Michelle Segar

or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Dr Michelle Seeger, motivation

scientist and author. Michelle is the director of the Sport Health and Activity Research and Policy Center at the University of Michigan. She's also the chair of the u S National Physical Activity Plans Communications Committee. Her book is called No Sweat, How the Simple Science of Motivation can bring you a lifetime of fitness. The book was chosen as the two thousand fifteen number one book and diet and

Exercise by USA Best Book Awards. When released, it achieved the number one selling exercise and fitness book on Amazon. Here's the interview. Hi, Michelle, Welcome to the show. Hi, it's great to be here. I'm happy to have you on. Your book is called No Sweat, How the Simple Science

of Motivation can bring You a Lifetime of Fitness. And I came across it because somebody said to me, you ought to check out this book because a lot of the things that you talk about on the show and in your coaching, this woman wrote a book about And uh, they were right. I mean there were there were countless things in the book that I went, oh, yeah, that's you know, that's a common theme on this show. So I'm excited to get further into some of those things. Thanks.

I'm I'm really excited to hear your questions and where you're coming from on this too. Excellent. So we'll start, though, like we always do, with the parable. And in the Parable, there's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson and he says in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like

greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and thinks about it for a second and looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Sure well, it's it's such a great parable. And the funny thing is is that before you contacted me, I believe I had just reread that in a Pemishodrin book,

if I'm remembering correctly. So I had to chuckle um when I heard that. You know, wow, You know, I think in life it's it reflects the challenges, right, and and what do we fuel when we're going through challenges? And what what lives? But you know, the interesting thing, I was thinking about how to respond to that, um from the perspective of no sweat and and I recognize it in a way, the whole shift that the book is asking people to do relates to that in a

in a different way. So um, typically people start to exercise or take care of themselves more generally out of a medical model. We we feed our beliefs and our approaches from the place of clinical abstract. I want to avoid a disease, I want to change numbers on a scale,

and that's what we feed in our approach. And and it's the feedback we get or in fact don't get, because the outcomes we're looking for are actually fire in the future, so we may never get them, but we certainly won't get them in the type of time frame that our brain needs to to be reinforced. In contrast, the approach that I'm asking readers to take in No Sweat Is is consider a different why or reason for starting to be physically active or for starting to get

more sleep. I mean, my book is specifically about changing exercise from mature into a gift, but it really says if you reframe your reason for being active, and you do it differently, so in essence, you're feeding a different why, and you're receiving different feedback. Because when you move, for example, to increase your energy or to boost your mood, You're gonna get feedback immediately immediately that you're what you're what you're giving to physical activity and why you're doing it

is giving it back to you. So that was kind of my big picture takeaway as it relates to my work, is that in a way, a shift in what you're asking from physical activity in a way is feeding it. It's feeding the results you get and how you experience it and whether you want to keep doing it or not right exactly, I mean, the book really is, you know, there is that fundamental shift there of trying to understand

why you do something. And I often say on the show that I do exercise as basically a mental health routine. At this point, it's like I do it because it makes me feel better, like immediately that day, that sort of thing, And so the motivation for me is, you know, is to do it. Very similar to what you're talking about. My why became something that was a lot more connected to me right now and not as vague as something like being healthy in the future or losing weight right while.

You know, most people don't exercise for the reason you just said, and the biggest reason they don't is because our society simply hasn't taught us that that's an actually wonderful reason to be physically active. So it's no one's fault that they're not using physical activity as this vehicle for energy and happiness and all these things that we really that impact our daily life in significant ways. It's just that we haven't learned to do it for those reasons.

And the secondary reason, which follows from the why, which I explain in the book, is that we typically choose physical activities in order to achieve the why or reason we're exercising for. So if we're exercising to feel better to boost our mood, it's logical, although people may not know this, that you would pick physical activities that are pleasurable to you, that feel good to you, if not

are at least tolerable. But when you exercise for better health or quote or to lose weight, the physical activities you choose tend to be intense and and and maybe make your heart rate um go higher and cost sweat.

