In this episode of Simple Shifts: Conversations to Fuel Your Body, Mind and Soul, Martha and Peter discuss the importance of breaking down goals into manageable pieces to enhance motivation and success. They explore the science behind goal gradient theory, the distinction between outcome and behavior goals, and the significance of establishing healthy habits. The conversation emphasizes the need for behavior change as a sustainable approach to achieving long-term wellness and personal development.
Key Takeaways
- Breaking down goals helps maintain motivation.
- Goal gradient theory suggests proximity increases effort.
- Focus on behavior goals for better control.
- Don’t break the chain to establish habits.
- Recovery is essential for sustainable fitness.
- Understanding human behavior aids in personal growth.
- Set personal guardrails to maintain progress.
- Behavior change is key to long-term success.
- Eliminating foods without behavior change is ineffective.
- Reflect on past behaviors to inform future goals.
Breaking Down Goals to Better Serve Us Podcast
Video Transcript
Martha McKinnon (00:00)
Hi, welcome to Simple Shifts, Conversations to Fuel the Body, Mind and Soul. I’m Martha McKinnon from the blog Simple Nourished Living and with me is my brother and partner Peter Morrison.
Peter Morrison(00:13)
Hi there.
Martha McKinnon (00:14)
Hi, how you doing?
Peter Morrison (00:15)
I’m good today. How is everything with you?
Martha McKinnon (00:19)
Everything is wonderful.
Peter Morrison (00:21)
Excellent.
Martha McKinnon (00:23)
So I thought it would be fun to discuss this week’s Weight Watchers meeting. And I know by the time we record this, the meeting will be long past, but it’s really an evergreen topic. It’s all around breaking down your goals to better serve you. But before we jump into that, what’s new and wonderful in your world?
Peter Morrison (00:47)
This is podcast, think my numbering got screwed up in the past, but this is should be podcast number 33. So you figure on a weekly basis, we’ve done over half a year’s worth, right?
Martha Mckinnon (01:09)
Yeah.
Peter Morrison (01:11)
So it’s an achievement.
Martha McKinnon (01:14)
It is. We’re breaking down a goal into smaller pieces to keep it going. We don’t really know where we’re going, but we keep plotting along. So, well, good. That’s great news. That’s exciting.
Peter Morrison (01:33)
What are you excited about? You always put me on the spot.
Martha McKinnon (01:42)
I’m excited about Weight Watchers right now. For a while, I wasn’t attending the virtual meetings, but I have been tuning in. I’m choosing Sunday mornings because I just feel like it helps to tune in. I like the ability to just watch in my pajamas while I’m having my cup of coffee. And I’m finding that the meetings, I just feel like there’s the caliber of them and the topics and the leaders – I’m dating myself, the coaches. I just find them, I feel like they’re helpful beyond just weight loss. They’re really sort of diving into behavior change, the psychology behind behavior change. And I feel like it’s helping me on a grander scale. So I’m excited about that.
Peter Morrison (02:32)
Which is probably a fundamental change to help with managing weight, I mean, behavior change.
Martha McKinnon (02:42)
It is. I think it is. I think what I’m really, what I appreciate about it is that the more you understand about, you know, human psychology, human behavior, the more you understand, because I think a lot of times we’re really hard on ourselves. And we think we’re broken, you know, we’re somehow less than and I think I’ve come to appreciate that these are universal problems or challenges that can that can be managed and that can be overcome with the right understanding.
So it just makes me feel, I think, better, more, I guess more confident, you know, and less overwhelmed. I think just, well, understanding is so important. Like when you really understand something, when you have additional information, it’s just helpful.
Peter Morrison (03:30)
Absolutely.
Martha McKinnon (03:33)
Yeah. So, goals. Are you good about setting goals?
Peter Morrison (03:40)
I think I’m, I don’t know if I’d call it a goal. I’m good about like setting objectives that I want to achieve. I’m not always good about following through all the way. I’m good about getting started. I’m good about getting to a certain point, but I kind of, I get distracted easily and I kind of jump around a lot, I think.
Martha McKinnon (04:10)
Well, I think this topic then is going to really help you too, because I learned a lot from this discussion. And in fact, we’ve got a post about it too, so we can link out to the post that just talks about it in more detail for people who like to read as opposed to listen. So this whole concept of breaking down your goals to better serve you has real, there’s some real science behind it.
