, which means that I study the science of human behavior, and I'm also host to the podcast a slight change of plans which marry science and storytelling to help us get a better understanding of how it is that we respond to change. Maya will give us a blueprint for how Emily and all of us can adapt to new life phases and get into healthier routines that lasts long after the new year. Stay with us, Maya, I wonder what you're thinking hearing Emily's story so far. Yeah, I'm thinking so much, Emily. And one is that your story is so relatable. So one thing you mentioned was around you giving yourself a cheat day and then you wake up the next day and you're like, oh, I guess you know Sunday is going to be a cheat day two and then suddenly find yourself spending six days of the week in cheat day mode. Right. And one thing we know from research is that it's actually very helpful at the outset to build in what's called emergency reserves. Let's say you're deciding, Okay, I'm committing to exercising three days a week for the next month. By building in the slack at the beginning of the goal setting process, when you miss a day here and there, which will inevitably be the case, because that's just how life works, right, You'll still feel that it's possible to achieve your longer term goal, and so that mindset will prevent you from falling off the wagon entirely, which is what I hear is happening to you. Yeah, because like you said, when you fail, then you're like, well, I'm a failure, might as well just like give up. But it's okay if you have a few days off and like you're still on track. Yeah, it's still possible for you to achieve your goal, right. I mean, in many ways, this insight solves for the fact that we are human beings and so naturally we're going to be fallible and we are you not going to be perfect every single day. And so I really love this way of thinking because it builds a compassionate model of human behavior into the goal setting process and then ends up setting us up for success. And it's funny because I have heard Maya, is this true that self control self discipline is like muscle and you kind of use it all day long and then at some point you kind of run out. I mean, yeah, that's disproven. Since I'm actually glad to hear this because I always feel like, uh see, I'm out of self control. But I mean, it's so interesting because I think this speaks to the fact that, you know, when we get that surge of motivation in us to try to accomplish a goal, we are embodying our most aspirational selves. Our ambitions exceed what's actually reasonable and practical. And so another piece of advice that I'd give you, Emily is try and set goals when you're in a similar psychological and physiological state as the one you'll be in when you're actually striving for that goal. So, for example, if it's four PM on a Sunday, okay, and you know you're feeling good, you're feeling optimistic, you're feeling motivated, don't then set a goal that you plan to go to the gym every night that we get eleven pm. Because what you have to do when it comes to goal setting is really bridge any empathy gaps that exist between your current self and your future self. That is really smart. Yeah, I feel like I could swing so far back and forth between like my aspirations and reality. Whenever I'm like, oh, I'm going to do this, and like make my whole plan and everything maybe I'll be like, oh, I want to wait until two o'clock on Monday, after your long meeting to decide what that goal would actually look like. And you know, you're a mom of a one year old, a stepmom to a thirteen year old. The feeling that you have after that two pm meeting is probably much more representative of your normal state, right which is you're tired and stressed and overworked, and there's a million things racing through your mind and you're just trying to you know, survive through the end of the day and help your family survive. And so you want to choose these moments that you feel are slightly more reflective of how you are on average, rather than find these really pristine moments of clarity and inspiration and aspiration to set those goals. Okay, we already have a few rules right up front. One is to build slack into your goals. Take the fantasy and dial it down one notch at least aim for real, not perfect. Another rule, set those goals when you're in your right mind, like after a meeting, when you want to take a nap, not when you're flying high after your first cup of coffee on a weekend. It's probably also a good time to mention that anytime we're talking about food or exercise, the advice can't be one size fits all. There are people for whom these kinds of resolutions can be damaging and even lead to a disordered relationship to food. So before you set your goals, it might be helpful to interrogate why you want to make a certain change one of the things, in addition to, you know, sort of daily routines and practices and setting goals. It sounds like one of the things that Emily is dealing with is a shift in identity, and that reminds me a lot of your show. In your own story, can you speak a little bit to how you know you go from being the sort of hard charging athlete to a mom who's working full time. I mean, this is a very different set of constraints and obligations. Yeah, And I do have a personal story that mirrors this, Emily. So when I was a kid, I was a concert violinist and I was absolutely aspiring to go to become a professional, and then a hand injury derailed my career when I was fifteen, and so I went from being on this speed train where I was practicing hours a day, spending all day Saturday at the Juilliard School of Music in New York, and so it was really the entirety of my life, and I fully identified as a violinist. And it was pretty heartbreaking to lose the instrument because I felt like I was not only grieving the loss of the instrument in many ways, I was grieving the loss of myself because it was such a key part of my identity. And I hear that reflected in your story with volleyball, right, This was such a foundational part of who you are. And so in your case, I think it's good to remind yourself that even though you are no longer this star athlete, a d one athlete, you clearly had some passion and ability to navigate the harder parts of exercise and willpower and self control, and you cultivated many relevant skills in the process. And so remember that you still have these parts of your personality and that they are accessible to you. I think for me with the violin, it was actually just loving human connection and really enjoying forging an emotional connection with the audience and my fellow musicians. And I wonder if there are parts of your identity as an athlete that you can still identify with. Does that resonate with you? Yeah? So much. And like when you said like not associating yourself with the things that you do like volleyball player, violinist, and like associating with the underlying things that really hit hard. And I like one thing I loved about being an athlete was like the like camaraderie, like being on a team with like a common goal. And another part was just like being able to like conquer something like practices were long, like games were hard, but like I was always the one like running back and forth in between the sets and saying like all right, you got this, get up, let's go, we can do that. Like that was just kind of like my role. Like I was team captain. I was in