Even though this might not be a way that people like exercising and and and the problem is is that when people exercise in ways that tend to not feel good to them, they don't stick with it for the most part, So why we do it and how we do it is actually crucial to whether we're going to stick with it, and that's why we have to be talking about this. Yeah, exactly. And the question I had though, because in your book you you say that having more than one primary why for doing a behavior is thought

to dilute our motivation. So, for example, I was saying that the primary reason I exercise is because I know that it helps my emotional and my mental health. I feel better when I do it, and I don't feel good when I don't do it. At the same time, the fact that there's a vanity aspect to it and there's a you know, long term health aspect to it

appeal to me also. But help me understand this dilution of our motivation a little bit more, you know, it's so counterintuitive, and I think we actually need a lot more research until we have kind of conclusive evidence. But the research suggests that if you have you know what I call the right why, which is a reason for exercising, that you determined that it's something you deeply want, not because you think you should do it, or or a

doctor employers telling you do. One would think that, Okay, I have that reason I want to feel better, but I'm also you know, going to try to avoid cardiovascular disease and and maybe I'll try to live to I'm eighty five years old. Research suggests that coupling a an intrinsic internal internal motivation with these you know, maybe distant

or extrinsic motivations potentially SAPs their power. So you know, it's it's thought to dilute the power of the positive emotion when you bring in these kind of logical, uh cognitive reasons for change. And you know, something that I've

been toying with my mind. I haven't studied this yet, but you know, I've been wondering if we could couple, for example, the motive for exercising I want to feel better with the motive of spending time with other people, so another positive, intrinsically driven motivation, if that potentially wouldn't dilute the goal. But the reality is is that we don't know from the research because it hasn't been done.

So I think we need a lot more on this topic, right because what I realize is that my primary y is pretty strong and it's pretty clear Um, and maybe it's not that I'm doing it for those other reasons, but it's hard for me not to appreciate that they're happening. Yes, right, Like I can't put it out of my mind, like well, you know, no, it's you know what I mean, it's like there's there But I get I get what you're saying about. How you know, the primary Y is the

thing that that drives us. So let's talk a little bit more about that. So you're talking about intrinsic versus extrinsic goals, Why don't you first tell me kind of what those are, and then let's talk about what some examples of good wise are and some examples of wise that are maybe not as useful. And for everybody listening when we say why, we mean w h y not the everybody probably figure that out, but just in case, Yeah, that no, that's that's good. And I also want to

it sounds weird. It reads well, but it sounds weird. Yes, No, you're right. Um, although I have to I have to say, I've been hearing a lot of people. It's getting into the vernacular. People are talking about your wise, so it's really interesting. Um, I want to start by saying why is people's reasons for change, And there's no you know, inherently horrible why. It's whether it works for each individual.

So if when we're when I'm going to say there might be some wise that are optimal and some that are not, it's not that they're going to be non for everyone, because you know, Baskina Rabbits has thirty one flavors. Because we all like different things, and different things resonate with us and work for us. So nothing is always gonna work or something is is never going to work for everyone, and we always have to keep that in mind whenever we're listening to an author or science or anything.

So experiences own experience, and and so having said that, internal reasons are sometimes what are called intrinsic goals are the things that we do because they're going to feed us immediately. You know, if if we're talking about exercising, being intrinsically motivated would mean that we're exercising for the inherent pleasure or satisfaction it gives us. An intrinsic goal would be a reason or a goal or why that we that relates to how we feel or doing good

in the world. Things that we deeply, deeply want on a personal level. In contrast, you know, being extrinsically motivated to exercise would be you're motivated to exercise because you know, you think you should look like the magazine cover or you wish you looked like you did um thirty years ago. Although I have to say that's kind of a complicated one. Um, your doctor tells you you need to, you know, do

this for your blood pressure or to win in a competition. Um, although you know, to some extent the wise, there are differences, but we can categorize them as intrinsic versus enric or

maybe even more importantly, helpful versus unhelpful. The thing about exercises we've basically in society, and this is this is across the country, we've been socialized, in other word for socialized is educated to be physically active and exercise from a really a singular perspective that we've learned from science and also marketers who have been trying to sell fitness products and services to get us to buy them. So when you ask people in general, why do you exercise?

