A version of this post originally appeared on the Envolve Blog.

The holiday season is a beloved time across America when we fill our houses with family, friends and laughter, and fill our bellies with meals, drink and dessert. By January 1, reality sets in along with a few unwanted extra pounds.

The end of the holiday season offers us a chance to make up for our overindulgences in the form of a New Year’s resolution. Among the 44 percent of the U.S. population that make resolutions, “be a better person,” “lose weight” and “exercise more” were the most popular in 2018.

Despite our intentions, almost 30 percent of New Year’s resolvers give up in just two weeks. Six months later, that number shoots up to more than 50 percent.

Behavioral scientists call this problem the intention-behavior gap. And it turns out to be a pretty big gap.

Why Is It So Hard to Keep Our Resolutions?

The New Year is a monumental moment, and we strive to make monumental changes. In doing so, we display an optimism bias — we’re overly optimistic about our chance of success. As a result, we set vague, unachievable goals — a recipe for failure.

Even the smallest roadblocks make it less likely that that we’ll enact our resolutions. This is known as friction costs, which refers to our tendency to be deterred by seemingly small barriers.

Adding to the challenge is a phenomenon known as ego depletion. Ego depletion suggests that our willpower gets tired the more we use it. A single act of self-control now leaves us even more susceptible to temptation later.

With our self-control depleted, we find it almost impossible to resist that delicious chocolate cake. For this, we can thank present bias, the tendency to choose immediate rewards over our long-term goals. Present bias works hand in hand with our (lack of) self-control, and together, they send us down a slippery slope.

You promised to cut back on sweets, but a single bite of chocolate cake can’t hurt, right? The what-the-hell effect describes how a small step off track can cause us to spiral out of control. Because once you have one bite, you might as well have another. And now that you’ve had two, well, what the hell … 

This Time Can Be Different

I’ll admit, the situation looks pretty dire. To keep our New Year’s resolutions, we’re up against a formidable team of behavioral biases and fallacies, each conspiring to get us to give up on exercise, eat more junk food, and leave our resolutions behind.

But there’s good news. Behavioral science has discovered the strategies that can make this New Year’s different than the rest.

• Step #1: Make it SMART

To accomplish your resolution, you’ll need to overcome the optimism bias. Try making a SMART resolution. Revise your resolution until you can answer yes to the following:

Is your resolution as specific as possible? Can you measure your progress? How achievable is it? Is it relevant to your life goals? Do you have a time limit?

My SMART resolution: To run a half marathon by June.

• Step #2: Break It Down and Build It Up 

Reducing friction costs requires making it as easy as possible to achieve your resolution. To do this, break your resolution down into smaller “sub-resolutions,” like running for 20 minutes on Saturday.

This sub-resolution may seem small, but that’s the point. Small goals lead to small wins, small wins build momentum, and momentum is crucial for long-term success.

Still, sustaining momentum requires making progress. Once you successfully complete your sub-resolution, try making it a little bit harder next week. Keep adjusting to keep your sub-resolution challenging, but still achievable.

This week’s sub-resolution: To run for 20 minutes on Saturday.

• Step #3: Find Your Opportunity

Now that you have a sub-resolution in place, you’ll need to make a plan. “Opportunity plans,” or when-then plans, map out exactly when, where and how you’ll act. By planning in advance, they also lessen your chance of succumbing to ego depletion and present bias.

To make your opportunity plan, use the “when-then” formula to decide when and where you’ll do your sub-resolution.

My opportunity plan: When it is 10 a.m. on Saturday, then I will run for 20 minutes around my neighborhood. 

• Step #4: Overcome Your Obstacles

A simple plan can also stop the what-the-hell effect in its tracks. “Obstacle plans,” or if-then plans, let us decide how we’ll behave when a challenging obstacle arises.

To make your obstacle plan, identify an internal obstacle to carrying out your opportunity plan. Then, decide on one behavior to overcome that obstacle.

To make your obstacle plan, use the “if-then” formula.

My obstacle plan: If I feel too tired to run, then I will play some music to wake me up and get moving.

The Year Ahead

Achieving your New Year’s resolution won’t be easy. Behavioral biases and fallacies leave us overly optimistic, easily deterred, tired and feeling a lack of control. But with the help of a few simple strategies tested by behavioral science, you can turn your resolution into reality. Here’s to the New Year, and each one that comes after it. Because this time really will be different.

