Exercise and Fitness Forum

Motivate Healthy Habits - Leaving a Family Legacy

by Rick Botello, MD, BMed.Sci, BSBM, MCRGP - July 2006

Do you want to prevent disease, live longer and improve the quality of your life? Would you like to help your family members live a healthy lifestyle also? It is simple, really; all you and your family members have to do is:

• Exercise regularly
• Eat well-balanced diets
• Keep your weight under control
• Refuse to smoke
• Avoid alcohol excess or abstain from alcohol
• Reject drug use 

It?s simple to say but difficult to do.
No person and no family has perfect health. Everyone has a weak spot. Even if you are a baby boomer, it?s not too late to change and get the most out of your golden years.

There is no simple, quick-fix recipe for addressing your weak spot. Do not be deceived by marketing hype that sells false promises of long-lasting change. Changing unhealthy habits can be a complex challenge. If are you interested in learning about deep change, read on.

Do you think you should change but don?t feel like it?
How well do you understand why you and your family members emotionally resist changing your unhealthy habits, despite your best intentions?

If you (as most people do) underestimate your emotional resistance, you can become trapped in the prison of your own mind. To break free of ineffective action (like broken New Year?s resolutions), you must first examine the lock of your emotional resistance before you can cut a key to effective motivation.

If you try to motivate yourself before you lower your emotional resistance, you will experience a tug-of-war between your head and your heart, and the feelings in your heart will win over the best intentions in your head in favor of your unhealthy habit. To help your head and heart work together effectively on change, use this three-step learning strategy.

1. Recognize what feelings drive your negative resistance.
Are you fully aware of how your emotional resistance prevents you from making health improvements?  How do positive and negative feelings contribute to your emotional resistance? Here are some examples of positive and negative feelings that can help you explore why you and your family members remain attached to unhealthy habits.

Positive versus Negative Feelings

• Comfort oneself vs. relieve stress (e.g. overeat, drink alcohol and/or smoke)
• Relax vs. relieve or avoid anxiety (e.g., overeat, drink alcohol and/ or smoke)
• Feel good vs. suppress depressed mood (e.g., overeat and/or drink alcohol)
• Increase confidence or self-esteem vs. avoid feeling low confidence or low self-esteem (e.g., overeat and/or drink alcohol)
• Enjoy the pleasure of downtime (watching TV, playing video games) vs. avoid the pain and gain of change (e.g., exercise to feel naturally high)
• Let go of anger (drink alcohol to suppress inhibitions) vs. suppress anger (e.g. over-eat to minimize anger)
• Enjoy the company of others vs. avoid loneliness (e.g. drinking)
• Give courage (e.g. drink alcohol to ask someone out) vs. avoid fear and rejection
• Increase sense of power (e.g., use cocaine) vs. avoid feelings of powerlessness

All of these positive actions (comforting oneself, relaxing, enjoying pleasure, etc) may conceal underlying negative feelings (stress, anxiety, depressed mood, etc). So if you identify more strongly with a positive feeling, you may not be fully aware of how your avoidance of negative feelings perpetuates your unhealthy habit. But if you stop your unhealthy habit, you can experience the full impact of the underlying negative feeling.

On the other hand, if you identify more with the benefits of reducing your negative feelings (overeating to comfort a negative mood, smoking a cigarette to relieve stress, or drinking alcohol to drown your sorrows), you may have additional underlying issues (e.g., anxiety disorder, undiagnosed depression or unresolved grief) that may require professional help to uncover and heal.

If you have a fear of failure that makes you feel guilty, you may try to avoid both change and negative feelings. If this fear is compounded by a lack of confidence, you may undermine your attempts at ever making a change, or never even make an attempt.

Feelings can distort your perceptions so that you maximize the benefits of your unhealthy habit but minimize its risks and harms to your health. This self-deception can keep you in your comfort zone and avoid the risk of change. 

How can you begin to address these distorted perceptions and the negative impact of these powerful feelings on your health? Explore deep change to understand what lies beneath your emotional resistance.  

2. Understand what lies beneath your emotional resistance.
Your past history and life experiences, your motives and values also affect your current behavior. With externally-controlled motives, you are only changing because other people want you to change. Internally controlled motives move you to you change because you feel that you should or must, and when you fail to change, this motive can evoke feelings of guilt and shame. With freely chosen motives, you are changing because it is really important to you and your values.  It feels good to change. You can, of course, experience a blend of these motives that can change over time.

In addition to these underlying factors, your current energy level and competing priorities in life also affect whether you can put your values into practice. For example, your work demands and family devotion drain your energy so much that you sacrifice your health. In other words, you value your health but you don?t do what you say. Weight gain or lack of regular exercise are common forms of sacrifice.

Researchers or outside resources can provide you with information, support and ?know- how,? but they cannot make you change. The ultimate answer must come from within. Do as you say and put your values into action. 

3. Lower your emotional resistance.
Understanding how your feelings drive your emotional resistance can help you become an effective researcher of your own behavioral change. Explore what lies beneath your feelings to discover the path of least resistance to effective motivation. Experience this learning process, ideally with the support of family and friends, to make change happen. This learning process can inspire family and friends to do the same.

Gandhi said, ?Be the change that you wish to see in the world.? Leave a family legacy of healthy habits to benefit future generations. Improve your health habits so that family members and their offspring can benefit from your learning experiences. This important ?hand-me-down? learning lesson can pass from generation to generation. This approach empowers families to address a major failing in our educational systems: the absence of a meaningful, healthy lifestyle curriculum.

About the Author
Dr. Rick Botelho is a professor of Family Medicine and Nursing at the University of Rochester, New York. He wrote the guidebook Motivate Healthy Habits: Stepping Stones To Lasting Change to help your family make lasting improvements in your health habits, based on his skill development guidebook, Motivational Practice: Promote Healthy Habits and Self-care of Chronic Diseases for practitioners, lay health guides, and wellness and fitness instructors. Dr. Botelho is a guest speaker for lay and professional audiences and has conducted workshops in more than 16 countries. For more information on Dr. Botelho, visit www.motivatehealthyhabits.com.