everyone's face, like I'm the one that you look to when we're down by three and we have like bad rotation coming up. Like I felt like I was the person that you look to to get the job done. I don't really feel a lot like that in my current life. What I'm hearing from you, Emily is that you should probably be the one that creates a like mommy workout group, your neighborhood. Yea, so are there other people that you can bring into your circle and you can be the lead of the group, motivating them and cheering them on. And I mean the bigger point, and I think this is such an important one, is that you've looked back at your career as a volleyball player and you've identified the core traits that kept you motivated and kept you happy and kept you fulfilled. Here's our next rule. As you go through different seasons of life, try to remember what motivated you in your past life and see if you can align your goals with those values. The camaraderie is something that I also really enjoy. And when I identified that, I realized there were certain jobs that weren't a good fit for me. For example, I used to be in research and I kind of decided, oh, being alone in a laboratory setting is probably not my cup of tea. And then I found other areas that still intersected with my love of cognitive science and my love of the human mind, but that we're far more social in nature. And so it's really like you said about channeling your understanding of your own passions and your skill sets. And what excites you into the goal pursuit process. Yeah. I love hearing Emily. I love hearing you describe what it was like for you to be on that team, And it sounds like it was about much more than how many calories you were able to burn and what you were able to eat. Right. It sounds like you're the perfect person to work out with or do any hard thing with, and so finding that new context might not be easy. It's probably going to take trial and error. And I'm guessing, Maya, did you go through a period of trial and error yourself trying to figure out how do I recreate that human connection, that magic that I could create with the violin? How many tries and errors did it take? So many? I mean, it was such a nonlinear path, and I spend a lot of time exploring myself and trying to reclaim identities and trying to understand what current identities mean. I mean, we explore this so much on my podcast. A slight change of plans, but I think Emily, what you're also experiencing, what I'm hearing from you, is that you now have this label mother, right, and you're making sense of what that label is and It's an identity that a lot of people struggle with and they lose themselves in. And I think you have to be also really compassionate with yourself right now as you're going through this kind of transition, and not expect to find all the solutions overnight, but to really to be patient and to view this more as a year of experimentation. Let's say, yeah, I really love that, because once I have an idea in mind, I want to get it done, check it off, and move on to the next item on the list. But like to keep that mindset of giving myself grace and like being patient and be like, oh no, I don't have to have everything figured out. Yeah, And it seems I mean, given that you were I can't even believe this working out six to seven hours a day. It seems like you're a zero to sixty kind of gal, right, And so I think reward yourself for incremental progress. Going up a few flights of stairs multiple times in a row. That counts to extending your walk by ten minutes, that counts too. You don't want to have a purity complex around your goals where you have an all or nothing mindset, right, It's really important for you to reward yourself for eating the small steps snowpun that you're taking to be more committed to exercise and healthy eating. That's our next insight. Incremental change is the only kind that's likely to stick, So don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. We're going to take a quick break, and when we come back, Maya will explain how simply framing your resolutions differently can dramatically increase the odds of success. Don't go anywhere. We're back with Emily, a busy mom who squeezed us in between work meetings and her baby's nap, and Maya Schunker, a cognitive scientists and host of the podcast A Slight Change of Plans. I also wanted to give you advice on the way that you frame your goals, because there are different ways of framing goals, and research shows that the way we frame our goals can have very different impacts on our motivational states. So there is what we call an approach framing. So this would take the form of I want to eat healthier foods, so you're actively approaching the good thing. And then there's the avoidant framing, I want to avoid unhealthy foods. I would play around with these different framings and see what works best for you in different contexts. But there is some research showing that when we frame our goals as approach oriented, right, I want to eat healthier foods that can be much more motivating for people and can promote endurance, and when we are good at it, it's met with pride, whereas avoid goals can sometimes just breed feelings of relief like oh good, I didn't screw up right, I wasn't terrible today. And so I'm curious to know, first of all, which type of framing do you tend to use already, and if is there a switch that you might be able to make and to at least test it out. My jaw is dropped when you said that, because it just like hit me like a ton of bricks. I've always framed everything like I'm not going to eat sugar, I'm not going to eat like kids, Like oh, I actually have to like flip the switch, like oh no, you actually have to actively do something to achieve this goal, not just avoid something I think will be very beneficial. Yeah, and I'm no expert on this, but I'm guessing when you were in a tournament as an athlete, you weren't like most of all, we want to not lose, right, you want to avoid losing at all costs, like you are much more probably I'm guessing about winning. Is that right? Yes? Absolutely, Like we had this whole like mindset thing and it's like you don't want to think about like, oh, don't mess up, like you want to think, oh, do good. And so bringing that concept into the real world is pretty profound. Yeah, there's a lot of psychology and sports right that if you can transfer it, which I'm not sure how easy that is to do, but that would be really valuable here. Perhaps maya is that that is there any research on can you transfer the thinking us in one arena of your life, one context to another like that? Oh? Absolutely, And especially when it comes to the science of motivation. So I'll give you one example. This is called the middle problem. It was discovered by one of my friends, Isle at Fishbox. She's a professor at the University of Chicago. And basically, when we are trying to reach our goals, we tend to experience higher levels of motivation at the beginning of the goal and then at the end of the goal. So there's a drop in motivation in the middle. This is called the middle problem. And so what we should do is we should try to keep our middles as short as possible. So when she sets a year long goal, she's setting herself up for, you know, a multi month middle period, right, four months in the middle. And since we know that motivation wage in the middle, it might be smarter for Emily to set a weekly goal, right, and that