And this is people who do and don't exercise, the majority of people say they do it to improve their health or to control their weight in some way. So, you know, we did a stud and we found seventy people gave either weight or health related reasons, and that's very common to see in the literature. But what I think is fascinating on this topic is that people give those reasons because those are the reasons for exercising that they've been taught to have. So it's not necessarily that

those are actually the most motivational reasons. There's certainly logical reasons, right, people do want to control their way and they want to be healthy. But the research and decision making would suggest that if our reasons for exercising are to achieve something in the future, whether it's weight loss or avoiding a disease, that we will not more. You know, in general, people will be less motivated by those reasons or wise then if they're motivated to improve how they feel immediately,

so that it's a big difference. And again, people haven't been socialized to think about physically activity as a way to spend time with friends and family and as a way to boost their mood. In fact, in a recent study I was part of, we discovered that a lot of that I think it was only clinicians actually recommended that people exercised for mood issues, and so that's fascinating. Research is very clear that physical activity reduces anxiety and

depression and boost mood and energy levels. So we're simply not being told that this is a great way to feel better. And so that's why it's so important for you to be talking about it and why you do it and how it infects you as well as other people, because we have to basically resocialize society about the value of physical activity for our sense of selves and for our greater life context. Part of what we're saying is that when we think we should do something, it becomes

a chore, yes, and we resist chores to some degree. However, on the other hand, when we want to do something, then it's not a chore. And so if the goal for exercise is you know, ideally the best would be that you really enjoy doing it. But if you're a step away from that, then the next best would be the benefits that you feel from it are very very immediate. Yes, And you know, one of the things I've asked my clients to do is to think back, what did you enjoy doing when you were a kid. When a kid,

when you're a kid, moving was not a chore. It was this way of being in playing right, And once people ask themselves that question, it opens up. Oh my gosh, I used to love writing my book. I used to love taking walks and parks. You know that changes everything. Right, you say in the book, and I'll quote you here, you say, there's only one basic instruction. Take any and every opportunity to move in any way possible, at whatever speed you like, for any amount of time. Do what

makes you feel good. Stop doing what makes you feel bad. Yes, everything counts. Everything counts is a radical, simple but timely idea because, uh a, we know that the typical recommendations to exercise, you know, the standard recommendations to exercise for a certain amount of time and a certain intensity have not successfully gotten most people to fall in love with movement or to do it consistently. That's kind of the first evidence that that's not going to really help most

people stain of physically active life. The second level is that research in a completely different area is showing that sitting a lot is actually really bad for our health. So we now have permission, and there's research to show that you know, anything is better than nothing, and that's kind of the bottom line. Any movement is better than no movement, and and if that's true, then we can stand up joyfully take a few steps because that's all the time we have, and pat ourselves in the back

and say, I just chose to move. I noticed a bursting energy which research was suggests would actually happen on you know, with very small amounts of movement. And I'm taking better care of myself. And I ask people to consider the idea. We didn't go to school to learn how to sustain a physically active life, so now is the time to start and guess what we have the

pleasure of being in kindergarten, which is fingerpainting. We want to start small and experiment with new activities and durations and places because we have our whole lives to be physically active. So let's let's invest in learning how to integrate it into our life in ways that we can sustain. Yeah, you're saying that anything is better than nothing. The phrase that I use a lot with coaching clients and on the show is that a little bit of something is

better than a lot of nothing. Um, which is that basic idea, like, you know, it's so easy for us to go, well, if I can't get to the gym to do thirty five minutes of running, I don't do anything. And I'm always like anything is better in that case, go walk for five minutes. You can't make it to the whole class that you want to go to, go for half of it, any little bit. And I really like what you're saying is that everything counts kind of

