28 May Episode #332: Michelle Segar, Ph.D, MS, MPH
Pete Moore: This is Pete Moore wanted to officially announce the release of Time To Win Again: 52 Takeaways From Team Sports To Ensure Your Business Success. I wrote this book over the last year. I think you’re going to love it. Good to great meets wears Waldo pick ’em up for your team. Time to win in 2022. Happy to come to your club, your studio, your company, and talk about ways we can optimize business and win going forward. Go HALO!
Pete Moore: Dr. Michelle Lynn Segar from Michigan directly into the halo sector with a book and content that is much needed. The Joy Choice, how to finally achieve lasting changes in eating exercise is something that everyone needs to start to focus on post pandemic. So Doctor, good to have you on the show and look forward to the book launch.
Dr. Michelle Segar: Oh, great. Thanks. It’s so wonderful to be here.
Pete Moore: Awesome. So obviously the I think the average weight gain over the pandemic was somewhere between 20 to 25 pounds. The bricks and mortar locations are now just celebrated their in dependence day for masks. So no one has an excuse for not getting back into their routine. So maybe talk first about your background why you spent the last couple years, you know, making sure that this content and these life choices are, are easily laid out and people could start to have sustainable change that they’re looking for.
Dr. Michelle Segar: Sure. Absolutely. And yes, it has been a trying, it has been a devastating time for people in the industry and it’s so great that we’re starting to come out of it. My background is, is in how to create sustainable. What typically are called healthy behaviors, but I refer to them as self-care behaviors, like exercise and healthy eating, getting enough sleep. And I call them self-care behaviors because ultimately isn’t that what we’re trying to do with these behaviors. So I’ve been studying these questions both as from an academic research perspective, but most importantly as a health coach, I’ve been working with people in the true nitty gritty of their lives in ways that the academic research can’t reach. So I’m excited to talk to you about what I’ve learned from this both bottom up and top down on perspective that can hopefully help your listeners better engage and inspire and, and keep the members that they’re aiming for the other 80 percenters. If I, is that, what is that? The term?
Pete Moore: Yeah, we’ve got 80 percenters that we’re trying to get under are yes, healthy, active lifestyle. You know, you use a couple words that not many people do when they think about eating and exercising, you talk about conflicts. So kind of maybe rewind and take us back to, you know, how you came to that term because it’s definitely stronger than what people both typically use.
Dr. Michelle Segar: Sure. You know, the, the deal is, is that most people have tried so many times over the last DEC, many decades to people I’m talking about consumers members, clients try to change their behavior and exercise more exercise regularly. But, but ultimately what happens, and this happens often is we face an unexpected conflict or challenge to what we planned to do. We thought we were going to get to the gym for that class at right after work. But our boss knocks on the door and comes in and just derails that class we were hoping to get to, or on an eating perspective, we, you know, we’re following a plan. We thought the restaurant we were going to with our family was going to have that salad bar closed. What do we do? So I call these conflicts because they are what we bump up against all the time. And it and people pretty much, because we’ve all been to, to have all enough, nothing thinking when it comes to healthy eating and exercise, the nothing takes over. And then people feel like failures and the whole behavior change project gets derailed. So that’s why I’m proposing that. We’ve got to focus on how and more adaptive, positive, and effective ways advocate these conflicts, because that is what determines whether we stick with these changes over time or not.
Pete Moore: Yeah, sure. I mean, in the book you use the term P O P or pop with the pause, open up, play, you know, talk us through how that acronym kind of came to being and, and how people implement that.
Dr. Michelle Segar: Sure. so what you’re referring to is the pop decision tool. And here’s, here’s how I think about it. We let’s go back to the example of that exercise plan that, and our boss walks in and guess what? Our bubble, our exercise bubble gets burst by our boss. We can’t do what we had planned to do conflict. Oh, how can we reframe this? So we can actually harness our innate brain self-management system to do this right. Well, let’s call it a choice point. It didn’t happen to us. It’s not a barrier. Let’s call this a choice point where we have an opportunity to make a choice that keeps us on track. And the way we do that is we have to understand how the brain works. I’m not going to go into that right now, but I created an acronym that is easy for people to, to remember at these choice points.