way, the middle is only a day or two, and so she will see that decrease in motivation extend over a much shorter period of time and then can kind of reclaim that boost and motivation that happens as we're inching towards reaching the goal for the week. So here's our next couple of rules. Shorten the time span of your goal to avoid that motivation dip in the middle. Try a sprint, not a marathon. In other words, and go towards something not away. And whatever you do, remember you can't replace something with nothing. When they did research on trying to motivate people to quit smoking, part of the addiction to smoking was in the form of getting used to taking that break after lunch and going outside and socializing with colleagues or whatever the pattern of behavior was, and so they found that substituting that behavior with something else is much more effective than simply telling them to abstain from behavior. And I think, Emily, this goes back to something we talked about earlier. But you know, the desire to reward yourself after a tough day is not going anywhere right, and so you just want to try to find alternative things that you can do to reward yourself. Maybe it's texting with a friend who you've been out of touch with. Maybe it's just looking at pictures of your kids on your phone. Now that they're asleep you can enjoy their more angelic faces on your phone. Maybe it's having a moment of just deep breathing in which you just try to find some calm internally. And so as a homework assignment for you, I would take out a sheet of paper and try to find five things that make you feel joy right that aren't associated with eating, and see if you can start subbing in some of those activities for what we'll call like the jellybean behavior instead. I love that, Emily, does anything immediately come to mind that brings you joy? That's easy to do in five minutes pretty much everything she said. I don't know if she's got cameras in my house or not, but like, I have a friend that I'm super close with, but she lives in Ohio, so she's so far away, and like, any time I talk to her, it always it's really great, and so texting her would be good. And actually, just last night, I was flipping through photos of my kids on my phone and that was exactly what I was doing, and that made me happy too. Yeah, and they can be those activities can be so nourishing and when you internalize them as oh, I'm treating myself to this therapeutic moment right right right. And I think in our culture at large, right definitely, sweet food is considered a reward, a way to kind of make ourselves feel good, a way to celebrate, a way to mourn. It's all the things. It's vehicle for many things. I wonder, may have you had any experience with this as far as you know, trying to exercise more or eat differently or is that not one of your one of your struggles? No, it definitely is. Again, I think Emily and I are like lost sisters, and I'm glad this podcast is bringing us together, absolutely, And let me tell you some of the strategies that I have used, and then Emily, you can decide whether you think some of these are things that you can adapt to your own life, right, because it's all about experimentation and playing with options and figuring out what works for you. So the first is, and I know you guys have had Katie Milkman on the show, but she talks about temptation bundling, and this is one of my favorites. So it basically just says you should pair a unpleasant activity, so let's say exercising or eating a kale salad in your case, with an immediately rewarding, intrinsically rewarding activity. So for me, when it comes to exercise, I actually save my favorite music and podcasts for exercise time. You can look forward to the aspect of now this paired bundle is really exciting to you, and that you don't allow yourself the treat of in other contexts. Yeah, that sounds like it makes a lot of sense. Besides temptation bundling, there's one more proven trick we can try, and it's actually why so many of us gravitate towards January first. To begin with, we're better at sticking with our goals when they are accompanied by any kind of fresh start, So it might be a birthday, moving to a new home, getting married, even honestly, the first day of spring works, the first day of the week works. But it's basically an opportunity for us to depart from old ways of being right baked in patterns of behavior that we used to have. I wonder why then New Year's resolutions so often fail, given I mean, you'd think that would be a good fresh start, right new year or knew me all of that. Yeah, Well, I think one challenge there is that people are setting a goal for the entire year, and we talked about how hard it is for us to sustain that kind of motivation over the course of such a long period of time. I think if their New Year's goal was okay, for the next five days, I'm going to try to go to the gym, and then they build on that. And you also want a feedback cycle, right, So, Emily, as I mentioned, you know a lot of these behavioral insights, they are contact specific. They depend so much on your personality type. What's worked what hasn't and so you really want to put on your scientists cap and test things out. And so you want to be in a situation where if that first week in which you're experimenting with a goal didn't work very well, you can pivot and you don't feel like you're failing, and you don't feel like you're giving up on the longer term goal. You are just changing your approach to actually getting there. And so you want to create a system where there is that plasticity, that malluability that allows you to change your strategy is needed. This is a really smart insight. Try to think of yourself as a habit scientist, not a judge. You're testing, gathering data and trying new things all the time. Yeah, I think that sounds really good. And just thinking about what you said, my resolution is going to be to set a goal every Monday. So like every Monday at two o'clock when I'm tired and hungry, I'm going to set a goal for the week and then reset it on the next Monday and be like and then I'll be able to say, Okay, how did last week go? How can I prove this week? And go from there. One thing I always notice is when people write to us and we go back to their original email, there's a lot in the words that can be helpful. And I noticed in your original email to us, Emily, you set things like I am lacking in discipline or routine or control, and then you ended it by saying, I don't know why I keep failing to control myself. So there's a lot of judgment here, right, am I right? That hit pretty hard? Yeah, I just I don't know, Like, I'm just surrounded by influences and people who can set a goal and maintain it and are disciplined and are structured, and like that's something that like I see them achieve and then are praised for. And then I turn around and look at myself and I think, like, if everyone else can do it, why can't you? And so yeah, and I think You're not alone here. So I don't mean to be making you feel bad about feeling bad about feeling bad, right, but I just want to note it and ask Maya, I'm assuming there's a pattern that we know about in the human brain, right, yeah, I mean, I first want to clarify, Emily, you just use the language why can I do this thing? That everyone else can do. Yeah, I don't know who everyone else is in your world, but they're not the same everyone else that's in my world or that I