across the day. And this is a practical illustration because I work a lot with people on how do you how do you make these changes and sustain them? And so exercise for me is one where I travel a lot, and so you know, traveling a lot rains chaos on you know, an exercise schedule. So one of the things that I figured out is that one of the places that I go very often it's I do some e

commerce consulting and it's a very large distribution center. And what I found is if I just structure my day in a certain way, I can get ten to twelve thousand steps in a day by adding them up all day. And so for me, that's a way of getting my exercise in even if time doesn't seem to permit. And that's the sort of flexibility I think that you're talking about that allows us to integrate into our lives, because that's really the key is how do we do the

one month, two months, one year, three years? How do we keep doing these things? Yes? And you you know, you're really your point is so important because what I found over the years is that the thing that keeps people starting and stopping instead of sustaining is that they have gold standards. It's about a bull's eye, and on any given day, when you can't meet the bull's eye, you feel like a failure and eventually you stop. But you know, that model, that bullseye model of physical activity

is based on a medical dose. And the reality is is that human beings are lives are so complicated. You know, curveballs come multiple times on most days, and so unless we have the luxury or the type of mindset that thrives with rigidity, you know, where you do everything at the same point. I don't mean rigidity in any kind of negative way. It's just you do you do what you planned every time, and there's no deviation, which a lot of people literally their lives don't permit that to happen.

You have to be flexible in life. And so once we we recognize that flexibility is actually a strategy for success instead of a reaction to failure again, and it changes our our mindset about what's possible. It gives us permission to get creative with those challenges. Those are barriers that are falling down in front of you and stopping

you in your tracks. The opportunities to dance and and be creative with solutions and you know, uh, research suggestion this is I usually talk about this as with regarding our reasons for doing something, but research shows that the frame we use on any you know, on a topic determines how we feel about it. So if we can turn it into a game things not going our way, then we're gonna are are We're gonna broaden our thinking uh and and be able to be more creative. And

there again there's science and theories to support that. Yeah, and and it's an absolute given, Like you said that for most of our lives, we're gonna make a plan, and that plan is going to hold up for about two hours and then you know, we need to be able to adjust. And it's that for me it's a combination of flexibility and a little bit of rigidity. The rigidity is like I want to get this in somehow,

like it's important, I want to do it. The flexibility is when where how you know you say in the book keep the end in mind, and um, I know you're talking a little bit more long term, but for me,

you know, it's that just being flexible. And that's one of the big things that I work and I think you do to work with so many people on is developing and learning that flexibility because none of us have been taught it, you know, and so many of us have the you know, I call it the effort syndrome right where it's like I try and it doesn't go perfectly, and so I give up and then and you refer

to this as the vicious cycle of failure. Yes, so, uh, this cycle you know, I talked about in the in the book and it's it's actually in a free chapter on my website if people are interested. Um, it's called the vicious cycle of failure, and it starts with the wrong why. Research shows that are reasons for initiating any behavior have incredible downstream results on the quality of motivation. We have and whether we stick with the behavior or not.

And so that's what the vicious cycle of failure is. And so logically, if you want to get into the successful cycle of motivation, what where do you start? You start with your why. You change it away from clinical, abstract reasons that might make you feel bad about yourself, even if that's how you've been taught to think about it. Two reasons for change that are about you. What do you care about? What do you want to feel in your day? And once you reframe your reasons, it changes

the downstream effects and motivation. Instead of low quality, unstable motivation, you get high quality, stable motivation. And that's you know, that's the ingredient for sustainability as well. Going back to what you just said about flexibility as well as being able to improvise in life, like we have to improvise with everything. Our kids get sick, a work deadline all of a a sudden comes up. We have to improvise in

