By Dr Christian Thoma

You want to know the truth about what to do, eat, drink, believe. At least I suspect you do. I certainly do. But where should that truth come from? Maybe from a book, an authority, an ‘expert’, deep meditation? That’s your choice, and when it comes to the really big questions it’s tough for some of us. 

When it comes to what to eat, how to exercise and other important health-related topics, I say find your own truth.

Now I love science. I’m a scientist. My blog posts are sometimes more heavily referenced than articles published in scientific journals. But it’s because of that experience and rigour that I know the limits of published research. 

The focus in research is often on the average. That means you loose out on seeing that some people responded one way and some another to the same treatment, diet, exercise programme, etc. 

Read more on that in: What science really tells us about how to be healthy

We are all cut form slightly different cloths, we have different genetics (nature), and we have different experiences and live in different environments (nurture). Our nature and our nurture can interact in exceedingly complex ways. Change one thing in our environment and it can be like a drop in a glass or a drop in an ocean, or something in-between.

Read more on how this relates specifically to nutrition in: Nutrition isn’t rocket science, it’s much more complicated! Part 1

I believe you should use science though. Not rely on the discoveries of science, not entirely anyway, but employ the scientific method. In it’s simplest form this means observe, test, change, and retest. 

People are desperate to explain things to you. They come up with elaborate explanations, diagrams, infographics etc. to connect the dots between input x and outcome y. 


Testing if x does cause y is often easy. How or why often isn't. Does a hammer blow to your thumb (x) cause pain (y)? Probably, unless you have some kind of nerve damage. So x causes y, but how? 

I love learning the how, but know there’s always a good chance the explanation is somewhat, or even very, wrong and just waiting to be disproved. Also, unless you are employed in research, you’ll never be able to test any explanation thoroughly anyway. 

You might assume that if someone tells you that if you do x, then z happens, and that causes y, and you then do x and get y, z is correct. Maybe it is and the explanation is true, but the explanation doesn't have to be true. Something working doesn't prove that the explanation for how it works is correct.

Save yourself time and energy by avoiding people who insistent that they know the absolute truth of things like diet and exercise. Anyone not willing to admit that people vary and have different needs, is missing a key part of their education.

Spend your energy on testing if x causes y for you. Does this exercise help you to do what you want it to? Does this dietary approach work for you, in the long-run?

Importantly, are you doing the exercise, diet, technique the way you are supposed to? That one you might need outside help with. 

In other words, become a scientist and observe, test, change, and re-test. Repeat until you get the results you can be content with.

Others can help you, professionals can provide you a foundation from which to explore and access to tests you wouldn’t otherwise get. Professionals can help keep you safe too. But no one will ever take as much interest in what works for you as you, at least not unless you have the kind of money that lets you outsource such a huge chunk of your life. 

So if you get outside help, get it from someone who recognises that you are a collaborator, a fellow scientists trying to find what works for you.

Just don’t become like so many modern day prophets who have the answer. Finding your truth is not having an opinion and then loudly proclaiming your right to it – opinions are like noses, we all have one, but some are crooked. That’s not the real saying, but this is a polite blog. Find your truth, but question it like any scientific theory should be questioned, and make changes when necessary.

So, once again observe, test, change, and re-test. 

By Dr Christian Thoma 

Upfront Summary:

1. Set a theme to help you bring everything else, especially your goals, values, and priorities into alignment.
2. Be clear why you chose your theme and related goals. Why are they important to you, and what would you get from being successful?

3. Know what you are prepared and not prepared to give up for your goals.
4. Have a plan that is firmly grounded in reality, and keep it a little flexible.
5. Practice applying a growth mindset that recognises that with consistency of practice, you can overcome any lack of talent or absence of past success.

The new year always brings changes, and for many people it also brings new year’s resolutions. Of course any day is a good day to resolve to take on something new, or give up something old, but this time of year makes many of us reflect more than we do at other times. Where is our career, business, health, happiness etc. going? How is our life shaping  up?