study or that I read research papers about. So I think one is like broadening your understanding of just how normal this is for for any given human to experience. And I think what really resonates with me? And again this is where I see such similarities in our personalities, but just a desperate need for control. And I feel really frustrated. It's like I feel frustrated that I didn't reach my goal, and I feel a meta level of frustration that I didn't have the control that I thought I had to achieve the goal. And so it's just like levels of frustration building on frustration, right, And one thing that's good to acknowledge from the research literature is that we really do love being in the driver's seat. We love having control over situations. In fact, there's a phenomenon known as the illusion of control, where we regularly overstate the role we played in driving certain outcomes. All right, So this is really baked into the human psyche. And so I think the thing that you can do is try to figure out how you can build agency and control into the goal setting process so that you feel that you're in charge. But it's also okay for you again to have built in some of that slack and to have not met the goals all the time. So there's research showing that when we set our own goals were better at achieving them. The other thing that I would encourage people who are going through, who are writing up their New Year's resolutions to do is, as part of that exercise, take stock of all the stuff that's going great that you're really happy you don't have to change. Because we're always focused on, you know, the negative parts of ourselves that we wish that we could improve, and I think it's a very healthy exercise to remember how much stuff is running in the background seamlessly, is actually going quite well for ourselves. And that form of gratitude I think can actually embolden us in trying to reach, you know, the very narrow set of goals that we specify for ourselves. I like that, and I like thinking specifically about the question what's going well, what went well today, you know, as opposed to like a gratitude journal, which I've never, never has felt totally natural Emily, what went well today? I think this morning actually I had oatmeal for breakfast and so that went well. That was a good start. I did get a good walk in during lunch, and so it's sunny outside and warm outside, so I was able to get some just general outside playtime today, So that was really good. Yeah, there's a lot going good today. Awesome. Well, has this been helpful overall, Emily? Yes, Like whenever I was coming into this, I was like kind of unsure because like I've been an athlete for so long, and like I know how to cycles, I know how to like discipline myself, and I was like, what really knew am I going to learn here? But like there has been so much that I've didn't think about before, and so that's I just can't thank you enough, Maya for taking the time to help me. And I think you can hear my son now, but he thinks you too. It was so nice to meet you and wishing you the best of luck. Thank you to Emily for reaching out to us, and to Maya for all of her great advice. Make sure to look for her excellent show. Slight Change of Plans will include a link to her podcast in the show notes, as well as a couple of other episodes we've done in the past about healthy eating, because let's face it, this is a big and complicated problem and one episode may not be enough. And by the way, we got a really nice note from Emily after our conversation. She says she's been able to cut down on snacking at work so far, and she's working on setting short term sprint goals for the new year. What about you? What are the rest of you working on in twenty twenty three? What resolution can we help you keep? Send us a note at how to at slate dot com or leave us a voicemail at six four six four nine five four zero zero one, and we'd love to have you on the show. If you like what you heard today, you know what to do. Give us a rating and a review, and tell a friend that helps us help more people. How To's executive producer is Derek John Rosemary Belson, and Kevin Bendis produced this episode. Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director, and Charles Duhigg created the show. I'm Amanda Ripley. Thanks for listening.

Pushkin Hey, Slight Change Listeners. We're back with a new episode of A Slight Change of Plans next week, but today I wanted to share a conversation I had on the show how Too from Slate. Each week, on How To, co host Amanda Ripley and Carvel Wallace tackle listener's toughest questions with the help of experts. I was a guest on the recent episode called hat A Stick to Your New Year's Resolutions. We talked to Emily, a former college athlete and new mom who's been struggling with unhealthy eating and lack of exercise. We explored why so many of us tend to fall off the wagon when reaching our goals, and I share science based strategies with her for staying on track. You can find how To wherever you listen to podcasts. I hope you find this episode helpful as you try to keep your resolutions this year. Join me next week when I talked to science journalists Flora Williams about the unraveling of her twenty five year marriage and what we can learn from the science of heartbreak. Okay, now onto my conversation with Emily. If you picture like whenever you were like a little kid, and you're like, whenever I grow up, I'm going to eat whatever I want. That's what I'm doing right now. I'm living out every kid's fantasy and I'm just eating whatever I want all the time. You're to live in the dream. Dream There. Welcome to how To. I'm Amanda Ripley. We're now about two weeks into twenty twenty three, which means those resolutions that you made on January first might be slipping out of your grasp. If so, that just means you are extremely normal. People don't achieve their New Year's resolutions, which probably means we're doing it wrong. So today we're going to talk about what it would look like if we tried to build healthier habits based on what works for actual humans according to decades of research. Starting with our listener, whom we're calling Emily. I've had this issue for a while now, but I guess it's just really starting to like hit me in the face that I really it's something that I need to fix. I love sugar and carbs, and I think that makes up maybe eighty to ninety percent of my diet, and I'll just snack all day every day and I think like whenever I was in college, I was a student athlete, and so I was like constantly hungry. So I was constantly eating, and it never mattered because I was just working it all off. But I was like still trying to eat more or less. Right, But then whenever I graduated and was no longer student athlete, I think my diet slowly shifted from like average to like really really really bad. As a college volleyball player, Emily used to spend six to seven hours at the gym every day. She stayed active coaching after that, but now, for the first time in her life, she's on the sidelines and her day to day looks really different. Emily works at a bank. She recently got married. She now has a thirteen year old step son and a new baby. Whenever I got pregnant, if I wasn't actively eating, then I felt like nauseous, and so I just all day every day it would just like snack constantly, and then I just never quit that habit. And also, like my youngest son, he'll try to eat whatever I'm