“What makes them different?” I asked myself.
What do they know that everyone else does not? That was the question I asked myself while filming a row of hard-bodied women’s figure competitors at the Natural Western USA Bodybuilding, Fitness and Figure contest in Phoenix.
Almost 100 women with washboard abs and toned arms strutted on and off the stage that morning. They ranged from house wives to single mom’s with careers to single-twenty-somethings.
The women far outnumbered the men at this contest who also ranged in age from teens to fifties.
In a country with epidemic obesity and a $15 Billion dollar diet industry, why is it that some people like the men and women on the stage that morning achieve the pinnacle of mastering their bodies through diet and exercise while the rest fail to even lose 15 pounds on the latest diet craze?
I was in Phoenix that morning specifically filming one female competitor who had been trained by professional fitness competitor Nita Marquez for the pilot episode of Inside The Muscle.
Ali Stewart had given birth to her second son 10 months earlier and now she was standing on stage in a bikini looking absolutely stunning. Her stomach was flat and hard, her arms were toned and without a trace of fat, firm shapely legs led up to high, round rear-end.
In the previous months I filmed Ali as she trained with Nita and ate a controlled diet to reshape her body. The training and diet principles used by nearly every successful physique competitor are outline in my book ‘Fit for Combat.’ Ali, as she went through the process, always commented on how simple it was. Not easy mind you, but definately not very complex.
While watching Ali and the other competitors that morning what I really wanted to figure out is what made them different psychologically? What made them so self-disciplined?
What I found is that their success had very little to do with the self discipline to never miss a workout and the will power to deprive themselves of certain foods.
“Eighty-percent of it is between a person’s ears,” Nita told me. “I can teach a person everything they need to know in the technical sense, but they have to see it and believe before they can achieve it.”
For the athletes on stage that day, working out and eating a strict diet became the opposite of what we think of as self discipline–it became enjoyable.
DISCIPLINE DECEPTION
Is a person’s amount of self discipline a ’set’ thing? Do people only have so much, or can they increase their self-discipline?
How does a person’s view on the amount of self discipline affect their abilities to keep a resolution or achieve a goal?
The first two questions are subject to multiple competing answers, but professors Anirban Mukhopadhyay and Gita Venkataramani Johar found the answer to the last.
I their study, ‘Where There Is a Will, Is There a Way? Effects of Lay Theories of Self Control on Setting and Keeping Resolutions’ published in the Journal of Consumer Research, the professors found that people who think self-discipline is finite and something a person cannot change set fewer resolutions and quit them earlier than people who though they could increase their self control.
They found that people who see themselves as being self disciplined set more resolutions and kept them more often than those who rated their discipline lower.
The intriguing part of the study was when they provided information to test subjects showing that self control was finite, that a person could not increase their discipline. After being told self control and discipline were ’set’ or ‘limited’ those subjects set fewer resolutions and gave up on them sooner.
Self control and self discipline are really a matter of self perception. You can increase your self control and self discipline to achieve your goals. Self control is not some fixed thing, you can have as much of it as you want.
Some of the physique athletes I have encountered built up their reserve of self displine. Most of them saw someone they know preparing for a contest and said, ‘geez, if they can do it, I can too.’
They saw their friend who was totally undisciplined in a dozen other aspects be disciplined and realized, ‘if that guy can do it, I can too.’
Thinking they did not have enough self discipline was self deception.
Everyone has enough self discipline to achieve their goals, but what really seperated the men and women competing that morning in Phoenix from everyone else was not overcoming the discipline deception–it was a complete reversal of how they thought about training and eating a strict diet.
TRIGGERS
Deep inside the brain, at the top of the brain stem is the ventral tegmental area (VTA).
The VTA is where the reward network is located and works in conjunction with the nucleus accumbens, amygdala, septum and prefrontal cortex.
The brain’s structure, like our reserves of will power, is not static. The brain’s internal neural networks are changed with every input we receive and thought we have.
Every sensory input, memory, thought and sensation is part of the network structure that changes all the time.
Neurologists call this neuroplasticity and it is the plasticity of the brain that changed the way the competitors on stage that morning in Phoenix thought about working out and eating.
“It is all about getting the right trigger,” said Lisa Krog. “When I can get a client to self-trigger they see everything differently.”
Lisa and her husband Glen own a high-tech personal training facility in Johannesburg, South Africa. Their expertise is in extreme body recomposition–taking regular people and transforming them into people who do well on the stage of physique contest.
The tools they use range from complex devices that measure metabolic rate through oxygen exchange, precise body fat calculations using multiple measuring methods and even having clients visit a doctor for a complete blood work up.
Lisa is a task master of trainer who makes Jillian Michaels of ‘Biggest Loser’ fame look mellow.
Even with all the high tech tools, gym equipment, diet plans and supervision in the gym, Lisa says it still comes down to the trigger of the pleasure center.