The truth is that we change all the time, at least in little ways. Time and circumstance change us. The pace of change is faster and faster as the world changes ever more quickly, especially in terms of technology. What never changes is that we really just want to be happy. What differs from person to person and from moment to moment is our definition of happiness and our strategies for achieving it. Let’s assume then that any resolutions you make or even think about making somehow relate to a desire to be happy. We can then work from there to go over some things you can do to be among those who succeed in their resolutions.

Set a theme for the year and seek alignment

We can only do so much, and the more our goals and values align, the easier it is to make progress. Choose a core theme for the coming year. What is most important to you? What do you want the bulk of your efforts to go toward, e.g. family, health, business, achieving work/life balance... 

Of course things in life sometimes compete, at any moment you can do this or that. Hence it’s important to look at your whole life and think about how one thing, especially goals and strategies to achieve those goals align with each other and your values and priorities. If there is a lot of conflict, you’ll need to start resolving what can be resolved. Having a theme gives you a framework for resolving issues.

A theme will also help you align things more than just having individual goals. If health is your theme and being more active is a key strategy, then look for ways of getting physical activity into your life without it regularly competing with other goals and priorities, e.g:

• Get a desk you can stand and sit at to do work;
  
• Pick active ways to spend time with family and friends like going for walks in nature or at museums/galleries, fun on the beach or in the snow, playing a sport etc.
• Take up a hobby/way to relax that has you moving, e.g. home improvement projects, doing art that has you standing and moving your arms, take up tai chi or gentle yoga etc.
• Exercise, but realise this shouldn't be the totality of you being physically active.

Help yourself by seeking out inspiration in what you read, listen to, and/or watch. Just be careful you don’t settle for being a spectator; you'll need to be a participant because what you do matters more than what you know.

Basically, the more different aspects and areas of your life align with each other and your theme, the more efficiently you can use your finite time and other resources to get what you truly want out of life. So spend some time brainstorming how you can achieve greater alignment.

What’s your motivation and what are your assumptions?

A resolution is usually something we want to change, although wanting to maintain something positive is just as worthy a goal as any other. Your chances of success go up tremendously when you are clear on if and why the change is important to you. What do you really want from achieving your goal of weight loss, making more money, being fitter, improving your health etc. How do you imagine your life would be different if you succeeded? How would your life be if you didn’t succeed? 

When you’re faced with choices that are likely to affect your success with your goal, recall your reasons for your theme and goals, visualise the positive outcome of making the decision that is in line with your goals/theme. It’s hard to say no to something that will be pleasurable in the short-term when the benefits of saying no are in the distant future. By visualising that distant future clearly, you’ll be making a fairer comparison. 

Focus on the positive results. This isn’t about trying to guilt yourself into anything. Guilt sucks willpower and the ability to make rational decisions. The only thing guilt is good at is helping you come up with excuses. Whatever your choice in any given instance, be that to stick to your goal or deviate from it, stay positive and recommit to what you want in the long-term!

What are you prepared to give up?

Themes and goals are different from wishes. Wishes are for Christmas and birthdays, themes and goals are for the rest of the time. A wish is about something being given to you. Whereas a goal is about earning something. We'd all like to be healthy, successful, and comfortable, what differs is what we are prepared to do to achieve those things.

It’s unfortunate that the word sacrifice is so often viewed negatively, because every moment we are making sacrifices and gaining rewards. But OK, let’s go with the word trade. When we go to a store/shop, we expect to trade our money for a product or service. Achieving goals is no different. Obtaining a goal or living consistent with a theme is all about trading time, money, effort, short-term pleasure, or even the absence of discomfort for something else. If we have appropriate goals and we achieve them, then we may reap the benefits in terms of money, reduced effort, long-term satisfaction, and/or greater comfort. Often though these benefits are in the future.

The question you are looking to answer is what is the goal/theme worth to you and what isn’t it worth? Having the answer to this question will give you an insight as to whether you are even prepared to go to any regular effort at all. The answer also helps you decide what you are most prepared to invest. Do you have lots of time to do and learn what you need to do and learn? Do you have the finances to outsource some aspects of the goal/theme such as by hiring a coach? Do you want to outsource some of your responsibilities to free up time to dedicate to a theme/set of goals? And basically, how can you make this work for you?

