Turning Life into a Game: And Winning

I don’t know if it was turning 30, or hitting a new milestone on the scale, or simply that I have the time and energy to re-focus myself now that I’ve left grad school behind me, but recently, I’ve been making strides in improving my personal health and fitness.

Right now, I’m in the middle of an 8-week… game? diet? lifestyle challenge?  Well, this thing, called the Whole Life Challenge.  I got into it via peer pressure, mostly, as an increasing number of my friends in and from Connecticut have been doing Challenges over the past couple of years.  I figured, if I wanted to improve my diet and exercise more, it would be easier to stick to something that my friends are doing, too.

But I’ve totally bought in to the principles of the Challenge.  Halfway through, I am seeing small, slight changes to my daily habits that I think will stick with me (to some extent) after these 8 weeks are over.

Caveat: Part of why this has been a positive experience for me is that I’m naturally a competitive person.  The whole gist of the WLC is that when you make healthy choices, you earn points; when you make unhealthier choices, you lose points.  This means that you must care about the points for it to work.  If you earn a certain amount of points, you can earn “indulgence tokens” (where you can eat something indulgent without losing any points), or even “free days” (where you get the full points for a day regardless of what you eat or do).  So if you don’t care about points, this system will not motivate you at all.  I’m the type of person who will try to get every single point possible (for an assignment grade, or a game, or whatever), even if the points don’t matter.  So this works for me.  (Sometimes too well, because I have to remind myself that it’s okay to not get ALL the points ALL the time!)  But I know it doesn’t work for everyone.

There are 7 areas that you can earn points in, which is why it’s a “whole life” challenge and not a diet, though the category you can earn the most points in is Nutrition.  This is the other reason why it’s not a diet: there aren’t things you “can” and “can’t” eat–instead, it’s all about making choices and forming habits.  I didn’t really understand this distinction at first, but let me try to explain.

First, there are different levels you can play at.  At the higher levels, you try to follow a whole-foods, Paleo-esque diet that cuts out processed foods, some grains, most dairy, and junk food.  Now, I have mixed feelings about the Paleo diet–there are some good parts to it, but others I’m not so sure about.  (Particularly, I think white potatoes and corn–which are restricted at the higher levels–are good for you.)  But at the lowest level (“Kickstarter”), which I’m doing, you pretty much cut out most processed grains, cheese, most added sugars, and most junk food.  All veggies are allowed, so any potential concerns I might have about the Paleo diet don’t really come into play.  Oh, and all levels restrict alcohol to some degree–on Kickstarter, if I have more than 1 glass of wine in a day, I’ll lose points.

So there’ve been a lot of small changes that I’ve made to my diet.  Oatmeal for breakfast instead of cereal with added sugar.  Unsweetened soy milk instead of “Original.”  Homemade lightly-sweetened iced tea instead of soda.  Whole foods–and lots of veggies–for dinner instead of meals with calorie-dense pasta or cheese.  Little things, but they add up over time.  These are the changes that I expected, and part of why I decided to do the challenge in the first place.

But the most significant part of the nutrition component, that I did not expect, has nothing to do with these small shifts.  Instead, it has to do with the way the points are structured.  You don’t earn nutrition points, instead, you start off each day with 5 points, and any time you eat something that’s “non-compliant” (the above-mentioned restricted foods that I said you “cut out” of your diet), you lose a point.  It’s actually better to think of it as spending the point.  It’s like money.  You can either spend a dollar now on a candy bar, or you can put it in the bank to earn interest (which you can then spend on a candy bar later, without using up any of your savings).

So above, when I referred to foods as being “cut out” or “restricted,” that’s not entirely true.  I’m very bad at following diets.  Several years ago, I tried out being vegan.  I was terrible at it.  A good friend of mine jokingly called me “the worst vegan ever,” because of how often I would cheat.  If you tell me (or I tell myself) that I can’t eat something, well, I might eat it less, but I’m going to cave to temptation pretty darn often.

But if you tell me that something has a set cost, and it’s totally no problem at all if I’m tempted and then decide to go for it, then I’m going to think about whether or not it’s worth it–and I’m actually going to cave to temptation much less frequently.  Take cookies, for example.  When I was trying to be vegan, I was particularly terrible at resisting free cookies when offered.  (Particularly the ones available before our late-afternoon departmental seminars.)  On the challenge, though, I’ve been amazed at how many free cookies I’ve turned down.  Where did this amazing strength of willpower come from?!  Well, every time I’m offered a cookie, I think, “Is this worth spending a point on?”  If it’s my favorite kind of cookie, lovingly homemade by someone I care about, the answer is going to be, “YES, it is totally worth a point to eat this cookie.  Mmmmm.”  But if it’s just a package of Oreos or something being offered to me, then instead of thinking, “Well, one won’t hurt,” and going for it, I weigh the options and think, “Nah, Oreos aren’t really good enough to be worth losing one of my precious few points on.”  And then I say no!  To free cookies!

I’ve thought some about the psychology that’s happening here.  I’m not just forming healthy habits by making small changes to my diet.  I’m forming healthier ways of thinking about my diet.  Every time I’m presented with an unhealthy food option and I turn it down, I don’t say no simply because it’s something I’m “not allowed” to have, I say no because I’ve gone through this entire process of (1) asking myself is it worth it, (2) thinking it through, and (3) making a decision.  This is classic reinforcement in psychology.  Every time I make a decision to not eat something unhealthy, it helps lay down that pathway of thinking in my brain, and it’s much easier to decide not to eat something unhealthy the next time, because I’ve now formed a habit of making good choices.

This is one of the biggest effects the Challenge has had on me, and one that I’m pretty hopeful will stick with me beyond these 8 weeks.  (By the way, I’ve already lost about 7 pounds since the beginning of the Challenge.  Even though weight loss isn’t the whole point of the Challenge, that’s still averaging 1-2 pounds per week, which experts say is what you should aim for if you want to lose weight.  Awesome!)

The other areas of the Challenge are Exercise, Mobilization (stretching), Supplementation (vitamins), Hydration, Lifestyle Practices, and Reflection.  I’ll talk about those more in another post!