eating, and so if I'm sitting there eating a cookie and I'm trying to feed him like organic sweet potatoes and he was like, I actually, no, I'll talk of what you're having. So you had a huge amount of life transition in the last couple of years, and also this huge part of your identity in life of sports has diminished. Are you able to work out with everything you have going on now? Or where is exercise and all of this. Actually this past week I had a really stressful day and it was like eleven o'clock a knife, and I was like in my head and I was like, I can't go to bed like this, and so I told my husband, I'm going to go for a run. So I went to the gym, got on the treadmill, and I realized that I can't. I'm so out of shape and I could not, like I could not even run a mile. How did that feel? It was pretty devastating because my whole life that had been my coping mechanism. If I was like stressed or anything, I could just go for a run and feel better. And then for a vast majority of my life that's been my identity. Like I was, I've been an athlete my whole life, and then now I can't even run a mile. Emily clearly has the muscle memory to dig deep and be disciplined and do hard things, but when it comes to her eating habits, she feels like she keeps coming up short. For instance, a while back, she tried the Whole thirty diet, which requires thirty days of eating whole, unprocessed foods with no sugar, grains or dairy. I completed the whole thirty, So I went the whole thirty days without like all those things. But then two weeks later and I was like right back into what I was doing. And I've tried, like, Okay, maybe I'll just have a cheat day, and so I'll like eat good all week and then on Saturday spurge. And then it ended up becoming Saturday and Sunday and then Friday, Saturday and Sunday, to the point where like Tuesday was my only day that I ate good and every other day was my cheat day. And yeah, it's sort of good. It's gonna be annoying because I'm like questioning the whole premise, But are we sure that this is bad? I get what you're saying about being a role model. I get what you're saying that you just kind of feel out of control and that's not a good feeling. Have you talked to a doctor about this? I mean, are you sure that this is something you should be worrying about at all? I'm pretty sure if I could show you, like what I eat in a week, you'd be like, where's the vegetables, where's the Like it's almost entirely I'm not exaggerating, it's almost entirely sugar in carbs. And I do feel that like tired all the time, like a little like afternoon pitfall. And at first I was like, Oh, it's just because I'm not sleeping because of my son. But now my son's been sleeping through the night for six months now, and so it's not really the excuse I can use anymore. Okay, So it sounds like you want to change your routines, your habits and just feel more in control of what your daily routine is. Is that right? Yeah, that's exactly right. So on today's show, we're going to work on building enduring habits with someone who knows a lot about change. My name is Maya Shunker, and I'm a cognitive scientist by training, which means that I study the science of human behavior, and I'm also host to the podcast a slight change of plans which marry science and storytelling to help us get a better understanding of how it is that we respond to change. Maya will give us a blueprint for how Emily and all of us can adapt to new life phases and get into healthier routines that lasts long after the new year. Stay with us, Maya, I wonder what you're thinking hearing Emily's story so far. Yeah, I'm thinking so much, Emily. And one is that your story is so relatable. So one thing you mentioned was around you giving yourself a cheat day and then you wake up the next day and you're like, oh, I guess you know Sunday is going to be a cheat day two and then suddenly find yourself spending six days of the week in cheat day mode. Right. And one thing we know from research is that it's actually very helpful at the outset to build in what's called emergency reserves. Let's say you're deciding, Okay, I'm committing to exercising three days a week for the next month. By building in the slack at the beginning of the goal setting process, when you miss a day here and there, which will inevitably be the case, because that's just how life works, right, You'll still feel that it's possible to achieve your longer term goal, and so that mindset will prevent you from falling off the wagon entirely, which is what I hear is happening to you. Yeah, because like you said, when you fail, then you're like, well, I'm a failure, might as well just like give up. But it's okay if you have a few days off and like you're still on track. Yeah, it's still possible for you to achieve your goal, right. I mean, in many ways, this insight solves for the fact that we are human beings and so naturally we're going to be fallible and we are you not going to be perfect every single day. And so I really love this way of thinking because it builds a compassionate model of human behavior into the goal setting process and then ends up setting us up for success. And it's funny because I have heard Maya, is this true that self control self discipline is like muscle and you kind of use it all day long and then at some point you kind of run out. I mean, yeah, that's disproven. Since I'm actually glad to hear this because I always feel like, uh see, I'm out of self control. But I mean, it's so interesting because I think this speaks to the fact that, you know, when we get that surge of motivation in us to try to accomplish a goal, we are embodying our most aspirational selves. Our ambitions exceed what's actually reasonable and practical. And so another piece of advice that I'd give you, Emily is try and set goals when you're in a similar psychological and physiological state as the one you'll be in when you're actually striving for that goal. So, for example, if it's four PM on a Sunday, okay, and you know you're feeling good, you're feeling optimistic, you're feeling motivated, don't then set a goal that you plan to go to the gym every night that we get eleven pm. Because what you have to do when it comes to goal setting is really bridge any empathy gaps that exist between your current self and your future self. That is really smart. Yeah, I feel like I could swing so far back and forth between like my aspirations and reality. Whenever I'm like, oh, I'm going to do this, and like make my whole plan and everything maybe I'll be like, oh, I want to wait until two o'clock on Monday, after your long meeting to decide what that goal would actually look like. And you know, you're a mom of a one year old, a stepmom to a thirteen year old. The feeling that you have after that two pm meeting is probably much more representative of your normal state, right which is you're tired and stressed and overworked, and there's a million things racing through your mind and you're just trying to you know, survive through the end of the day and help your family survive. And so you want to choose these moments that you feel are slightly more reflective of how you are on average, rather than find these really pristine moments of clarity and inspiration and aspiration to set those goals. Okay, we already have a few rules right up front. One is to build slack into your goals. Take the fantasy and dial it down one notch at least aim for real, not perfect. Another