So the reason you really want to break down your goals is that there’s science that shows something called the goal. It’s called the goal gradient theory. And basically, the goal gradient theory says the closer you get to your goal, the harder you work to achieve it. So it’s sort of like the light at the end of the tunnel. As we move closer, the goal becomes close.
Martha McKinnon (05:02)
So for example, in the world of weight loss, suddenly you had a goal to lose 20 pounds and you’ve lost 18. There’s an excitement, you can see the end of the tunnel and it’s sort of a push or a motivation to get you there. And the example that I list, I tuned into Kimi, a workshop coach, and she gave the metaphor of a ladder, just sort of working up the rungs of the ladder. And as you get to the top of the ladder, you can just, you know, you can see more and get excited.
And I it caused me to think about something that Rod, I’ve heard Rod say again and again, and I didn’t really understand it because I don’t know horses. But I immediately thought of gold gradient theory because he spent a couple of summers as a young kid in Wyoming at sort of ranch horse camp. And he always used to say that the horse when the horse can see the barn, when the barn gets in, you have to know this about horses that they speed up and that you really have to tighten the reins because left to their own devices, they just like they just they’re diving, they know they’re close to home, they know they’re close to food and comfort and a roof.
And so I thought, hmm, this goal gradient theory suggests that we’re kind of like horses in some ways that as the goal gets closer, we’re speeding up and working harder. And that’s where the whole concept of breaking down the goals makes sense into mini goals. Because if the goal is far, far away, for example, if you’re wanting to lose a significant amount of weight, it’s going to be harder to stay motivated because the goal is so far away. But if you start breaking it down incrementally into sub goals, then that’s going to help you maximize the goal gradient theory in your benefit. It’s like, my first goal was 10 pounds. I’m there. I’m at eight. I’m excited again, I’m hard working. And then you keep just moving incrementally, breaking it down, and that’s going to work to your benefit.
Peter Morrison (07:04)
Because you’re always essentially getting close to your goal?
Martha Mckinnon (07:11)
Closer. Yeah. So by setting these mini goals, breaking it down, you’re always closer, you’re keeping yourself more more motivated. So I thought that was very cool. And the other thing that was talked about, which I’m not sure if I was clear in my mind about was the concept of outcome goals versus behavior goals. So are you familiar with that? Have you heard ever those goals broken down into those specifics before?
Peter Morrison (07:39)
I guess I think of a goal, I think of an outcome. So no.
Martha McKinnon (07:44)
Well, yeah. An outcome goal is the typical way that we do think about goals. But the interesting thing about an outcome, so an outcome is the result. I want to lose 20 pounds. I want to have more energy. I want to work with my doctor to lower or decrease my need for meds. So they’re outcomes. But the tricky thing about outcomes is that they’re kind of beyond, in some ways, beyond our control.
I think about that a lot in terms of the work that we do. We might want certain outcomes for our website, certain amount of traffic or this or that, but all we can do is the other kind of goal, the behavior goal. So it’s sort of like, what behaviors are going to get you there? All you can really focus on is the behaviors and trust that by doing the right behaviors, you’re going to move yourself more and more towards your outcome.
Again, it’s just another way to track your progress in a way where you have more control. So for example, if one of your goals is to eat healthier meals, not depend so much on one of the outcomes is to not be calling for takeout or stopping, then what behaviors are going to allow me to get there?
What am I going to have to do? I’m going to have to shop, right? So that I have good food available. Maybe I spend part of my weekend, you know, prepping again to make it to make it easier and to set myself up for success. So, the real encouragement is to focus more on the behaviors, which is really very empowering. And then to just take ownership of the behavior piece. Make sense?
Peter Morrison (09:33)
It does, absolutely. It actually, it’s kind of weird, but it takes me right back to Mindless Eating.
Martha McKinnon (09:42)
Yeah.
Peter Morrison (09:44)
From a, because that to me is about behavior change.
Martha McKinnon (09:50)
More than the outcomes you’re focusing on, the behaviors and the environment and the things that are in your control. And that’s the point is that we really want to focus on what we can control. Because you can’t really focus, like on any given day you’re going to get on the scale. There’s a gazillion different variables that could affect that. I mean, if you went out and did a bunch of exercise or did a 5K, there’s a good chance that your body’s going to hold water just as part of the recovery from that.
