Bigger Leaner Stronger

by Michael Matthews

  Future self-continuity refers to our ability to connect our present actions with their future consequences.

  You can improve your future self-continuity by thinking about how you’ll behave in the future, writing a letter to Future You, and imagining Future You in vivid detail.

  Whenever people confronted with a setback say to themselves, “I’ve already messed up, so what the hell,” they’re acting out the vicious cycle of slip up, regret, and splurge, or what psychologists call the what-the-hell effect.

  Like most everything in life, you don’t need to be anywhere near perfect to win in the fitness game—you just have to be good enough most of the time.

  Many people worry that they’ve “blown” their diets after a single instance of overeating, not realizing that the absolute amount of fat that they can gain from a single meal or day—no matter how much they’ve eaten—ranges from negligible in the case of a single “cheat meal” (a few ounces) to mildly irritating in the case of a day of feasting (0.5 to 1 pound).

  When you stumble (and you will), show yourself the same compassion and forgiveness that you would show a friend.

  Progress can cut both ways because the satisfaction it produces can become complacency, a powerful catalyst for weakening willpower.

  We should view our wins as evidence of how important our goals are to us and how committed we are to seeing them through.

  In many ways, fitness is the ideal training ground for many of our most important virtues because its challenges and difficulties are fundamentally analogous to the obstacles and barriers we face everywhere else in our lives.

  Baumeister RF, Heatherton TF, Tice DM. Losing Control: How and Why People Fail at Self-Regulation. San Diego, CA: Academic Press; 1994.

  Ibid.

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  Kahneman D, Tversky A. Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk. Econometrica. 1979;47(2):263. doi:10.2307/1914185.

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  Crockett MJ, Braams BR, Clark L, Tobler PN, Robbins TW, Kalenscher T. Restricting Temptations: Neural Mechanisms of Precommitment. Neuron. 2013;79(2):391-401. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2013.05.028.

  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Only 1 in 10 Adults Get Enough Fruits or Vegetables. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Website. https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2017/p1116-fruit-vegetable-consumption.html. November 16, 2017. Accessed August 20, 2018; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One in five adults meet overall physical activity guidelines. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Website. https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2013/p0502-physical-activity.html. May 2, 2013. Accessed August 20, 2018.

  Statista. U.S. - average fast food consumption per week | Survey 2016. Statista Website. https://www.statista.com/statistics/561297/us-average-fast-food-consumption-per-week/. 2016. Accessed August 20, 2018; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dietary guidelines for americans 2015 and related NHANES updates. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Website. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/bsc/bscpres_ahluwalia_may_2016.pdf. 2015. Accessed August 20, 2018; Williams O. One in three people would rather do housework than exercise, survey reveals. Daily Mail Website. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2323912/One-people-housework-exercise-survey-reveals.html. May 13, 2013. Accessed August 20, 2018.

  Centola D. The spread of behavior in an online social network experiment. Science. 2010;329(5996):1194-1197. doi:10.1126/science.1185231.

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  Fowler JH, Christakis NA. Estimating peer effects on health in social networks: A response to Cohen-Cole and Fletcher; and Trogdon, Nonnemaker, and Pais. J Health Econ. 2008;27(5):1400-1405. doi:10.1016/j.jhealeco.2008.07.001; Christakis NA, Fowler JH. The Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network over 32 Years. N Engl J Med. 2007;357(4):370-379. doi:10.1056/NEJMsa066082.

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  Christakis NA, Fowler JH. The Collective Dynamics of Smoking in a Large Social Network. N Engl J Med. 2008;358(21):2249-2258. doi:10.1056/NEJMsa0706154.

  Cacioppo JT, Fowler JH, Christakis NA. Alone in the crowd: the structure and spread of loneliness in a large social network. J Pers Soc Psychol. 2009;97(6):977-991. doi:10.1037/a0016076.

  Keizer K, Lindenberg S, Steg L. The Spreading of Disorder. Science. 2008;322(5908):1681-1685. doi:10.1126/science.1161405.