rule, set those goals when you're in your right mind, like after a meeting, when you want to take a nap, not when you're flying high after your first cup of coffee on a weekend. It's probably also a good time to mention that anytime we're talking about food or exercise, the advice can't be one size fits all. There are people for whom these kinds of resolutions can be damaging and even lead to a disordered relationship to food. So before you set your goals, it might be helpful to interrogate why you want to make a certain change one of the things, in addition to, you know, sort of daily routines and practices and setting goals. It sounds like one of the things that Emily is dealing with is a shift in identity, and that reminds me a lot of your show. In your own story, can you speak a little bit to how you know you go from being the sort of hard charging athlete to a mom who's working full time. I mean, this is a very different set of constraints and obligations. Yeah, And I do have a personal story that mirrors this, Emily. So when I was a kid, I was a concert violinist and I was absolutely aspiring to go to become a professional, and then a hand injury derailed my career when I was fifteen, and so I went from being on this speed train where I was practicing hours a day, spending all day Saturday at the Juilliard School of Music in New York, and so it was really the entirety of my life, and I fully identified as a violinist. And it was pretty heartbreaking to lose the instrument because I felt like I was not only grieving the loss of the instrument in many ways, I was grieving the loss of myself because it was such a key part of my identity. And I hear that reflected in your story with volleyball, right, This was such a foundational part of who you are. And so in your case, I think it's good to remind yourself that even though you are no longer this star athlete, a d one athlete, you clearly had some passion and ability to navigate the harder parts of exercise and willpower and self control, and you cultivated many relevant skills in the process. And so remember that you still have these parts of your personality and that they are accessible to you. I think for me with the violin, it was actually just loving human connection and really enjoying forging an emotional connection with the audience and my fellow musicians. And I wonder if there are parts of your identity as an athlete that you can still identify with. Does that resonate with you? Yeah? So much. And like when you said like not associating yourself with the things that you do like volleyball player, violinist, and like associating with the underlying things that really hit hard. And I like one thing I loved about being an athlete was like the like camaraderie, like being on a team with like a common goal. And another part was just like being able to like conquer something like practices were long, like games were hard, but like I was always the one like running back and forth in between the sets and saying like all right, you got this, get up, let's go, we can do that. Like that was just kind of like my role. Like I was team captain. I was in everyone's face, like I'm the one that you look to when we're down by three and we have like bad rotation coming up. Like I felt like I was the person that you look to to get the job done. I don't really feel a lot like that in my current life. What I'm hearing from you, Emily is that you should probably be the one that creates a like mommy workout group, your neighborhood. Yea, so are there other people that you can bring into your circle and you can be the lead of the group, motivating them and cheering them on. And I mean the bigger point, and I think this is such an important one, is that you've looked back at your career as a volleyball player and you've identified the core traits that kept you motivated and kept you happy and kept you fulfilled. Here's our next rule. As you go through different seasons of life, try to remember what motivated you in your past life and see if you can align your goals with those values. The camaraderie is something that I also really enjoy. And when I identified that, I realized there were certain jobs that weren't a good fit for me. For example, I used to be in research and I kind of decided, oh, being alone in a laboratory setting is probably not my cup of tea. And then I found other areas that still intersected with my love of cognitive science and my love of the human mind, but that we're far more social in nature. And so it's really like you said about channeling your understanding of your own passions and your skill sets. And what excites you into the goal pursuit process. Yeah. I love hearing Emily. I love hearing you describe what it was like for you to be on that team, And it sounds like it was about much more than how many calories you were able to burn and what you were able to eat. Right. It sounds like you're the perfect person to work out with or do any hard thing with, and so finding that new context might not be easy. It's probably going to take trial and error. And I'm guessing, Maya, did you go through a period of trial and error yourself trying to figure out how do I recreate that human connection, that magic that I could create with the violin? How many tries and errors did it take? So many? I mean, it was such a nonlinear path, and I spend a lot of time exploring myself and trying to reclaim identities and trying to understand what current identities mean. I mean, we explore this so much on my podcast. A slight change of plans, but I think Emily, what you're also experiencing, what I'm hearing from you, is that you now have this label mother, right, and you're making sense of what that label is and It's an identity that a lot of people struggle with and they lose themselves in. And I think you have to be also really compassionate with yourself right now as you're going through this kind of transition, and not expect to find all the solutions overnight, but to really to be patient and to view this more as a year of experimentation. Let's say, yeah, I really love that, because once I have an idea in mind, I want to get it done, check it off, and move on to the next item on the list. But like to keep that mindset of giving myself grace and like being patient and be like, oh no, I don't have to have everything figured out. Yeah, And it seems I mean, given that you were I can't even believe this working out six to seven hours a day. It seems like you're a zero to sixty kind of gal, right, And so I think reward yourself for incremental progress. Going up a few flights of stairs multiple times in a row. That counts to extending your walk by ten minutes, that counts too. You don't want to have a purity complex around your goals where you have an all or nothing mindset, right, It's really important for you to reward yourself for eating the small steps snowpun that you're taking to be more committed to exercise and healthy eating. That's our next insight. Incremental change is the only kind that's likely to stick, So don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. We're going to take a quick break, and when we come back, Maya will explain how simply framing your resolutions differently can dramatically increase the odds of success. Don't go anywhere. We're back with Emily, a busy mom who squeezed us in between work meetings and her baby's nap, and Maya Schunker, a cognitive scientists and host of the podcast