Jonathan Cloughesy is a behavioral scientist in the Better Living and Health Group at the Center for Advanced Hindsight at Duke University. He is a recent graduate of the University of California Santa Barbara, where he studied biopsychology and applied psychology. He is interested in the design and evaluation of scalable interventions that promote health behavior.

The Envolve Center for Health Behavior Change™ is a partnership between the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, The Center for Advanced Hindsight at Duke University and Centene Corporation. The Envolve Center advances life-centric health research to improve lives so that communities can thrive.

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This post initially appeared on the Envolve Blog.

Imagine the following scenario:

You go out to eat at a very nice restaurant. You share a few appetizers with your friends, have a beer, and enjoy a delicious steak and baked potato. After dinner, your friends talk you into splitting a piece of chocolate cake. Even though you’re pretty full, you can’t resist the cake so you have several bites. You enjoyed the meal but go home regretting you ate so much. The next morning you weigh yourself to see how much damage was done. To your delight, you don’t really notice any significant changes to your weight, so you go on with your day as usual. Maybe you eat a little less than usual to make up for the extra calories from the night before. But chances are, you don’t fully compensate for your splurge. Over time, these small doses of overeating add up, making it hard to maintain weight.

In the age of growing rates of obesity, our difficulty in maintaining normal weight is also a growing concern. On average, Americans gain about a pound each year. A pound doesn’t sound so bad, and year after year people probably barely even notice. But over 10 years this can matter quite a lot. Not only is it hard to lose weight, it’s also hard to just maintain weight.

Understanding the precise relationship between what we consume and the impact on our weight is actually quite difficult. It’s like trying to determine the impact of one home’s energy use on the rate of global warming. We know there is a relationship, but it’s hard to know exactly what that relationship is. First of all, there’s a lot of natural variation in our weight and in our diets. A few pounds of fluctuation each day can be totally normal, and most people don’t eat the same thing every single day. Also, our weight can go up or down by two pounds just depending on how much water we’ve had recently. Then, consider that excess food doesn’t convert to fat immediately.

New research from the Duke researchers at the Envolve Center for Health Behavior Change™, published this month in the journal Appetite, explains how our lay beliefs, or naïve models, lead us to faulty assumptions about how our “dietary splurges” impact our weight, resulting in a lack of compensation following these indulgences and self-serving biases.

Across six studies, the researchers showed that people have distorted ideas for how weight change works — specifically after single instances of overeating. In general, people convince themselves that weight loss will happen much faster than it actually will and that small amounts of weight gain are only temporary, disappearing without any dieting attempts. Even more interesting is that people seem to do this in a self-serving way — we can much more accurately predict the rate of weight loss in others than in ourselves. Sadly, since people believe weight loss happens more quickly and easily after overeating, the paper found that people also fail to compensate enough after overeating. This means that people don’t diet enough when they overeat because they trick themselves into believing the effects are short-lived and less consequential than they actually are.

In real life, this is probably a vicious cycle where we have a hard time noticing small changes when there are lots of things that impact our weight. At the same time, we enjoy, and should be able to enjoy, nice meals from time to time, without worrying about long-term health consequences. We just need better strategies for dealing with these indulgences so we can have our cake and eat it too (pun intended).

So, what should we do about this? One interesting finding from the paper was that participants reported that they would try to reduce their calorie consumption after overeating, but they matched the timeline of their reductions to the timeline of their consumption. If they overate for a week, they compensated for a week, but if they overate on one day, they compensated for only a few days – even if calorie amounts were the same in both cases. So, perhaps we can give people easier rules of thumb for compensating after overeating. For example, if you indulge at a restaurant, that may require four days instead of two days of cutting back. Or, we could help people cut back in larger quantities more quickly, through methods like intermittent fasting. But people should get medical approval first and supervision while fasting. Ultimately, education or calorie-counting strategies probably aren’t enough to help overcome this bias that is more about self-protection than information. And for those with patterns of overeating, more guidance from professionals such as social workers, registered dieticians and psychologists may be indicated.