And so it could be that you’re the, you know, the number on the scale is inflated, but you actually did something really good for yourself. So by focusing more on the behaviors, it’s just more positive and it’s more empowering. And again, these are the things that can sustain you for the lifestyle because, sometimes what happens is we reach the outcome goal and then we lose motivation. And I know because this has happened to me. I did it. And then I stopped doing all the behaviors or I start diminishing the behaviors that got me there, where that’s self-defeating. Because the truth is you got to keep doing the behavior.
So I found this, just a really good reminder. And it made me think back to something that I learned years ago that Jerry Seinfeld taught. He had this whole concept called don’t break the chain, which falls into the whole behavior category where he felt it was really important as a comedian and a writer to focus every day and spend time writing comedy. And he, as part of that, bought himself a huge calendar. And he would just cross off every day he did it. And he would just then tell himself, don’t break the chain. You want to keep the chain going because it’s the behavior that’s going to help you improve.
And it’s funny because we have a friend up here who has run every day of her life for over 30 years. She’s never missed a day. So that’s like one of the longest don’t break the chain examples that I’ve ever heard of. So it doesn’t matter. Like it can get to the end of the day and she can be in a hotel and she’s gonna go run laps, you know, in the hallway. She’s always gonna, she’s committed to herself to just never not run. And she’s amazing. You know, she’s so fit and so strong and she’s in her seventies and she’s just an incredible example of that whole focusing on the behavior, the behavior goal.
Peter Morrison (12:28)
That makes me think too, I had the whole break the chain thing because I’ve stopped now, but I was doing Duo Lingo for a while. And I was kind of, I was a little obsessing over it and keeping it going, but it got to the point where learning was less important to me than keeping the street going. And it just, I feel like it just all, it just all fell apart. Like it wasn’t fun. I wasn’t learning anything. You know, I’d be half asleep and wanting to go to bed, but it’s like, I need to keep the streak going. And so I’m struggling to, and I’m thinking to myself, this is stupid. You’re not doing it for the right reasons. I don’t know what the right reasons are, but at the time they were not the right reasons for me. So I had to work through this period of, then I was getting all these notices from Duolingo about… you know, starting your streak and this and that. And I’m like, no, it’s it’s not right. It’s not. So it sort of became I don’t know, sort of ended up biting me.
Martha McKinnon (13:47)
Mm hmm. Well, that’s interesting. And again, I think our thinking around any of this is huge. Right. And I think we have to do like you’re saying, you have to remember why you’re studying Duolingo. You have to keep in track. So I would say you have to keep track of your why always. And you have to be doing any behavior for the right reason. So I think what I’m hearing you say is you were just rushing through it to keep the streak alive without really learning anything.
Peter Morrison (14:12)
Mm-hmm.
Martha McKinnon (14:14)
So again, we don’t want to get to that point. We want to make sure that we’re doing our best and doing quality, otherwise we could defeat ourselves. And even like Deb with her long streak, I mean, if she had been injured during that time, it might be a disservice, right, to go out on a run if you have a stress fracture or something. So we always have to keep our common sense about us and our wits about us whenever we’re trying to use any…
Because these are all just tools to try to help us get to our goals. And so I guess you’re right. We always have to be able to step back, pull up, keep our perspective, keep our common sense, keep our wits about us. So yeah, that’s a good reminder.
Peter Morrison (14:59)
Because if it was important to me and if it was something I was deriving value from, I would have carved 15, 20, 30 minutes out of my day and make it happen. I wouldn’t be, you know, as I’m brushing my teeth, shoot, I need to do this. I mean, I was doing it, like I said, for all the wrong reasons. So it was it was a learning experience for sure.
Martha McKinnon (15:25)
Yeah, something good to keep in mind. And again, if it were like you said, wasn’t learning the language wasn’t as high a priority. It sounds like as other things you’re trying to accomplish in your life, whereby if we’re getting fit, because you had talked about your push up streak, right? You were trying to incorporate strength training and push ups into your day. Now, if at the end of the day, suddenly you’re like, my gosh, I didn’t do my push ups. It’s probably it may be worth right taking those couple minutes to keep that streak going, even if you had already gotten into bed or whatever. So again, it’s important just to say, where is this in terms of importance and prioritization to?
