This weekend I visited Dr. Jeff Levine’s home to learn more about his experience on the popular reality-based TV show, “The Biggest Loser”.  From the thousands of emails they receive each day from fans of his, they luckily found my email to them, asking for an interview, and thought it might be something worthwhile!

One of the things they asked me was, “Why us? Why not one of the other Biggest Loser contestents?” - since Dr. Jeff didn’t win the Biggest Loser show in Season 2.  I explained to them, that I believed that the impact of the show, and losing an incredible amount of weight the way he did, had a far reaching impact on his views as a Women’s Health physician and educator, as well as a parent of 4 girls.  As we look for important people to interview for the documentary, I believe it is not only about inspiring each individual to change their lives, but to demonstrate the role in which many of us play in turning inspiration into something real.  I feel that the message he and his family have to share sets a perfect example of the important role a physician has with his patients, as well as the critical role parents have in terms of shaping what our children know and do.

 First of all, Dr. Jeff and I spoke only once on the phone together…and exchanged a couple of emails about our project.  Nonetheless, he and Doris invited me into their home to stay - which not only helped with my travel expenses, but gave me a great deal of time to get to know them.  People I’ve told about it could hardly believe how these people would invite a stranger into their home…I quickly learned that this is the kind of people they are.

From my earlier blog entry, you can see I have these “theories” on how to best get kids to buy into healthier lifestyles.  Dr. Jeff and Doris explained to me how before the TV show experience, they did try to get their kids to do the right things…but the difference was that they didn’t feel like they had to follow the same set of rules.  What they discovered however, was that it wasn’t until the parents adopted the healthy habits, that their daughters began really following along.  They learned the importance of setting the example, by living the way they wanted their children to live.  That meant spending time finding healthy options that the whole family enjoyed, instead of forcing their daughters to eat things that they didn’t enjoy at all…and the difference as they explained, will forever change all of their lives.

 Unlike typical kids, the Levine girls read food labels and are very conscious of their food choices…they read the labels and look for healthier foods.  They’ve learned that just because something is considered “healthy” - that it doesn’t have to taste bad.  Doris and Dr. Jeff explain that it is a lot of trial and error finding the things their kids like to eat, that are healthy — but the end result is worth it.  They allow their kids to eat junk food when they choose to, but make sure to educate their kids on the importance of healthier food options…so they are much more aware of food…not obsessed, but better informed eaters!  These important lessons, I believe, they will carry with them for the rest of their lives…and they will pass these habits down to future generations! 

As a physician, we discussed the critical importance of “caring” for patients…that when patients believe you really care about their well-being, they really can respond to the things you say.  And the fact that Dr. Jeff has gone through a dramatic weight loss experience himself, has given him a greater apprecitation for the challenges his patients face…and as he shows others what is possible, he inspires his patients to live healthier lives.

You’ll have to watch the film to see the other lessons we’ve learned from Dr. Jeff’s experience…about excuses, about never giving up on something, and the most important lessons he learned from the Biggest Loser.

Special thanks to the Levine family for their incredible generosity and genuine desire to help many others find the happiness they have found.   Another great experience!

Although the title may suggest that I know how to motivate kids to eat right and exercise…I don’t really!  But, I will blog about it anyway…

While I don’t have any kids yet, we do work with some kids in the documentary (the youngest being 13 at the moment), and there are some distinct differences we’ve seen between kids and adults…I’ll try to suggest what we have found.

Kids have a short attention span for the most part.  This means that they have a harder time seeing what hard work every day will ultimately lead to, because they tend to be more impatient than us adults (and we are impatient for sure!).  So this means right away, that if a young person is initially motivated to exercise (for example), if the exercise activity is not any fun (a treadmill for example), then these kids have a hard time connecting the dots.  They do not see how walking or running on a treadmill has anything to do with what they will ultimately become sometime in the future (I generalize a bit here).

So the challenge with kids, as with anybody, is to find the strongest motivators in their lives…and channel these “things” into positive behavior that will help them get what they want.  Clearly, an overweight child might desire to look really great, look like the other kids, and be popular in school…but often this idea isn’t tangible enough for them to exercise and eat right every day…just like it often isn’t tangible enough for adults.

The first thing we must pay attention to is what our kids enjoy doing.  Do they enjoy kicking a soccer ball around?  Do they enjoy games like laser tag or playing basketball?  We cannot learn how to motivate anyone without first understanding what makes them tick, what makes them excited, and what we can use to get someone to do something they might not otherwise do.  As parents or teachers, the challenge is not how to get a child to exercise, but more to enable them better access to activities they enjoy that will not seem like exercise.  Kickball never seemed like exercise to me!