About the Authors

Rachel Kahn is a behavioral researcher on the Better Living and Health Group at the Center for Advanced Hindsight at Duke University. She has a BS in biomedical engineering and a strong background in social psychology. She works with the Envolve Center’s Behavioral Economics (BE) team, which incorporates BE and social science into health-related behavioral modification programs.

Julia O’Brien is a principal behavioral scientist and leads the Better Living and Health Group at the Center for Advanced Hindsight at Duke University. She has a Ph.D. in social psychology and a background in product research. She also works with the Envolve Center.

The post The Psychology Behind Food Indulgences: How We Trick Ourselves into Thinking Overeating Is Fine and That We’ll Bounce Back appeared first on Center for Advanced Hindsight.

How many fruits and vegetables should you eat every day for better health? Many public health food campaigns hinge on providing information to help people make better choices. These campaigns, such as the “5 A Day,” are good at raising awareness or improving people’s attitudes toward fruits and vegetables.¹ However, there is little evidence that these campaigns then increase actual fruit and vegetable consumption.^{1, 2, 3, 4}

Although most people would agree that eating a healthy diet and exercising can improve health and help prevent chronic diseases, only one in 10 Americans eats the recommended five servings of fruits and vegetables per day.⁵ And despite clear guidelines for physical activity, only one in five Americans meets the recommended levels for aerobic and anaerobic exercise.⁶

Why is there this disconnect? It may be that the time it takes for individuals to see the positive health effects of these behaviors seems too long and the outcomes too indirect. Perhaps people are better at carrying out healthy behaviors when the effect is more immediate, such as controlling one’s blood sugar to manage diabetes or taking a daily medication to address a chronic disease.

In collaboration with the Envolve Center for Health Behavior Change™, researchers from Duke University surveyed 1,000 adults with Type II diabetes and found that being well-informed about diabetes self-care does not translate into healthier behaviors or better disease management. Survey participants were asked to report on their knowledge and attitudes toward diabetes self-management behaviors, including diet, exercise and following other medical recommendations. Participants were asked about their motivation to control their disease, the dangers it presented to their short- and long-term health, and their actual disease management. Despite two-thirds of ­the sample reporting extremely high knowledge of what to do to manage their disease and almost all agreeing that following those recommendations was “very important,” there was little to no relationship between those measures and the likelihood that individuals were successfully managing their diabetes and reaching their HbA1c targets. Whether it’s eating more veggies or managing diabetes, healthcare providers and policymakers need to question assumptions that being informed about healthy behaviors means people actually engage in those healthy behaviors.

 If information alone doesn’t change behavior, what works?

Once people know what to do, the most effective ways to increase the likelihood of action are to make it easy or fun and to make unhealthy behaviors more difficult. We’re great at doing this for children: accompanying vaccinations with lollipops, blending extra greens into a smoothie to make “monster juice,” or replacing screen-time with outdoor playtime. We overlook that adults like doing easy and fun things too!

Adults can also harness the power of social connections. Exercising with a friend makes working out more fun and creates accountability; knowing that your “accountabilibuddy” is waiting for you makes it much harder to decide that you’re too tired for the gym. Getting others involved in your health goals can also create a culture of wellness in your network. For example, an office could hold “Salad Club” during a weekday lunch, making healthy eating the default norm. Even more complicated behaviors, such as checking blood sugar or adhering to a medication regimen, can benefit from accountabilibuddies, as app developers have learned.

So, grab a friend, get out there and eat your veggies!

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16672211

[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749379706004934

[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/health-20858809

[4] http://www.who.int/dietphysicalactivity/media/en/gs_fv_ppt_lorelei.pdf

[5] https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2017/p1116-fruit-vegetable-consumption.html

[6] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/exercise.htm

About the Author

Lindsay Juarez is a senior behavioral scientist in the Center for Advanced Hindsight at Duke University. She has a Ph.D. in social psychology and specializes in goal pursuit and self-control. She works with the Envolve Center’s Behavioral Economics (BE) team, which incorporates BE and social science into health-related behavioral modification programs.

The post Easier Read Than Done: Knowledge Alone Isn’t Enough to Change Behavior appeared first on Center for Advanced Hindsight.