In the 1950s researchers James Olds and Peter Milner put electrical implants into the pleasure centers of the rat’s brains. When the rats pushed a lever, the electrodes were activated sending the sensation of pleasure through the lab rats. What Olds and Milner found is that rats would do nothing but push the lever foregoing food and water until they died of dehydration.
Trigger starts in the prefrontal cortex where inputs are processed and the brain makes a quick decision: Is this good or bad, positive or negative, do I like this or not?
If it is good or positive, the pleasure centers of the VTA are stimulated. The more often and more powerful the sensation of pleasure is associated the input or action the more often it will be repeated.
The neural network is wired over time to associate the actions and input with pleasure.
“If you put a some of my clients in an MRI and did word association with training and diet, I bet their brains would light up,” Lisa said.
If there is a precise study showing that, I haven’t found it, but it does provide a frame work for understanding my many conversations with physique athletes who talk about how despite the deprivations, they enjoy the strict diet for contest preparation and the regimented lifestyle.
If anything finding and establishing the trigger is the key to Lisa’s success as a trainer, her best clients see the training and controlled eating plan as a pleasurable.
Developing that trigger to flip the training and diet to pleasure is something most people are capable of doing themselves.
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PROGRAMMING THE PLASTIC BRAIN
Much like how the reseviors of self-control and self-discipline can be manipulated, much of how people perceive the world can be manipulated through rewiring of the neural networks.
The concept of neuroplasticity is not new, the first study of it was started nearly 120 years ago, but with advances in brain imagery it is now more accepted.
The human brain is not a magnetic hard drive like in the computer I am typing on, it is a network of billions of neurons with every memory being a physical structure. Every thought, sensory input and action effects the physical structure.
“What you tell yourself, how you associate and correlate what you eat affects how you think about the diet,” Nita said.
If you associate eating eggs, chicken breasts and green salad with the feeling of looking good in a swimsuit, then the eating a clean diet becomes a positive thing. If a person focuses on how exhilerating it will feel to go to the pool or a beach with a firm body, that gradually changes the neural network.
The reverse is also true when a person focuses on the foods they have to give up and the time they have to spend exercising.
The behavioral economists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman’s ground breaking work in Prospect Theory and the framing effect shows that people will forgo many positive outcomes (looking good in a swimsuit) for fear of losing things (eating cupcakes).
They also found in their studies that with a change in words, or the frame, people will choose the positive outcome if they see not having it as a loss.
To flip the frame requires not just putting a higher value on looking good in a swimsuit, but implanting the trigger and creating a neural network that associates eating the cupcake with losing the beach body.
When I was filming Nita working with her clients I saw her flip the frame constantly. Recently I saw Nita walk a person through the re-framing and trigger process via instant messenger in a very subtle way.
Kristine is in her mid-forties. She has exercised her whole life and is blessed with fantastic genetics. She came to Nita and I with a goal–washboard abs by Memorial day 2010.
Kristine, like many resolutioneers, expected us to tell her to do this or that and send her on her way. But we took a more winding path.
“Why do you want washboard abs?” I asked.
This stumped Kristine for a second. “Because they look good,” she typed.
“Why do want to look that good?”
“To be more confident. I’ve had body image problems.”
“What will it feel like to look that good with washboard abs?”
“Confident. A super-cougar.”
“What will it feel like when you see them in the mirror?”
“Amazing. Hard to imagine.”
“Try to imagine. How amazing will it feel?”
This type of exchange repeated itself throughout the chat as I told her that she needed to follow the steps in book Nita and I wrote.
The goal was to get Kristine to start feeling the sensation of achieving her goal, to flip the frame and form a new neural network around how ‘amazing’ it will be to have the look she wants–to give her ownership of a sensation. Eating cupcakes and not working out would lead to a loss of the ‘amazing’ feeling. As Kahneman and Tversky’s theory shows in experiments people value what they own more than the prospect of getting more.
“Linguistic awareness is important. Whenever one my athletes is preparing for a contest and complains about the diet, I start asking them about how great it will feel to be on stage,” Nita said.
I saw her do that time and again with Ali, other clients and any of the competitors she bumped into at the gym. She always asked, “What will it feel like to look great on stage? What will you be thinking at that moment?”
After nearly half an hour of online chat with Kristine another reason why she wanted washboard abs came out–Revenge.
The cougar Kristine wanted to flaunt in front of an ex-boyfriend she was almost certain to see at the lake on Memorial day.
“What will be like to show off your abs in a bikini? How great will that day at the lake feel?” Nita asked.
“Perfect. Better than anything I’ve ever felt before,” came the instant reply.
Flipping the frame is not just for competitive physique athletes or revenge motivated cougars, it is for everyone who wants to succeed in their fitness oriented resolutions.
How great will feel to fit into those jeans again? How great will it feel to go for a bike ride with your kids? How much more fun will going to the beach or the pool be? How amazing will it feel to accomplish your goal?
Nita says resolutionners “are very optimistic at the idea of the goal being achieved, but they want results overnight, and when they fail to see this, they become unmotivated and uninterested, and therefore more
distracted by other activities and life needs such that they fail to prioritize working out as highly as initial intentions conceded to.”