  Fowler JH, Christakis NA. Dynamic spread of happiness in a large social network: longitudinal analysis over 20 years in the Framingham Heart Study. BMJ. 2008;337:a2338. doi:10.1136/BMJ.A2338; Aarts H, Gollwitzer PM, Hassin RR. Goal Contagion: Perceiving Is for Pursuing. J Pers Soc Psychol. 2004;87(1):23-37. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.87.1.23.

  VanDellen MR, Hoyle RH. Regulatory Accessibility and Social Influences on State Self-Control. Personal Soc Psychol Bull. 2010;36(2):251-263. doi:10.1177/0146167209356302.

  Fishbach A, Yaacov T. Implicit and Explicit Counteractive Self-Control. In: Handbook of Motivation Science. New York, NY: Guilford; 2008:281-294.

  Mukhopadhyay A, Johar GV. Indulgence as self-reward for prior shopping restraint: A justification-based mechanism. J Consum Psychol. 2009;19(3):334-345. doi:10.1016/j.jcps.2009.02.016; Sachdeva S, Iliev R, Medin DL. Sinning Saints and Saintly Sinners. Psychol Sci. 2009;20(4):523-528. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02326.x; Khan U, Dhar R. Licensing Effect in Consumer Choice. J Mark Res. 2006;43(2):259-266. doi:10.1509/jmkr.43.2.259.

  Wilcox K, Vallen B, Block L, Fitzsimons GJ. Vicarious Goal Fulfillment: When the Mere Presence of a Healthy Option Leads to an Ironically Indulgent Decision. J Consum Res. 2009;36(3):380-393. doi:10.1086/599219.

  Ibid.

  Khan U, Dhar R. Where there is a way, is there a will? The effect of future choices on self-control. J Exp Psychol Gen. 2007;136(2):277-288. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.136.2.277.

  Khan U, Dhar R. Licensing Effect in Consumer Choice. J Mark Res. 2006;43(2):259-266. doi:10.1509/jmkr.43.2.259.

  Ibid.

  Ersner-Hershfield H, Wimmer GE, Knutson B. Saving for the future self: Neural measures of future self-continuity predict temporal discounting. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2009;4(1):85-92. doi:10.1093/scan/nsn042.

  Peters J, Büchel C. Episodic Future Thinking Reduces Reward Delay Discounting through an Enhancement of Prefrontal-Mediotemporal Interactions. Neuron. 2010;66(1):138-148. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2010.03.026; Murru EC, Martin Ginis KA. Imagining the possibilities: the effects of a possible selves intervention on self-regulatory efficacy and exercise behavior. J Sport Exerc Psychol. 2010;32(4):537-554; Schippers MC, Scheepers AWA, Peterson JB. A scalable goal-setting intervention closes both the gender and ethnic minority achievement gap. Palgrave Commun. 2015;1(1):15014. doi:10.1057/palcomms.2015.14.

  Polivy J, Herman CP. Dieting and binging. A causal analysis. Am Psychol. 1985;40(2):193-201.

  Wohl MJA, Pychyl TA, Bennett SH. I forgive myself, now I can study: How self-forgiveness for procrastinating can reduce future procrastination. Pers Individ Dif. 2010;48(7):803-808. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2010.01.029; Leary MR, Tate EB, Adams CE, Batts Allen A, Hancock J. Self-compassion and reactions to unpleasant self-relevant events: The implications of treating oneself kindly. J Pers Soc Psychol. 2007;92(5):887-904. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.92.5.887; Allen AB, Leary MR. Self-Compassion, Stress, and Coping. Soc Personal Psychol Compass. 2010;4(2):107-118. doi:10.1111/j.1751-9004.2009.00246.x.

  Fishbach A, Dhar R. Goals as Excuses or Guides: The Liberating Effect of Perceived Goal Progress on Choice. J Consum Res. 2005;32(3):370-377. doi:10.1086/497548.

  Fishbach A, Dhar R, Zhang Y. Subgoals as substitutes or complements: The role of goal accessibility. J Pers Soc Psychol. 2006;91(2):232-242. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.91.2.232.

  15

  Finding Your Biggest Fitness Whys

  Be first and be lonely.

  —GINNI ROMETTY

  People with vague, unrealistic, or uninspiring fitness goals (or none at all) are always the first to quit.