Dr. Michelle Segar: And so instead of letting life or your boss burst your exercise bubble, guess what you’re going to take charge, and you’re going to pop it yourself so that you can do something instead of nothing and popped is when we pause, why do we pause? Well, that actually lets us harness our attention and, and not be in a reactive mode. But be in a thoughtful, intentional mode and pausing lets us do that. Then once we go, okay, this is a choice point. What else could I do? Well, that’s the next step. It’s open up your options and play and, and we can play and create a bunch of options. What could we do? Let’s just re quickly. I haven’t thought of this before. Let me come up with a few options. We can open up and play with, well, we could go to part of the class who cares.
Dr. Michelle Segar: If we walk in late, we could go to the gym and do something else. Anyway, we could walk outside. We could decide to go home early and, and NA a couple kids and take a, a, a run. There are so many different opportunities and possibilities to, but instead of thinking about is success or fail. Let’s think about it in with curiosity and play with them. And then the third step of pop while we need another P what is it? We’re going to pick the joy choice. And that is the name of my book. And the reason why I am calling imperfect option or what I call the perfect imperfect option, the joy choice, because jeez, OE, if we can do something, instead of not nothing, not only is that a success, but it lets us keep us in sync in some way, shape or form with our self-care, which then lets us stay in sync with the things we care most about. So let’s pop our plan, let’s pop our plan so we can do something instead of nothing.
Pete Moore: Yeah. I think you have a lot of people that say, well, if I can’t get to the gym for 45 minutes or an hour, then it’s basically not why bother no, a robust workout. So I’ll just skip it. Or you have somebody that says, you know, oh, I’m, I’m a couple minutes late for that class. I don’t necessarily, you know, want to walk in and, and, you know, potentially embarrass myself or, you know, feel like I’m, I’m somehow disrespectful, you know? So maybe there should be more encouragement to have people come in whenever they want to and take away some of the stigmas related to it and kind of you, I having more of an hour court
Dr. Michelle Segar: Absolutely. I mean, imagine the difference if there were signs above the exercise classrooms that say, come on in anytime, because anything is always better than nothing. So how easy would that be to implement? Think about that from a messaging per
Pete Moore: I think it, yeah, I think the yeah, I used do a lot of soul cycle classes and you know, there is something about getting into a rhythm and not being, you know, disrupted. So I think maybe spin classes are one thing because of dark room and people are in the zone, but yes, if you take a look at 80% of the classes they’re done with the lights on, they’re done in a functional training area, there’s really no reason why somebody can’t just come in whenever they want. And almost like a, you know, we used to use a term back in camp. It’s kind of like free play. Yes. You know, so whenever you’re available, just, just kind of step in and, you know, we might do arts and crafts one day, we might play a little ultimate Frisbee. I’m going to throw out some, one of the things I like to do, flag football, tackle football.
Pete Moore: So I, I hear you on that. You know, as part of your research, you kind of you, you spend a fair amount of time either quoting or, or harkening back to research by Kurt Lewin with every choice there’s a driver, you know, give us a little bit of descriptor related to what you think the key drivers are, the key drivers related to, it’s easier to do nothing than do something. You know, if I have an opportunity to be lazy, let me be lazy. You know, what, what are like the, the, the, the root cause or, you know, the essence of the essence, you know, sure about those.
Dr. Michelle Segar: So, you know, it’s, it’s never too late to circle back and find the best, the best ideas that can help people succeed long term and can help Jim’s thrive long term. And Kurt Lewin is one of these people who had amazing ideas and this space, we’re going to talk about the driver and disruptor, but this space is referred to a life space. So let’s go back to the original example. Cause I think it’s really helpful. We’re at the point we can’t go, we can’t get to on time to our class. That’s a choice point, right in that moment is the, is, is a decision and a choice that how are we going to address this choice point? And according to Lewin, we bring our life space to that. And so the life space, isn’t just that class, that was 60 minutes or the fact that our boss needs us, but it’s our past experiences coming in late to a class or deciding not to go to a class.