Turns out households account for the largest percent of food waste from farm to landfill, and according to ReFEd, people in the U.S. throw out an average of $450 per person annually, or $1800 a year for a 4-member family! (1) And USDA says that’s over 400 pounds of food per person each year (2) Food waste also accounts for 2.6% of greenhouse gas emissions (3) and 67% of the freshwater use in the U.S. (4)(5)

There is hope, though – the population of the UK grew 4.5% from 2007 to 2012 but the total demand for food did not increase, indicating that food waste decreased over that time!

Now that my fridge is clean(er) and I’ve taken a proper inventory, I’m trying some behavioral science on myself to reduce my food waste. Here are the five tips that I am trying out that could help you cut down on your food waste.

1) Stick to the Shopping List

Implementation intentions are really helpful in executing your goal (aka, consuming your food), so if you don’t have a recipe or a specific meal you’re planning to use it for, it better have a long shelf life. My personal produce-impulse-buy is avocados – I love them and always buy a few when they’re on sale without thinking. But they spoil quickly and there’s no salvaging an avocado past its peak. DON’T DO IT!

2) Rearrange Your Fridge

Adjust the position of items in your fridge so that the things that spoil quickly and the leftovers are in your immediate line of sight. Go ahead and put the beer, soda, and eight kinds of mustard that last forever in the “vegetable” drawers, because that drawer is where vegetables go to rot. Changing this choice architecture can be a huge help to remind you what should get eaten quickly. Pro tip – you can also hide junk food from yourself in those bottom drawers!

3) The “Best If Used by” Date Is a Suggestion

Don’t anchor on it too firmly, it won’t hurt to keep it around longer.  “Use by” is for highly perishable foods so pay closer attention to that date (although personally, I’m convinced that that date doesn’t apply to yogurt). Also interesting – the grocery industry has done great work to reduce food waste recently by simplifying the types of date labels on consumer products – there used to be more than 10 terms used, like “Sell by”, “Expires on”, and “Better if Used By”, but now there are just “Best if used by” and “Use by.”(7)

4) Set a Calendar Reminder

Set a reminder or alarm to go off right before you leave for work so you’ll remember to take your leftovers for lunch! Or put a bright sticky not on the door so you’ll see it as you’re leaving. In the rush to get to work, it’s easy to leave lunch behind and then you’re stuck having to go buy something and waste what’s at home.

5) Default – Freeze It!

If it’s getting close to the expiration, I’m going to make my new default/rule of thumb “just freeze it”. I already do this every time I go on a trip – put milk, fruits, veggies, and bread in the freezer –  so now I’ll try to make it my post-dinner ritual, as well. If it didn’t make it into that night’s meal and it’s getting close, my default is to toss it in the freezer.

So go check out your fridge right now and see what you might be neglecting. If you’re anything like me, the beautiful summer produce at the farmers market is already tempting you to buy lots of unnecessary things. Stay vigilant! You can save yourself money, remorse, and major fridge clean-outs.

References:

1. (ReFED, A Roadmap to Reduce US Food Waste by 20 Percent, (2016), www. refed.com https://www.refed.com/downloads/ReFED_Report_2016.pdf  and NRDC, WASTED: HOW AMERICA IS LOSING UP TO 40 PERCENT OF ITS FOOD FROM FARM TO FORK TO LANDFILL, (August 2017) https://assets.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/wasted-2017-report.pdf ).
2. (Jean C. Buzby, Hodan F. Wells, and Jeffrey Hyman, The Estimated Amount, Value, and Calories of Postharvest Food Losses at the Retail and Consumer Levels in the United States, https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/43833/43680_eib121.pdf).
3. (Martin C.Hellerand Gregory A. Keoleian, “Greenhouse Gas Emission Estimates of U.S. Dietary Choices and Food Loss,” Journal of Industrial Ecology, 19:3 doi. 10.1111/jiec.12174. http://www.civ-viande.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Martin_GHGEEstimates-of-USDietary-Choices_20141.pdf)
4. (Molly A. Maupin, et al., Estimated use of water in the United States in 2010, U.S. Geological Survey Circular 1405 (2014) https://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/1405/pdf/circ1405.pdf)
5. WASTED: HOW AMERICA IS LOSING UP TO 40 PERCENT OF ITS FOOD FROM FARM TO FORK TO LANDFILL https://assets.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/wasted-2017-report.pdf
6. (Tom Quested and Liam Murphy, Household Food and Drink Waste: A Product Focus, The Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), (June 2014) P. 23).
7. https://www.gmaonline.org/news-events/newsroom/grocery-industry-launches-new-initiative-to-reduce-consumer-confusion-on-pr/

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St. Louis, MO (February 6, 2018) – Hopefully, you are sticking to your plans and are on track to meet your goal. If you are like most of us, you have probably already thrown in the towel.