  These people are easy to spot too. They show up to the gym sporadically to sleepwalk through workouts, barely breaking a sweat. They constantly complain about how situations and circumstances “made” them fall off the wagon (pesky office potlucks!). They’re always on the lookout for the newest fads and magic bullet fixes.

  If you’re going to succeed where the masses fail, if you’re going to get into the best shape of your life and become a paragon of health and fitness, you need to inoculate yourself against these attitudes and behaviors, and that’s why we’re going to do a little soul-searching in this chapter.

  Different people have different reasons for eating well and working out. Some like to push their bodies to the limit. Others just want to impress the opposite (or same) sex. Many want to boost their confidence and self-esteem. Most want to improve their general health and well-being.

  These are all perfectly valid reasons to get fit—looking great, feeling great, having high energy levels, being more resistant to sickness and disease, living longer, and so forth—but it’s important that you isolate and articulate your reasons.

  In the last chapter, you learned about the power of visualizing your future, and how doing so can greatly enhance your ability to navigate your life more skillfully.

  Let’s put this into practice right now, starting with the dimension of fitness that most people find most alluring: the visual.

  What Does Your Ideal Body Look Like?

  Let’s face it: a major reason why you’re reading this book is you want to look a certain way. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

  Every single fit person I know—including myself—is motivated just as much by the mirror as anything else, if not more so. I value my health, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t care about how I look nearly as much as the many other benefits of regular exercise.

  Don’t mistake that for narcissism, either. There are plenty of self-absorbed fitness twits out there, but I don’t see anything wrong with playing a bit to our vanity if looking great also helps us feel great (and it does).

  So, let’s talk about you. What does your ideal body look like?

  I want us to go beyond trite words and hazy daydreams, too. I want us to establish this visually and precisely by finding a picture or two (or three or four!) of exactly what you want to look like. Then, I want you to save these pictures somewhere that’s easily accessible, like your phone or Google Drive or Dropbox.

  In other words, when you’re on my Bigger Leaner Stronger program, I want you to feel that you’re working toward a very real, very desirable body that’s as concrete as the page you’re reading, not an imaginary physique that could be described as “jacked” or “shredded.”

  If you already know where to go to find pictures of the type of body you really want, go collect them now. If you don’t, head over to my “Great Male Physiques” board on my Pinterest (www.pinterest.com/mikebls/great-male-physiques), and you’ll find a large gallery of fit guys of all types to choose from.

  What Does Your Ideal Body Feel Like?

  This question asks you to explore one of the many “hidden” benefits of fitness.

  Few people are aware of it when they begin their transformations, but a fit, healthy body is far more pleasurable to inhabit than an unfit, unhealthy one.

  The more in shape you are, the more you get to enjoy hi
gher energy levels, better moods, more alertness, clearer thinking, fewer aches and pains, and higher-quality sleep, to name just a few of the advantages.

  And then there’s the deeper stuff like more self-confidence and self-esteem, more productivity and self-fulfillment, and more intimate and satisfying relationships.

  I want you to take a few minutes now to imagine what this will be like for you, and then write it all down in the form of individual affirmations.

  In case you’re not familiar with affirmations, they’re positive statements that describe how you want to be, like, “I’m full of energy all day” and “My mind is always quick, clear, and focused.”

  This might seem a bit woo-woo, but research shows that writing and reading affirmations can benefit you in several ways. For example, a study conducted by scientists at the University of Pennsylvania found that people who practiced affirmations exercised more than people who didn’t, and research conducted by scientists at the University of Sussex found that performing self-affirmations improved working memory and cognitive performance.1

  For the sake of completeness, you can organize your health and fitness affirmations into four broad categories:

  Physical

  Mental

  Emotional

  Spiritual

  Physical affirmations are all about bodily function and physical energy levels, and they can include statements like, “I wake up rested every day,” “My joints are pain-free,” and “I rarely get sick.”

  Mental affirmations concern your mind’s ability to remember and compute and your ability to focus on the present and tune out the “noise.” They can include statements like, “I can focus deeply on the task at hand,” “My memory is sharp,” and “I can control my thoughts.”

  Emotional affirmations relate to your feeling of positive or negative sensations, and they can include statements like, “I find joy everywhere I go,” “I bounce back quickly from bad news,” and “I give and receive love openly.”