Be SMART with your goals

A theme has it’s strength in being a little bit vague and therefore flexible, a goal is best when it has more concrete borders. You need to know what you’re aiming for, when you are getting closer/further away, and when you’ve reached your goal and it’s time for a new one. You also want to be able to clearly identify if a given goal becomes unreasonable. To help with this follow the acronym SMART, which just tells you that your goals should be:

1. Specific - what and by when;
2. Measurable;
3. Achievable – be realistic, you need to have the resources and confidence to achieve the goal;
4. Results-focused – this is about the destination not the journey (we discuss that below);
5. Time-bound – tomorrow is always a day away, so set a date and evaluate your progress  and process against that date.

Focus on the process

Even if your goal is realistic, the exact strategy to achieve it in the set time is unlikely to be 100% clear. Some people need to do more or different exercise to others, some respond better to one nutrition strategy than another, and our subtle differences don’t stop there. What is true for everyone is that if you follow a halfway appropriate – to you – strategy consistently, you’ll reap substantial benefits. So, along with any measurable outcome goal, e.g. body fat reduction, reducing reliance on medication, improved fitness etc., set some process related goals. How many – be realistic – exercise sessions will you do this year, month, week? How consistently will you stick to having minimally processed, mostly low-to-no sugar meals/snacks? How many times a week will you meditate or do some other form of focused relaxation?

If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail

Make a plan. What do you need to know, have, and do to live consistent with your theme and in line with your goals? Make it as easy as you can by planning ahead. 

There will be temptations, so find the tools and develop the skills to help you deal with them. Give your goals careful consideration. If they aren’t worth the effort of some introspection, reflection, and planning, then they are unlikely to be worth putting in any other sort of effort. 

Be adaptable

As important as it is to do some planning, we need to include some leeway. Life is unpredictable, and success stays with those who can adapt. Adapting may mean failing and then trying again, or changing course part way through to make the most of an opportunity. If you stick to your chosen theme by always asking does this choice fit with my theme, you’ll reach your destination even if the journey takes a few unplanned turns. 

Adopt a growth mindset

Succeeding at something we don’t really believe we can succeed at, is fairly unlikely. One way of thinking that makes us doubt ourselves is to assume we lack some inborn talent or characteristic needed to reach a specific goal. Another barrier to success is the assumption that just because we haven’t been successful with our goal in the past, we never will be, e.g. we haven’t been able to maintain a healthy weight so we believe this is out of reach.

The secret to success lies in recognising that we can overcome a lack of talent, can acquire a desired characteristic, and can succeed where we previously failed by adopting  a growth mindset. People with a growth mindset recognise that characteristics can be developed, skills learned through practice, and success achieved when we keep learning and keep practicing. Just because you haven’t achieved something yet, doesn’t mean you can’t.

Apply these principles and enjoy a year of living the life you want.

By Christian Thoma BSc MSc PhD ACSM-Certified Clinical Exercise Specialist

Last week yet another scientific paper was published saying that popular dietary approaches — Zone, Atkins, and Weight Watchers – are more less equal when it comes to helping people shed the excess fat and keep it of (1). Looking at the results, we'd have to conclude that they are all equally bad. The people who have been arguing that it's all just about calorie restriction now have another piece of evidence to wave about to back their argument. When these same people are scientists, this is disappointing. As someone who has done formal research in academic and government settings, I know first had that something very important gets lost in the numbers. That something is just how individual people's responses to diet, exercise, medication, and other things actually are. Seems intuitive yet we, at least in science, keep forgetting this important truth.

If you read an actual research paper looking at diet, exercise, or behaviour change approaches, or even drug trials, you'll see lots of numbers. The numbers will mostly be in the form of means, in other words averages. Not everyone is going to be average and get average results, so researchers often also report a number that hints at the variation around the average, for example standard deviations, as in something deviates or is different from the average. This statistics jargon isn’t that widely understood and so conveniently disappears from the news headlines. What gets lost with this approach is the detail, detail that often shows that a given dietary approach, exercise method, drug, etc. worked much better for some than it did for others. Put another way, we focus so hard on the map that we forget about the rich detail of the actual territory.  