Luckily it’s not too late to pick back up again – we can help.

This post originally appeared on the Envolve PeopleCare blog 

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An estimated 45 percent of Americans (110 million people) make New Year’s resolutions.

 

•  Google searches for words like “diet,” “gym” and “resolutions” generally peak around January 1 (exception in July 2016 due to searches for “Pokemon Go Gym”).
•  The most popular resolutions are eating healthier and exercise (55–74 percent)followed by saving money and better habits, such as sleeping more and stopping smoking.

 

“On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.” –George Orwell

 

It hasn’t even been two months since our resolutions were made. Some of us may still have remnants of those healthy vegetarian meals we vowed to eat, now mingling in the fridge with pizza boxes and Chinese food delivery; others fight to cling to their resolutions like lifeboats. We had such good intentions, such important goals, such high hopes for the “future us.” We made these resolutions because we wanted to be better and believed (at least for that day) that we could be.

Sadly, most of us can’t stick with our new plans. More than half of resolution-makers (50–80 percent) have abandoned them by now. A longitudinal research study done at the University of Scranton found that after a year, only 8–19 percent of people followed through on their resolutions, and in the UK, researchers found that about half of those who make resolutions report they have never kept a resolution.

So, why did we give up so quickly? Why even make resolutions if they don’t work?

 

The “Fresh Start Effect” energizes new beginnings.

We are right to believe in the power of the “fresh start” that New Year’s offers. It gets us out of a rut and improves our sense of self-efficacy. But it doesn’t provide either clear goals or a plan. Without those, we can’t succeed in the long-term; motivation is too variable and fleeting to keep us on track day after day.

In some ways, New Year’s may actually be a very difficult time to set a new goal because we are exhausted already and don’t have the time we need to plan. We make resolutions during the busiest and most stressful time of the year, often basing them on post-holiday guilt without thinking about what we really want. Instead, we take goals that we did not accomplish the entire preceding year; we rename them as resolutions, bet on the magic of the new year, and hope for the best.

 

Luckily, it’s not too late to try again! Any day can be a “Fresh Start.”

 

• The beauty of a “Fresh Start” is that with proper framing, any day can be THE day.

  So, maybe your ideal New Year’s is actually on your birthday, or the first day of Spring (March 20), or even just this Monday. You don’t have to wait a whole year to get back to your resolution; just pick a day to be your own personal New Year’s!

•  Set yourself up for success.

  Make a detailed plan with very specific goals. Instead of saying, “I want to get in shape,” say: “I want to exercise for 30 minutes, four times a week. I’ll go to the YMCA at 5:30 p.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays.” Think about what might go wrong and also create a backup plan: “If I’m feeling tired, I’ll allow myself to do strength training instead of cardio.”

•  Set a challenging goal, but give yourself a few mulligans.

  Research shows that people tend to do best when their goals are difficult, but they plan for a few “cheat days.”

•  Find an accountability buddy.

  We all do better when others are watching. Tell someone about your goals and give them regular updates. Even better, post updates on social media so that you have even more buddies to encourage you.

 Don’t rely on long-term rewards.

We all need positive feedback and fun to keep us going. If you enjoy something, you are far more likely to do it, so add some fun into your goals. Add variability and excitement into your exercise routine or take a class to learn how to cook healthy foods.

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Julie M. Miller, PhD – 

Julie M. Miller is a senior behavioral researcher at the Center for Advanced Hindsight at Duke University. She works with the Envolve Center’s Behavioral Economics team, which incorporates behavioral economics and social science into health-related behavioral modification programs. Julie’s work blends behavioral economics and clinical health psychology to develop interventions that improve adherence to medical recommendations, QOL, provider-patient relationships, medical decision making, and overall health and wellness.

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