Peter Morrison (16:06)
Right. Right. And interestingly on that note, I would say I’ve relaxed a little where I’m not so much feeling like I need to do it every day. In part because I feel like I’ve built up to this point where it’s hard, it’s physically hard and demanding and I feel like a day or two of rest in between is sort of what my body wants and it’s telling me to do so.
I’m not as, I feel like the habit is somewhat – I’m not strict about it, but I’m regular about it. Somewhere in the, I’d say anywhere from three to six times a week, depending on, and I’ll vary it depending on how I’m feeling or what other activities I’m doing. So I feel like I did the work to make it a habit and I’m okay with that, you know, with it not being an everyday thing.
Martha McKinnon (17:20)
And it doesn’t have to be, right? I mean, you could say don’t break the chain or do it so many times a week. That was just one example. You might say, I want to make sure that I do push-ups. What I heard you say is maybe at least three times a week and anything more than that’s a bonus. And I think that’s true. Isn’t that kind of the recommendation around strength training, maybe three times a week for any type of strength training at minimum?
Peter Morrison (17:46)
Right. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right. And I think the popular theory suggests, while the strength training is important, the downtime is as important to give your body the time to rest and recover, then to just keep pushing it every day.
Martha McKinnon (18:03)
Absolutely, absolutely. I’m a big believer in that. I’m a longtime practitioner of yoga, yoga, yoga, yoga has been my, that’s the one form of movement and exercise that has resonated with me the longest. And it’s interesting because every yoga practice has that relaxation built right into it – that concept of the Shavasana and then just giving your body a chance to just, I guess, kind of assimilate muscle memory or whatever it is.
I mean, yoga is a centuries old, thousands of years old practice. Yeah, recovery is just as important, right, as the activity oftentimes. But what I think I heard you say, Peter, was that you have gotten to the point where you did the work to establish the habit. And so now it’s part of your life. How long do you think establishing that habit took you? Where it just became part of your life?
Peter Morrison (18:59)
Well, when I started off, I mean, I’m thinking of the push-up example because I did feel I felt personally rather physically weak. So. And it was, you know, just a couple of push-ups and then slowly building up every day to try to do one, to try to do at least as many as the day before and maybe one or two more if I could you know, eek them out.
I would say… about a month.
Martha McKinnon (19:35)
OK. That’s interesting, because I think a lot of the science says it takes about a month, doesn’t it? And again, there’s variability around that, depending on the habit.
Peter Morrison (19:45)
That I don’t know. I just know, but doing it every day helps, yeah.
Martha McKinnon (19:50)
About a month. That’s cool. That’s great. Wonderful. Good for you.
Peter Morrison (19:54)
And then, like I said, we have a gym where I live and it’s sort of grown on me. I go up there, I try to go up there once or twice a week and doing smaller things here at home. You know, initially I wanted to do more, but there’s just too many other things going on in life. And I’ve come to the point where I’m OK with that.
And it feels… it doesn’t feel like I’m always starting over. You know, I’m going regular enough to where I feel like I’m continuing the chain, but it’s not, you know, three or four months in between where every time you go, you’re stiff and sore. And you feel like you’re back at square one every time. That was a very tough place to be for me, when you’re trying to establish a new goal.
Martha McKinnon (20:54)
That’s helpful. That’s very helpful. So goals. I don’t think I focus on outcome goals maybe as much as we might be encouraged to do. But I but I feel like I do have a lot of those behavior those sort of habits. The behavior goal is pretty well established in terms of yoga and walking and meal prepping and so, but there’s always room for improvement and that’s why I love these meetings, because they do kind of reinvigorate me to up the game a little bit. I think that that’s something that I find very helpful personally.
Peter Morrison (21:38)
So given that you’re a Lifetime Weight Watcher in maintenance, how could you use…
Like, how do you use a goal of maintaining your lifetime status?
Martha McKinnon (22:00)
So are you saying that the goal is to stay within my range? Is that the outcome goal that we’re saying?
Peter Morrison (22:06)
Yeah, so if you start to feel like maybe you’re going above where you wanna be weight wise? Given that you’re in maintenance as a lifetime member, how would you, like what would your goal be?
