Welcome to Diet Season. Be sure to pick the right environment to be successful.
This is Diet Season. This is the time of year when everyone starts the new food plan. They pick Atkins. They pick South Beach. They pick the Doctors’ Diet plan. They pick Dr. Dubrow’s Diet. They pick low carb. They pick WW. They pick going Vegan. They even pick the Standard American Diet (SAD), which is the default diet plan.
Food is controversial. It turns out the food and our choices about food are exactly like politics: everyone has an opinion about it and most everyone thinks their opinion is correct. Nobody likes to be wrong about food. Nobody likes their opinions on food contested, especially personal trainers, nutritionists, and weight lifters.
Our food picks are very personal because these are learned behaviors. Food choices and what we eat are behaviors. We make these each day, multiple times per day. It is what we do.
Here is some more controversy for you: 70% of your body composition is determined by what you eat. Exercise determines the other 30%. Please note that this is an approximation, and it is subjective. Diet and Exercise Pros’ opinions on this statement will definitely differ. An old cliche in dieting circles is you are what you eat. It turns out that this is correct.
Do we have the discipline and personal accountability to make these new diet plans successful?
Each diet plan above provides nearly identical promises. We don’t even need to go into them here because we all already know the benefits they market. The upsetting deal that most exercise and diet pros have to deal with all year long — not just in January — is peoples’ discipline and stick-to-itive-ness. Here is where most of us are sorely lacking. Yes, beginning a new behavior is all well and good. What’s missing is the ability to keep going, to keep on keeping on with the new behavior. That’s the key. That’s the difficulty. And that is entirely the point. Most of us simply lack the discipline and personal accountability to make these new diet and exercise plans successful.
You must have accountability and social support.
So, what do we do? Hire personal trainers and nutritionists to help us with our accountability. Two of the keys to lasting behavior change are accountability and social support. We need the accountability buddy, someone close to us in both relationship and proximity to help guide us, to ensure we actually follow through on what we say we will do. Without these people in our lives, many of us fall off the self-help / personal development wagon. It is just too hard to go it alone.
Think you’re in the right environment? Watch out!
It is hard to overestimate the power of our environment when it comes to behavior change. This is something that few people talk about, and even fewer execute on.
Marshall Goldsmith, one of the most successful Executive Coaches of all time and one of the Top Ranked Thought Leaders in the world, states,
“We do not control our environment. Our environment controls us.”
That’s some heavy stuff. Here, all this time, you thought you had control over your environment. But it turns out that your environment has more control over you. How can this be? Let’s take a closer look.
At home and in the office, what kind of foods are you surrounded by? Healthy foods? Organic foods? Fruits, vegetables, lean proteins? Or, are you surrounded by sugary snacks, salty snacks, donuts, cakes, cupcakes, and chocolates? The foods that are bad for you will be tough to overcome in that environment unless you are extremely disciplined. Even then, it’s still tough to overcome them.
Conversely, the environment where the foods are good for you are set up for you to win. Here, you are far more likely to eat right and know what to do and follow through. It is all a matter of what surrounds you in your environment.
Who do you become?
Take the community of people you hang around with the most. This is another environment. Do these people bring you up? Or, do these people bring you down to their level? Do they cheer you on as you pursue your goals? Do they say supportive things to you? Do they tell you they believe in you? Or, do you hang around mostly negative people who do not support one another? Who say snarky things? Who bristle with negativity? This matters — a lot. Why? Because we become the people we hang around with the most.
Take your workplace environment. If you are lucky and blessed enough to work in a Great Place, you likely get to work with ‘A’ players, super smart people who are eager to learn and to serve and to help. You also get great community opportunities to make a difference wherever you are. You also get great pay and benefits, some of the best in the business. You also get exceptional leadership, comprised of people who care about you and your career there. They have deliberately set up the environment for you and the team to Win. And win these companies do, over and over again.
Beware the toxic work environment.
The opposite of a Great Place to Work is a toxic work environment, a place that sucks the life out of you each day. In the toxic work environment, no one wants to help each other, no one knows what’s going on, no one really cares. They’re barely showing up, and when they do show up, their attitude is terrible. Here, Leadership only cares about the bottom line and increasing it at all costs, typically at the cost of employees’ careers. Leadership provides few if any learning opportunities. Promotions are ad hoc and random and typically favor those who preen for and please the bosses. Goals are always changing along with the rules. Same thing with strategies and initiatives.
The toxic work environment is a harsh one, 180 degrees away from the Great Place to Work. Unless you have an exceptional position of power and authority within the toxic work environment, it is highly unlikely you can affect change in it. What will happen is the toxic work environment will eat you up like an insatiable media monster, chew on you for awhile, and then spit you out into the cold. In short, it is in your best interests to avoid the toxic work environment at all costs.
Finally, take the gym. What’s it like in there? Who’s hanging around there? Most gyms are full of hard working, happy people who are dedicated to their growth and development. These people want to do better and get better. They want to see improvement in themselves and in their friends. They’re helping each other out. They’re giving advice (no surprise there). They’re here to work hard and to get after it.
The gym can be intimidating to people. However, they have your best interests at heart.
Do you like going to the gym? Like all new environments, the gym can be intimidating to people. However, you should know that nearly all of these people have your best interests at heart, that they care about themselves and their friends’ well-being, and they are a very supportive bunch of people.
Regular gym participants know how hard it is to start and maintain new habits, like eating right and getting regular exercise. It is very hard. And many of them come from backgrounds just like yours.
Beware of your environment. Understand it has unconscious powers over you that you cannot see, nor feel. Understand that sometimes you have little to no control over your environment and that the best you can do sometimes is simply to avoid those bad places entirely.
If I have one New Year’s wish for you, it is for you to choose your environments wisely. Do your best to pick only healthy ones, places that will pick you up, support you, enhance you, make you better. Pick the gym. Pick the healthy restaurant. Pick foods that are good for you at the grocery store. Pick drinking tons of water every day. Pick supportive communities. Pick the Great Place to Work.