Does this mean that we need to play these games with our kids?  Of course it does!  Or at least help organize them with other neighborhood kids.  If there are too many “tasks” that are left on a child’s plate in order to get them moving more, we leave things up to chance.  As adults who are concerned with the activity level of our kids, since we know how to create environments to facilitate change, we must act.  This activity of seeking out good activities for our kids to participate in IS part of being a responsible parent or teacher…because left to their own devices, kids will not always choose the right paths in life…so outcomes are random.

Perhaps we think our kids only like to sit around and watch TV or play video games.  Perhaps we need to pay attention a little more!  This may be the most accessible activity for them, so we believe this is all we can get them to do.  No one said this was an easy task!  Who do you think brought the video games and TV into the home?  If we have enabled sedentary activities to be the easiest to access, the most convenient, we are conditioning kids to do this every day.  As parents, we are in control, or at least we need to gain control before it becomes a bad habit for our kids!

Wanting our kids to exercise or be more active and telling them so is not enough.  If we sit on our own couch and tell our kids to go outside and run around, we can expect that not much will change. 

Often the obvious answer, the answer we don’t want to hear, is the answer!

If we think it’s too late, that our kids are already too addicted to TV and video games, then we must be more creative, and sometimes find reward systems that can “motivate” a child to do something they don’t want to do as much as sit and watch cartoons.  Again we must pay attention to what might motivate our kids to turn the TV off.

So, does this mean we need to bribe our children to eat right and exercise?  Well, in theory, perhaps…but not all the time!

In INSPIRED: The Movie, we’ve tried finding video games that use a video camera to make you move around a lot more than just using a standard controller.  Unfortunately, games that do this often are not as fun as the most popular games you can find.  Although I do have high hopes for the Nintendo Wii’s boxing game (I haven’t played it yet).

We’ve tried building in reward systems that motivate kids to eat better, or exercise more consistently.  I think there has to be some balance here (these are just theories mind you).  If we create a situation where our kids expect to get rewarded by something each time they reach a goal, do we create self-motivated kids?  Or do we just create kids that expect something for anything they do?

I believe how we craft these scenarios has a lot to do with the outcome and interpretation.  Ultimately, we must remember what we are trying to instill in our kids…

Hard work, done consistently, is the key to achieving anything in life.

So if we merely give our kids 5 bucks every time they lose a few pounds, what are we teaching them?  That we want them to be skinny?

A reward system needs to be carefully structured so that kids are rewarded for the consistent behavior, not reaching a goal — the goal is a natural reward of the consistent behavior.  And, as parents or teachers, we much reenforce the idea that hard work over time always pays off…literally we must put this into our kids’ heads each time they are rewarded…so they have a better chance of connecting the dots.  Otherwise we can only hope for the best…that our kids figure it out for themselves.  I’d prefer to reduce the random nature of this process

Does all this apply to eating healthy too?  I believe so.  We control the food that our kids eat, so we must pay attention to the healthy options they enjoy and enable them to eat these things.  If we bring junk food home, what should we expect to happen?  Obviously if we eat the junk food ourselves we cannot hope to teach our kids much about eating healthy…so it becomes a bit of a dilemma…can we change in order to teach our kids to change?  We have to ask ourselves how valuable it is to us…

Motivate, teach, enable, and lead (by example).  A little bit of nagging doesn’t hurt once in a while either!  (There is a difference between scolding and reenforcing why)

Nobody said it would be easy.  Is it worth it?

Just this past year, I’ve had a few paradigm shifts in terms of how a single person can make a difference.

Whether you’re a teacher, a Jenny Craig counsellor, a personal trainer, a parent, or just a friend, we all posess this incredible power to influence how other people’s lives turn out. I’m not so much talking about donating your time and money to good causes, but more about how we interact with the others around us every day.

Each day, each moment, gives us a unique chance to be a positive or negative influence on someone else’s life.

Can we teach our child just one important life lesson each day, that they will remember forever?

Can we change our habits of tempting our friends with unhealthy food options, and motivate them to choose something better, if for just a single meal?

Can we help someone we’ve just met, if they are struggling to understand something we already know?

Can we show someone that we care, when there’s not really any specific reason to?

While many of us take this ability for granted every day, if we can think a little more about the big picture, how one life lesson with our children will carry them through the rest of their years, how one word of encouragement can be the deciding factor for someone exercising today, or how showing we care how someone is doing impacts whether or not they care about themselves…it all matters more than we often think about.

A simple, “hey, you want to get a workout in with me today” - to a friend who may never exercise…may lead to a new decision to live a healthier life…which can resonate through all future generations of someone’s life as we pass on these habits to our families. And if we take the time to inspire just one person today to do something positive with their own life, the possibility exists that this single event can turn into incredible physical and psychological transformation that becomes a chain reaction of inspiration, passing from one person to the next.