Formal research isn't geared to finding the right approach for you, it's trying to find the approach that if used on everyone with the same medical condition or goals as you, will get the best average results. There are areas of research much more focused on at least defining people based on more personal things, such as genes, or better yet, adjusting diet/exercise/medication on the basis of response. This doesn't usually make headlines, and isn't broadly used in medical care. It is, within a limited scope, available to you though. 

Any approach to health should have some foundation of theory, and call me biased but I'd back good research as the best foundation. However, published research will only ever be a starting point for you to build on with some trial and error, and self-observation. When you do that personal research, either with the help of a good coach, or on your own, you’ll discover what works best for you. Odds are, you’ll find the best thing to achieve good health is a unique combination of gradual changes to your eating, moving, sleeping, thinking, and maybe even breathing habits. So don't be put off or wowed by research results, just use them to inform your own journey of health.

References:
1. Atallah, R. et al. Long-Term Effects of 4 Popular Diets on Weight Loss and Cardiovascular Risk Factors: A Systematic Review of Randomized Controlled Trials. Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes 7, 815–827 (2014).

By Christian Thoma BSc MSc PhD ACSM-Certified Clinical Exercise Specialist

How and what we think has a big effect on what we do, which in turn determines how close and how fast we get to our goals. Let's look at two scenarios, and then see how we can harness them to help or hinder our progress by applying different perspectives:

1. your goal is to get leaner and your latest body fat assessment shows your body fat has gone down quite a bit since the last measurement; or
2. same goal, but your body fat hasn't budged or has even gone up since the last measurement.

Your goal might be to reduce your blood pressure, build strength or muscle, or anything else readily measurable.

There are two ways you can respond to either of these scenarios:

1. you can use them to motivate you to keep going, maybe even increase your efforts when appropriate;
2. or you can use them as an excuse or 'licence' to undermine your efforts.

How would each look? Let's say you are making good progress. You can do A and say to yourself this is great news, now I know I'm on the right track, I'll use this progress to evaluate what's working and motivate me to be diligent and dedicated. Or you could do B and say to yourself I've done so well, I deserve a break from all this effort, let go a little and use my feeling of virtue to justify acting against my chosen goals. Ok, you would probably choose to say it slightly differently. Still, if you opt for the second option, you might feel good about your decision for a while, maybe even until you get the next assessment, but you've just undermined your earlier efforts and are unlikely to be proud that you let 'defeat by snatched from the jaws of victory'.

Now let's say scenario 2 applies and things didn't work out so well. You could say to yourself well that isn't what I hoped for, I'll have to look at what I can do to improve the outcome next time and come up with a workable plan/be more faithful to the existing plan. Or you could say to yourself well that was all a big waste of time, I'm going to console myself by indulging myself/quitting.

At the end of the day you can use either outcome to stop you in your tracks and derail your efforts, or you can use either to draw strength and motivate you. It pays to remember that progress is seldom linear, just like children grow in spurts, so our progress toward our goals comes in spurts even when it feels like we've been consistent. If you consistently use your outcomes, even the not so pleasing ones, to motivate you to both become fully aware of your goal-related actions, and to reassert your commitment, then you are doing all you can to get the results you want. Taking a positive attitude also feels better in the long run. 

Bonus Tip

If getting into the success mindset after a setback is a real struggle, you’re probably being too hard on yourself. It may seem counterintuitive, but research frequently shows that if we are very critical of ourselves we feel bad and get stressed. When we feel bad or are stressed, we look for anything that might take away that feeling; all too often that means doing more of the thing that cost us our progress in the first place like a food binge or missing a planned exercise session for some junk television (1).

Take Home Message

Use your outcomes to motivate you to: 

1. reflect on your efforts without moral judgement; and 
2. take actions in line with your goals.

References and further reading

1. McGonigal, K. Maximum Willpower. (Macmillan, 2012).