A Slight Change of Plans. I also wanted to give you advice on the way that you frame your goals, because there are different ways of framing goals, and research shows that the way we frame our goals can have very different impacts on our motivational states. So there is what we call an approach framing. So this would take the form of I want to eat healthier foods, so you're actively approaching the good thing. And then there's the avoidant framing, I want to avoid unhealthy foods. I would play around with these different framings and see what works best for you in different contexts. But there is some research showing that when we frame our goals as approach oriented, right, I want to eat healthier foods that can be much more motivating for people and can promote endurance, and when we are good at it, it's met with pride, whereas avoid goals can sometimes just breed feelings of relief like oh good, I didn't screw up right, I wasn't terrible today. And so I'm curious to know, first of all, which type of framing do you tend to use already, and if is there a switch that you might be able to make and to at least test it out. My jaw is dropped when you said that, because it just like hit me like a ton of bricks. I've always framed everything like I'm not going to eat sugar, I'm not going to eat like kids, Like oh, I actually have to like flip the switch, like oh no, you actually have to actively do something to achieve this goal, not just avoid something I think will be very beneficial. Yeah, and I'm no expert on this, but I'm guessing when you were in a tournament as an athlete, you weren't like most of all, we want to not lose, right, you want to avoid losing at all costs, like you are much more probably I'm guessing about winning. Is that right? Yes? Absolutely, Like we had this whole like mindset thing and it's like you don't want to think about like, oh, don't mess up, like you want to think, oh, do good. And so bringing that concept into the real world is pretty profound. Yeah, there's a lot of psychology and sports right that if you can transfer it, which I'm not sure how easy that is to do, but that would be really valuable here. Perhaps maya is that that is there any research on can you transfer the thinking us in one arena of your life, one context to another like that? Oh? Absolutely, And especially when it comes to the science of motivation. So I'll give you one example. This is called the middle problem. It was discovered by one of my friends, Isle at Fishbox. She's a professor at the University of Chicago. And basically, when we are trying to reach our goals, we tend to experience higher levels of motivation at the beginning of the goal and then at the end of the goal. So there's a drop in motivation in the middle. This is called the middle problem. And so what we should do is we should try to keep our middles as short as possible. So when she sets a year long goal, she's setting herself up for, you know, a multi month middle period, right, four months in the middle. And since we know that motivation wage in the middle, it might be smarter for Emily to set a weekly goal, right, and that way, the middle is only a day or two, and so she will see that decrease in motivation extend over a much shorter period of time and then can kind of reclaim that boost and motivation that happens as we're inching towards reaching the goal for the week. So here's our next couple of rules. Shorten the time span of your goal to avoid that motivation dip in the middle. Try a sprint, not a marathon. In other words, and go towards something not away. And whatever you do, remember you can't replace something with nothing. When they did research on trying to motivate people to quit smoking, part of the addiction to smoking was in the form of getting used to taking that break after lunch and going outside and socializing with colleagues or whatever the pattern of behavior was, and so they found that substituting that behavior with something else is much more effective than simply telling them to abstain from behavior. And I think, Emily, this goes back to something we talked about earlier. But you know, the desire to reward yourself after a tough day is not going anywhere right, and so you just want to try to find alternative things that you can do to reward yourself. Maybe it's texting with a friend who you've been out of touch with. Maybe it's just looking at pictures of your kids on your phone. Now that they're asleep you can enjoy their more angelic faces on your phone. Maybe it's having a moment of just deep breathing in which you just try to find some calm internally. And so as a homework assignment for you, I would take out a sheet of paper and try to find five things that make you feel joy right that aren't associated with eating, and see if you can start subbing in some of those activities for what we'll call like the jellybean behavior instead. I love that, Emily, does anything immediately come to mind that brings you joy? That's easy to do in five minutes pretty much everything she said. I don't know if she's got cameras in my house or not, but like, I have a friend that I'm super close with, but she lives in Ohio, so she's so far away, and like, any time I talk to her, it always it's really great, and so texting her would be good. And actually, just last night, I was flipping through photos of my kids on my phone and that was exactly what I was doing, and that made me happy too. Yeah, and they can be those activities can be so nourishing and when you internalize them as oh, I'm treating myself to this therapeutic moment right right right. And I think in our culture at large, right definitely, sweet food is considered a reward, a way to kind of make ourselves feel good, a way to celebrate, a way to mourn. It's all the things. It's vehicle for many things. I wonder, may have you had any experience with this as far as you know, trying to exercise more or eat differently or is that not one of your one of your struggles? No, it definitely is. Again, I think Emily and I are like lost sisters, and I'm glad this podcast is bringing us together, absolutely, And let me tell you some of the strategies that I have used, and then Emily, you can decide whether you think some of these are things that you can adapt to your own life, right, because it's all about experimentation and playing with options and figuring out what works for you. So the first is, and I know you guys have had Katie Milkman on the show, but she talks about temptation bundling, and this is one of my favorites. So it basically just says you should pair a unpleasant activity, so let's say exercising or eating a kale salad in your case, with an immediately rewarding, intrinsically rewarding activity. So for me, when it comes to exercise, I actually save my favorite music and podcasts for exercise time. You can look forward to the aspect of now this paired bundle is really exciting to you, and that you don't allow yourself the treat of in other contexts. Yeah, that sounds like it makes a lot of sense. Besides temptation bundling, there's one more proven trick we can try, and it's actually why so many of us gravitate towards January first. To begin with, we're better at sticking with our goals when they are accompanied by any kind of fresh start, So it might be a birthday, moving to a new home, getting married, even honestly, the first day of spring works, the first day of the week works. But it's basically an