In other words, their frame is wrong or their neural networks are not strong enough. They don’t find a trigger and soon see it all as a futile effort and put higher value on cupcakes and watching Law & Order reruns.
“If they sustain a positive frame, are linguistically aware of what they tell themselves and can flip from drudgery to pleasure, they will stick with it.”
Once the framing is at work, the trigger is primed. It then becomes a matter of finding it.
THAT’S SHIT HOT, RIGHT?
The trigger starts with an input and is processed through the pre-frontal cortex before the ventral tegmental area (VTA) goes to work on the pleasure reward.
Humans, just like James Olds and Peter Milner’s electrode implanted rats, will continue to engage in pleasureable activities to get the reward. If resolutioneers could be implanted and shocked in the VTA every time they exercised or ate food in their diet they would within a few years all resemble the cast of American Gladiators.
I doubt many of the resolutioneers will be implanted, but even the act of exercising starts to form one of the strongest triggers.
A study by Heather Hausenblas published in the Journal of Health Psychology finds that the mere act of exercising makes people think they look better–even if they do not look better. These results partially explain why some people will continue to exercise regularly for years with no discernable results–they think their workout is working, they think they look better or they have flipped their frame. (How to find the workout for your goals is the subject of the next article in the Resolutioneers Project.)
Another explanation of the effect Hausenblas found relates to prospect theory. Kahneman and Tversky found that people weigh decisions based on the status quo. A person’s workout may not be improving their appearance, but quitting exercising will almost assuredly result in weight gain and loss of muscle tone.
Hausenblas says 60% of adults don’t like the way their bodies look. The billions of dollars spent on various pills, powders and potions are to improve physical appearance.
“People workout and diet to look better, period,” Lisa says. The only exception being the people who exercise purely for cardiac or blood pressure management, “and those are rare” she adds.
The pleasure trigger is almost always associated with physical appearance.
To watch Lisa train a client is to witness a carefully constructed act of passive aggressive behaviour akin to that of a Marine Drill instructor–tough love leavened with occasional tacit praise.
At the right moment the praise is elevated to excitment.
Lisa picks the client’s best body part, be it arms, legs, chest, it does not matter, then imperceptibly positions them at an angle and in a way the light enhances their appearance then spontaneously gushes a compliment.
“Look at your triceps, the back of your arms, that is sexy! Your arms look shit hot babe!” Lisa will a squeal in elation.
In most instances Lisa compliments the men and her husband Glen compliments the women. They are a handsome couple with sculpted physiques and use the seemingly flirtatious praise to set the trigger.
The compliment of looking hot is associated with the gym, with working out, the neural networks in the pre-frontal cortex decide working out is a positive thing, the VTA goes to work delivering a reward of pleasure.
“It takes repetition, over and over again,” Lisa said, “but it begins to click with each bit of progress then training and diet becomes a lekker jol.” A good time in South African slang. The pleasure circuit kicks in, exercise and a controlled eating plan become their own reward.
Any progress, with the right frame, will help reinforce the pleasure reward and a person does not need to have an elite personal trainer to help them.
As Nita said, many resolutioneers quit because they want dramatic, unrealistic results right now. When those results don’t come they get frustrated, bored and give up. Yet as Hausenblas’ study points out and the studies on self-control show, the brain can easily be tricked–people can even trick themselves.
Taking a cue from the often misleading before and after pics on diet products and bodybuilding supplements Lisa suggests taking progress pictures.
In the advertisements for diet products the before picture is not just of person who is overweight–it is a horrible photograph all the way around. The lighting is bad, the clothing is awkward, the hair is uncombed. The after picture is well lit, the clothing is perfect for that person, hair is styled.
For people who want to look better on the beach, Lisa would have them put on a bathing suit they have no business wearing and take the worst looking photo possible just like the before pictures in a diet ad. Every other progress pic should be with better lighting, hair combed and more flattering attire.
But what about knowing you intentionally took a horrible photo?
“I’m always counting on people’s ability at self deception to keep them motivated,” Lisa says.
That is just like Hausenblas’ study the subjects thought they looked better, even if they didn’t. The frame shifts and it keeps people at least on track, going to the gym. Just seeing a picture of yourself looking better after a few weeks of exercise can be enough “then it is only a matter of getting them to train and eat smarter,” Lisa said.
What made the women and men on stage at the Natural Western USA Bodybuilding, Fitness and Figure contest in Phoenix different from everyone else was how they framed the training and diet and how that led to a pleasure trigger in their brains.
They came from diverse backgrounds, genetics and starting points but all wound up on the same stage. They succeeded because they framed the diet and training as a positive, a net gain rather than work and deprivation. They focused on the pleasure of the end goal and became self triggering.
When people have the 80% mental aspect in place, the technical aspect of doing the right workout and eating the right foods is just matter of simple math that will be the subject of the next article in the Resolutioneers Project.
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