Why your goal “to be more healthy” might not be as useful as you think
Big goals are helpful, but the nature of them is really important
I’m sure we’ve all set goals for our health behaviour - it might be to go for a walk every day, or to eat your 5 a day. Sometimes we meet them, sometimes we don’t. One way we can be more likely to stick to them is to think about the underlying deeper goals that these help you to achieve. These “superordinate” (i.e., higher level) goals might be to live longer, be healthy, have a better quality of life - essentially the answer to the question “why do you want to do that?”
There’s some evidence to show that having these higher level goals can make you more likely to make sustainable changes to your health. However, I read a super interesting study this week about how the content of these higher level goals can be important.
Michelle Segar (yes, the very same author of The Joy Choice) and colleagues did a study in middle-aged (40-60 year-old) women who were working full time, looking at their physical activity levels, and their goals and motivations. They found that when women held higher level goals around weight loss, appearance, and even health, they were less active one year later than women who held higher level goals around their quality of life (e.g. sleep better, feeling good). Essentially, those who were exercising for their health (or weight) were less likely to be active, than those who were exercising to help themselves feel good.
There’s a good chance that this is because health (and even weight) outcomes are longer-term - it takes a while for us to see the impact. Whereas those quality of life outcomes can be seen more easily - you might feel quite quickly that you have more energy. Segar & colleagues suggested that much of the health messaging that we receive (e.g. from your doctor, or in the media) tend to be focussed on health outcomes or weight loss, and this might make people feel like exercise is something they should be doing (rather than something they want to do). They propose that instead, we might benefit from “rebranding” exercise around the immediate benefits (e.g. stress reduction, more energy).
Me when I think about things I should do:
Me when I think about things I want to do:
I love this idea - often activity does make us feel good (as I type this I’ve been sitting at my desk all day, and my body is definitely telling me that it doesn’t feel good!), and also relates nicely to the idea of “interoception” (listening to our bodies) that I feel is really important for sustainable behaviour change (read more about that here).