all areas of our life pretty much. So even though we do have a goal, we do want to be physically active, if we're not able to improvise with our goals in any area, we won't be able to stick with them. What you're saying, though, is really really important because I think that all these things that you're talking about, I know, work with things besides fitness. These principles are very sound, kind of across the board. You're very focused on and your researches in fitness, but these sort of

things really they apply to behavior change in general. I'm sure when people are hearing us talk about this, this, these ideas they're common sense, they're shaking their heads. The nice thing is that even though they are common sense, there's their backed by fundamental science, and that gives these

ideas even more credibility. We talked about the vicious cycle of failure, which is we start, we stop, we feel bad about it, We start, we stop, we feel bad about it, on and off for you know, years, and that whole process sort of damages our our opinion of ourselves as able to even do it. I think it the more we do that, the you know, the harder it becomes, because we don't even take ourselves seriously sometimes that you know, like here we go again. Um, but

let's talk about the sustainable cycle of self care. What is that? Yes? So that gets us into the third cycle, which is the cycle of sustainability. And this side goal takes us past physical activity to really our own self care and to the recognition and consideration of do we feel even comfortable prioritizing our own self care, our our own our own selves. And you know what I discovered.

The reason I got into this work was because we were doing um research with cancer survivors and you know, people ended the study, they complied, we saw the effects we were, we hypothesized, But when the study was over three months later, we were shocked to discover that despite talking about how great exercise was for their health, participants had stopped exercising because they had more important things to do than their own self care. And think about this.

They committed to exercise for our study, but these cancer survivors when our study ended, they did not feel comfortable committing to their own self care. And that people who had faced a life threatening illness didn't feel comfortable prioritizing their own self care suggested that in society we have a real problem. So this third cycle is about this issue,

it says my work. So my work over the last two decades suggests that we can create a positive feeling about exercise or another self care behavior, we can make it feel like a gift, and actually converting exercise from ature into a gift is incredibly easy to do if you follow the steps in the book. The challenging part is then to go on to say and I am going to prioritize time for that gift. So, for another

example is going to the movies. I Michelle Seeger love going to the movies, but it's not a priority for me, so I almost never go. So we want something to be a gift, something we want to do, but whether we make it a priority and self management self management in our lives is really a completely different and actually more difficult questions. So the third cycle, the sustainable cycle of self care, asks people to step way back away from physical activity and to think about who they are

and the roles they care about. So the why goes from a reason to who I am as a parent, partner, professional, volunteer, seeker. And when my self care behavior, whatever it is, whether it's getting more sleep or changing my DIY, terry habits, or exercising, when my self care behavior aims to fuel who I am, it turns it from simply being something I'd like to do a gift something that helps me feel good to something that I actually need to perform in these roles that I care most about, So it

becomes essential fuel. And when a behavior becomes essential fuel, we stick with it because we know that when we don't fuel our helves, we actually perform worse, and everything we care about and everyone we love um and so it turns the behavior into something profound and deeply meaningful. Then we can legitimately prioritize the behavior once we recognize

those connections. So, in essence, what we're talking about here is taking a behavior like let's just take exercise, and recognizing that it contributes to our mental health, and then recognizing the important role that our mental health plays in who we are, who we want to be as a parent, what kind of parent we want to be, what kind of husband we want to be, how effective we want to be at work. It's it's tying that to that next level of meaning, yes, almost the most profound level

of meaning. How do we contribute to others and the things we want to achieve? But I would dare say it goes beyond our success in our roles to actually how much we enjoy doing them. I mean, think about it, if you are are low energy, or you're in a bad mood when you're talking to a child who might be frustrating or not, or you're just cooking dinner or you're at work. When we do things with energy and

in a better mood, we enjoy things more. So it actually doesn't just lend itself to contributing more to the world into being more successful, but actually to being happier

because we're enjoying everything we do that much more, right right. Absolutely, I think for people that have a hard time saying I'm important, that recognition that as an interim step that doing this makes me better with my kids is a really powerful one because then it's you can step away at least I think from the being selfish and recognizing like, no, this is really important, it's it's actually you know, it's a gift and help to them also absolutely, and you know,