Martha McKinnon (22:30)
So the behavior goal. Of course the goal is always to not go over. I think a lot of people will give themselves – because the way Weight Watchers is set up is that you have a two pound – you can be within two pounds of your goal weight. You don’t have to stay right at it. So you can’t be beyond, you can’t be more than two pounds beyond your goal weight. And then essentially you’re not at your lifetime status anymore. And at that point back in the day, then you would have to start paying until you were back within those two pounds.
Everybody can set and a lot of people give themselves even a bigger window depending, and a lot of people will say, well, once, you know, once I’m three, four, five, whatever that goal is about, I don’t let myself go beyond that where I really then start re-focusing again on all those behaviors where you may have slacked off a little bit. So again, it’s refocusing on the behaviors that can slip away. And I really have the tendency making sure I’m like snacking can be a problem, right? I can be really good about not snacking maybe if I’m in the weight loss mode or if I’m getting really close to being over a goal.
So it’s going to just reestablishing those behaviors, making sure I’m getting my walk in every day, making sure I’m not slacking. Making sure I’m doing the meal prep and that I have, you know, food readily available so that I’m not stopping at the drive-thru when I’m out for the day doing errands and stuff. By now I know the advantages that, you know, which behaviors are important.
For me, another one is just watching like the carbs, because I love carbs. And so, and I again, went through Weight Watchers back in the day before points where it was food exchange. So we had so many starches a day. And so that’s another thing I find that if I keep track of my starches, that’s just magic. That’s magical for me to make sure that I’m not letting because if left to my own devices, you know, the number the you know, the number of starches per day can gradually increase.
So that’s the advantage I think at this stage is I know what behaviors I need to focus on in order to get back on track. Because I think we all need, there’s just so many influences, there’s so many temptations in our world, that I think we all just need our own guardrails. You know, we need to establish for ourselves what rules work for us and then make sure that we stick with them and we don’t let ourselves slide too long. So does that make sense?
Peter Morrison (25:11)
Mm-hmm. But it stands to reason when you achieve something, the longer you’re… the more time you spend there, the easier it’s gonna be to keep that going.
Martha McKinnon (25:31)
Yeah, because you really have changed. When I think about it, my behaviors, if I did an assessment of my behaviors now versus, you know, 20, 30, 40 years ago, I mean, the behaviors are so different. And so, so I kind of, I’m the same person, but I have very, very different behaviors, right? So, and if, so if I was to go back to the behaviors that I engaged in back when I was struggling and overweight, then I would struggle and be overweight again.
So this behavior, this whole concept of behavior change and lifestyle change and finding ways to focus on the behaviors is the magic because we can get so hung up. For years you get hung up on a number or an outcome. And the more you focus on the outcome with really without focusing on the behaviors, then you never get there.
And so that’s the magical understanding that it really is about behavior change. And the more you learn about behavior change in the brain and, you know, how we work, then it gets, it almost gets to be a, it sort of becomes a game. Like I said, because the other part of it is realizing that it’s part of the human condition, not your personal condition. It’s like not a personal flaw. It’s just how human beings are. And I find that very helpful too, because then suddenly it does become, it seems like there’s less stress, less personal pressure, less like beating yourself up and just, so I feel like I’m a better cheerleader for myself. Just saying, well, this is what humans do. Don’t beat yourself up, but here’s what we’re going to do about it. So it just feels much more empowering, you know.
Peter Morrison (27:22)
Hmm. Right. Well, isn’t that kind of like the person who says, I’m going to eliminate carbs or I’m going to eliminate sugar or I’m going to go keto to achieve a particular goal. So that might get you to the goal. But if you don’t change your underlying behaviors and if you’re not, if you’re not going to do that, to maintain that and you go back to the way you were doing it before, well, you’re gonna sort of end up right back where you started.
Martha McKinnon (27:54)
Yeah, and I’m living proof of that, you know, because I think most of us have done things to lose weight that we didn’t stick with only to gain the weight back. And that’s just, that’s exactly right. So that’s very true, yes.
Peter Morrison (28:14)
Well.
Martha McKinnon (28:15)
I think it’s time to wrap it up.
Peter Morrison (28:19)
Well, if you found this helpful, we would appreciate you sharing it with anybody who might also find it helpful. And if you can like and subscribe, we would appreciate your support. And we’ll be back soon with another helpful video.
Martha McKinnon (28:38)
Thanks so much for taking the time to tune in. We’ll see you soon.
Peter Morrison (28:43)
Have a good one.