It is for this new way of thinking, that I believe that every interaction I have each day matters, because it can change someone’s life, in some way.

It is a new way to think, but if you can imagine, if everybody thought this way…how much the world would really change? And it’s not saying that changing the world is something that impacts large groups of people all at the same time, but more that we can impact the entire course of someone’s life, which ultimately will impact more individuals…so exponential change can occur when it happens at an individual level.

I guess that’s what they mean when they say, “pay it forward”.

I’m not sure if I’m getting really weird and philosophical as I get older, or if everything just starts making more sense when we find a greater purpose in our lives. Perhaps it’s both.

We went to Freedom Writers today…inspired by a true story. Perhaps it will inspire others to make a difference.

Try changing someone’s life for the better today.

Each decision we make, at any given moment, often has to do with what the payoff is.

Why should I eat that grilled chicken breast and broccoli instead of my favorite slice of pizza? What will happen if I get up today at 6am to workout? Go to lunch with friends?

We have so many decisions each day that have to do with tradeoffs. It is how well we can visualize our ultimate success, and how valuable it is to us, that determines each decision we make (for the most part). So the difficulty becomes, when we compare the short term payoff with the long term. Short term is often immediate, we want that extra hour of sleep, that delicious bit of pepperoni and cheese, the social aspects of going out with friends. These are so clear in our minds, because they are so close in terms of when we are rewarded by them.

So in the heat of a single moment, when we are faced with what we desire NOW versus what we may dream of in the future, often our immediate urges and desires win…this is where consistency plays such a key role in how successful we become.

How many meals each day do we eat the right thing? How many days of the week do we stick to our eating plan? How many weeks in the month? Each little step is so critical as it builds upon the previous and creates the momentum that propels us further at each new milestone.

So is it only about how tangible the end goal is? How vividly we can see it or believe it? Sometimes, for some people it is. These are the people you see who suddenly become “on a mission”, where there is literally nothing that will get in our way. Some of our documentary subjects have this unique mindset, and it isn’t something we can always find in everybody. That’s why success is often so random from one person to the next.

The answer is, well, at least for now, is that we must re-engineer our lives to ensure we can consistently make the right decisions. This comes from a lot of very critical thinking and a TOTALLY different kind of self-awareness. In order to reduce this seemingly random behavior, where sometimes we make the right decisions and sometimes we do not, here are some things we must do:

1) Take a good look at what things (and people) consistently tempt us day in and day out. Is it one of our best friends, who loves to go out and relax at the local happy hour every Tuesday, and who does their best to convince you to go? Do they always order a big plate of nachos that stares you in the face even when you are trying to resist the temptation? Faced with such temptation on a consistent basis, we most surely cannot consistently make the right decision for any long stretch of time.

So we need to change the equation, and remove the temptation from our lives.

Does this mean ditch our best friends? Well, that’s more complicated to say yes or no. But you have to be truly honest and aware of the temptations that are causing you to be inconsistent with your behavior, when you are trying to accomplish something. Instead of being victim to someone else’s negative influence, try imposing a postive influence on others who may need a change anyway. In some cases you just have to be up front with people who drag you down, and tell them that things have to change if you are to keep them in your life (at least for now). Or ask them not to order an appetizer anymore if you are going to hang out with them…make them aware that their behaviors will in some way impact what you are trying to do, no matter how good your willpower is today.

2) Find the people who remind you of what you are trying to do. Have a new appreciation for the nagging friend or mentor. Embrace it. These are the people who will change what you do for the better, on a consistent basis. They may send you a txt message to your phone to remind you of what you need to do, or suggest a quick trip to the gym on an evening that you are planning on being lazy. These people affect our split second decisions and make us do the things we SHOULD do more consistently. Don’t underestimate the power of suggestion, and find the people who will change the outcome of your decisions for the better. The real hard part is not resenting the people or the nagging - because when we want to do something really bad, the last thing we want to hear is someone telling us what we should do. Well, just remember that the more people that push you in the right direction, the more consistent you’ll be…you won’t always do the right thing, but more often you will!

3) Create your own reminders, to keep you focused. Sometimes this feels weird and goofy, because we are restating our goals to ourselves and putting up pictures and sayings that just remind us that we are trying to accomplish something. Put a picture up of something you are aiming for. The more you do this, the more you will be reminded that a decision you make today impacts the long term outcome. It makes you stronger, and keeps your decisions more consistently focused on your goals.