if you listen to an interview by with Adam Grant and Christa Tippett on on being she asks him about this issue about being a giver and he discusses the nuances actually that the most successful givers are actually people who make sure to get their own needs taken care of first, so it's wonderful to be a giver, but if we don't fuel ourselves, then we really do have

that much less to give and to contribute. So it's actually not counterintuitive and and hopefully will help people who are challenged in this area know that it's not just a gift you're giving to yourself, but you actually are giving it to everyone else as well. So we're running near to the end of time. But I've got a couple of quick things that I would like to touch on. UM,

integrate one new behavior at a time. UM. This is sort of an equivalent to us saying, you know, we say start small and connect the dots, but let's let's talk about you know, why is integrating one new behavior

UM a really useful way to approach these things? Well, if if we begin with the end in mind, and that one of the six big ideas in the in the book towards the end of the book, if we begin with end in mind, which is sustainability or forever consistency is another way of thinking about it, then we have to actually learn the ins and outs of sticking with and being consistent with that behavior through the ebbs and flows of life and seasons of life, sickness semesters,

in school, work deadlines, et cetera. We actually it takes our cognitive energy and time um to to do it, to see what gets in the way, to pay enough attention to what gets in our way. So the next time we are so we can make a mental note and say, oh gee, this is what happened. Next time I get to this point, I'm going to do B instead of A. Human beings have a limited cognitive capacity.

So how on earth can we learn to change to more than one complicated behavior at a time when we are working and taking care of our families and potentially aging parents and trying to do a B and C. So we simply don't most of us. There are some talented people who probably you know, have a lot of more cognitive resources than most of us. We simply don't have the energy and attention to dedicate to learning how

to sustain more than one complicated behavior at a time. Right, And I think it's a lot easier when you're trying to do a lot of things to start falling apart in a couple of them and give up on the whole endeavor. So the last thing I want to talk about and I had. It was a really interesting concept in the book that I looked at, and I thought it was interesting the way yours and your husbands were different.

But let's talk about what the self care hierarchy is, because I think that was an idea I had never seen before and I thought was really interesting. Sure, the self care hierarchy, you know, came out of my work with people. And I'll give you an example. A woman contacted me. This was many years ago, and she said to me, Michelle, I would like to start x A sizing, and so part of my client intake is to ask some questions that help me assess what's going on with people.

And after the assessment, I said to this woman, I said, wow, you're getting four and a half hours of sleep every night. You know, I'm not really sure physical activity is the is the behavior, the foundational self care behavior that's most appropriate to work on, because you told me you're sleep deprived and you feel terrible and you overeat because of it. So through those you know, through that assessment, we figured out that sleep was truly on the foundation of her

self care pyramid. She wanted to be physically active, but if she didn't start getting more sleep that was going to undermine her physical activity goal too. So the self care hierarchy is the idea that we all have some fundamental self care behavior that if we don't get it, we are not going to have a good day. And many people may not be aware about what that is. And I think for many people it is sleep and

they just don't know it. Um. But for other people like my husband, and he's very clear that it's not sleep, that it's physical activity because he knows he feels terrible if he doesn't exercise, but he he doesn't feel nearly as bad even if he doesn't get, you know, very much sleep. So it's incumbent upon people and potentially the coaches they work with, like you, to identify what is that behavior that I'm not getting that if I got it it would truly radicalize my day for the better exactly.

I think that's such a great, great thing to learn and understand about ourselves. So, Michelle, thank you so much for taking the time to come on. We will have links to your website, links to your book um, as well as a download of a couple of quotes from your book that I really loved. At one you feed dot net slash Michelle and that way people can find you and get to your website. I highly recommend the whole book. I I thought it was I thought it was wonderful. Well, thank you so much. It was just

a pleasure to speak with you today. Okay, take care you too. Okay. Bite. You can learn more about Michelle Seeger and this podcast at one you Feed, dot net slash Michelle