opportunity for us to depart from old ways of being right baked in patterns of behavior that we used to have. I wonder why then New Year's resolutions so often fail, given I mean, you'd think that would be a good fresh start, right new year or knew me all of that. Yeah, Well, I think one challenge there is that people are setting a goal for the entire year, and we talked about how hard it is for us to sustain that kind of motivation over the course of such a long period of time. I think if their New Year's goal was okay, for the next five days, I'm going to try to go to the gym, and then they build on that. And you also want a feedback cycle, right, So, Emily, as I mentioned, you know a lot of these behavioral insights, they are contact specific. They depend so much on your personality type. What's worked what hasn't and so you really want to put on your scientists cap and test things out. And so you want to be in a situation where if that first week in which you're experimenting with a goal didn't work very well, you can pivot and you don't feel like you're failing, and you don't feel like you're giving up on the longer term goal. You are just changing your approach to actually getting there. And so you want to create a system where there is that plasticity, that malluability that allows you to change your strategy is needed. This is a really smart insight. Try to think of yourself as a habit scientist, not a judge. You're testing, gathering data and trying new things all the time. Yeah, I think that sounds really good. And just thinking about what you said, my resolution is going to be to set a goal every Monday. So like every Monday at two o'clock when I'm tired and hungry, I'm going to set a goal for the week and then reset it on the next Monday and be like and then I'll be able to say, Okay, how did last week go? How can I prove this week? And go from there. One thing I always notice is when people write to us and we go back to their original email, there's a lot in the words that can be helpful. And I noticed in your original email to us, Emily, you set things like I am lacking in discipline or routine or control, and then you ended it by saying, I don't know why I keep failing to control myself. So there's a lot of judgment here, right, am I right? That hit pretty hard? Yeah, I just I don't know, Like, I'm just surrounded by influences and people who can set a goal and maintain it and are disciplined and are structured, and like that's something that like I see them achieve and then are praised for. And then I turn around and look at myself and I think, like, if everyone else can do it, why can't you? And so yeah, and I think You're not alone here. So I don't mean to be making you feel bad about feeling bad about feeling bad, right, but I just want to note it and ask Maya, I'm assuming there's a pattern that we know about in the human brain, right, yeah, I mean, I first want to clarify, Emily, you just use the language why can I do this thing? That everyone else can do. Yeah, I don't know who everyone else is in your world, but they're not the same everyone else that's in my world or that I study or that I read research papers about. So I think one is like broadening your understanding of just how normal this is for for any given human to experience. And I think what really resonates with me? And again this is where I see such similarities in our personalities, but just a desperate need for control. And I feel really frustrated. It's like I feel frustrated that I didn't reach my goal, and I feel a meta level of frustration that I didn't have the control that I thought I had to achieve the goal. And so it's just like levels of frustration building on frustration, right, And one thing that's good to acknowledge from the research literature is that we really do love being in the driver's seat. We love having control over situations. In fact, there's a phenomenon known as the illusion of control, where we regularly overstate the role we played in driving certain outcomes. All right, So this is really baked into the human psyche. And so I think the thing that you can do is try to figure out how you can build agency and control into the goal setting process so that you feel that you're in charge. But it's also okay for you again to have built in some of that slack and to have not met the goals all the time. So there's research showing that when we set our own goals were better at achieving them. The other thing that I would encourage people who are going through, who are writing up their New Year's resolutions to do is, as part of that exercise, take stock of all the stuff that's going great that you're really happy you don't have to change. Because we're always focused on, you know, the negative parts of ourselves that we wish that we could improve, and I think it's a very healthy exercise to remember how much stuff is running in the background seamlessly, is actually going quite well for ourselves. And that form of gratitude I think can actually embolden us in trying to reach, you know, the very narrow set of goals that we specify for ourselves. I like that, and I like thinking specifically about the question what's going well, what went well today, you know, as opposed to like a gratitude journal, which I've never, never has felt totally natural Emily, what went well today? I think this morning actually I had oatmeal for breakfast and so that went well. That was a good start. I did get a good walk in during lunch, and so it's sunny outside and warm outside, so I was able to get some just general outside playtime today, So that was really good. Yeah, there's a lot going good today. Awesome. Well, has this been helpful overall, Emily? Yes, Like whenever I was coming into this, I was like kind of unsure because like I've been an athlete for so long, and like I know how to cycles, I know how to like discipline myself, and I was like, what really knew am I going to learn here? But like there has been so much that I've didn't think about before, and so that's I just can't thank you enough, Maya for taking the time to help me. And I think you can hear my son now, but he thinks you too. It was so nice to meet you and wishing you the best of luck. Thank you to Emily for reaching out to us, and to Maya for all of her great advice. Make sure to look for her excellent show. Slight Change of Plans will include a link to her podcast in the show notes, as well as a couple of other episodes we've done in the past about healthy eating, because let's face it, this is a big and complicated problem and one episode may not be enough. And by the way, we got a really nice note from Emily after our conversation. She says she's been able to cut down on snacking at work so far, and she's working on setting short term sprint goals for the new year. What about you? What are the rest of you working on in twenty twenty three? What resolution can we help you keep? Send us a note at how to at slate dot com or leave us a voicemail at six four six four nine five four zero zero one, and we'd love to have you on the show. If you like what you heard today, you know what to do. Give us a rating and a review, and tell a friend that helps us help more people. How To's executive producer is Derek John Rosemary Belson, and Kevin Bendis produced this episode. Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director, and Charles Duhigg created the show. I'm Amanda Ripley. Thanks for listening.