4) Reverse engineer your bad decisions. Sounds weird, I know. But if you take a look at a bad decision you made on a meal, or why you skipped the gym today, and try to figure out why…you can often come up with a new strategy to ensure you become more consistent in making the right decision.

Did I mention how important consistency is?

Now, get to work!

Most extremely successful people are goal setters. It’s common sense, that we should all set goals for ourselves…but how we set them and how we treat them can make all the difference.

What is the difference between the following goals:

- This year I’m going to lose weight!
- I’m going to lose 30 pounds this month!
- By the summer, I’m going to be in the best shape I’ve ever been in my life!

At first glance, these are all very similar goals, right? Not exactly, from what we’ve seen.

The problem with “This year I’m going to lose weight”, is that there are no specifics. While it’s good not to kill yourself to live up to the numbers on the scale within a specific time, having very vague goals lead to unsatisfactory results (most often). This is because there is nothing that drives us to do the right things each day, because we always have tomorrow. Ultimately, we will adjust our goal in our minds to match what we want to do next. So, to make ourselves accept our own actions, we allow ourselves to push our goals out and make them less demanding. That extra piece of cheesecake won’t matter this week, since we’re going to lose our weight starting the following week, or month even.

Ultimately, we’ll find ourselves at the end of the year, facing the Thanksgiving and December holidays, with little hope of accomplishing our goal.

Now, “I’m going to lose 30 pounds this month”, is a bit too unrealistic. This is OK, but often in the weight loss game, it is important to know what is possible, and what is not, and how it relates to what we need to do to get there. So, while aggressive goals are great, sometimes we need to understand how possible they are. The only way to do this is to do a little bit of research. (We have done this for you).

“By the summer, I’m going to be in the best shape I’ve ever been in my life!” is a great goal. However, it needs a bit of fine tuning. Being able to visualize where and when you want be at your goal is important. It’s also good to set some numbers around that. Often we don’t know what these should be. So as a general rule, we might set a 1-3 pound per week goal and see where that leads us within our allotted timeframe.

So from our experience, we outline what is feasible, from the conservative to the agressive. By all means, don’t be afraid to be aggressive in your goal setting (the next step is understanding what it takes to get there):

1-3 pounds per week or 4-12 pounds per month.
12-36 pounds in 3 months (12 weeks)
24-72 pounds in 6 months

On the conservative side, we see it is very possible to lose 24 pounds in 6 months, or nearly 50 pounds in one year. Seems pretty good, right? 1 pound per week? Maybe that doesn’t excite you. On the other hand, losing 72 pounds in 6 months sounds incredible (for those with that much weight to lose) - sounds far fetched, almost too good to be true? Not really.

So at the end of the day, if you have 70-100 pounds to lose to get to a healthy weight, before the year is over, you can easily do it. (now taking my word for it may be the hard part.)

Goals, need to have a time wrapped around them. It’s ok to have multiple long, medium, and short-term. What else?

We should be able to measure them to some degree, so we can see where we are in relation to them.
They should get us pretty excited, and shouldn’t be arbitrary. We need to feel an emotional connection to them.
They can coincide with an event (birthday, wedding, reunion). Why? Because it keeps us a little more focused.

So what’s your goal?

Of course! Any single moment in time you can decide to change everything, and embark on something new and more positive in your life. Since INSPIRED is about weight loss first and foremost, if you’ve been dragging your feet on starting a new healthy lifestyle, of course January is the best time to start…because usually our minds are ready to “start anew” - and envision what this year might bring to our lives.

So, that said, if you are on the fence still…embrace change, envision what you want your life to become this year. The payoff is worth it (although it is far more than you know). In the beginning it may be about your appearance, and for some, for better health…ultimately, your life will change more than you can imagine. I’m often surprised at the hesitation, because there is no downside to making a decision to eat healthier and exercising more. I guess I’m surprised because I already know the outcome…for most, the outcome seems so much more uncertain. How then, do we change this perception?

For that, you’ll just have to have a little faith. (or a lot)

So, over the next few days I’m going to try to break down everything that we’ve learned in this 18-month project (and counting), about what it takes to succeed in your weight loss journey. Some of these things you may disagree with…so feel free to let me know if you have a different perspective.

We don’t claim to have all the answers, so we are piecing the puzzle together as we learn and observe more and more people.

The first step to really, truly unlocking your potential, is getting your mind ready for the changes you will have to make. Each of us have so much baggage depending on how long we’ve been living an unhealthy lifestyle, so this will be hard for some, easier for others.

So the first thing to tell yourself is that you can do anything for a month, or three months for that matter. We’ll determine what you have to do next when you get there. For now, just be ready to make the necessary changes, and everything will fall into place as it have for so many others who have succeeded.

Are you willing to change everything?