Values & the direction of your effort.

Managing weight is a lifelong pursuit needing sustained effort. You will be asked to consider: what are the things in my life that are meaningful enough to make me willing to maintain a sustained effort?

These meaningful reasons are called VALUES. They serve as a key source of intrinsic motivation, and you will be asked to do two things with them:

• Clarify them — name what is most important to you.
• Reflect on them regularly — at the end of each day, ask whether your decisions moved you in their direction.

Core values guide the way people live their lives, and represent what is most important to them. In weight management, being aware of one's values can help foster a willingness to choose the difficult but worthwhile choices — such as not giving in to a craving, or exercising even when tired. Managing weight requires ongoing effort. Values provide a strong reason one may be willing to work hard over the long run.

What are values, and why do they matter?

People are capable of difficult work long into the future if the work leads them in the direction of the things that are most important to them. The behaviours involved in successful weight management require lifelong attention and work. What might be important enough to you, in your life, that it would make you willing to attend to and work on these behaviours long term?

Core values are the things most important to you in terms of how you wish to live your life. Whether you are fully aware of your values or not, they are guiding forces that influence your daily decisions and behaviours. When we do things that are aligned with our values, we tend to feel good about them — and we are even willing to experience some discomfort or inconvenience by living this way, because it is important to us. When we live in a way that doesn't support our values, there are usually signs of unease or dissatisfaction.

Long-term weight management is not easy, and requires a willingness to experience some short-term discomfort from time to time. The discomfort of passing up a tasty treat, of preparing a simple meal at home instead of going through a drive-thru, or of exercising when you feel tired are all examples. However, these discomforts may be minimized if those choices are aligned with your values.

The best clinical weight management outcomes to date1 integrate, as a central strategy, a behavioural commitment to clearly-defined values.

Values are a direction, not a destination.

Distinguishing between values and goals is important. Values are a direction, while goals are a destination. Values are a compass that helps determine the direction you want to be going. You strive in the direction of your values, but you never reach them — because they are not a destination.

Long-term goals, on the other hand, are destinations. Losing this much weight, fitting into this pants size — these are goals. There are risks in setting long-term goals when it comes to weight management. You may not be able to achieve the goal, and that could result in disappointment, self-criticism, and giving up. Another risk: if you do reach the goal, what will motivate you to keep going? Managing weight requires long-term effort. Goals may change over time, be achieved, or prove too difficult. In contrast, a person's core values tend to be constant and permanent.

Step 1 · What are my values?

A good place to start is to think about why you want to lose weight sustainably. For example, some may say: "I want to lose weight because I want to be healthier." A rule with values is that if you can ask "why," you have not yet found the underlying value. Why do you want to be healthy?

"If I lose weight, I will have more energy and mobility." Why do you want more energy and mobility?

"I really enjoy participating in fun activities when travelling — like hiking, scuba diving, and canoeing — and I like cycling with my kids on the weekends. I want to share in all those experiences with my spouse, children, and grandchildren long into the future."

There it is. Now you can begin to capture a values statement. We suggest you start your values statements with the phrase: I want to be working in the direction of where my weight and health are least preventing me from…

The value of fun

You will also be asked to consider maintaining a loyalty to enjoying the experience of good food and drink with family and friends — in socialization, and in celebration. You may think this would seem contradictory to your values of health and quality of life. In a way, the opposite is true: sustained behaviour change to achieve weight loss requires maintaining a loyalty to all your values.

It is very common to want to maintain a loyalty to both of these values. In fact, the journey to discover your best weight may also be defined as the process of finding a personal balance that allows for loyalty to both: enjoying life, while maintaining a loyalty to health and quality of life.

Flexibility and balance

Consider asking yourself before a dinner party: How would this night end if I were to be loyal to both my values — for (1) health and (2) fun, food, and friends? How can I still enjoy the pleasure of good food and drink, and yet minimize any negative impact on my health and weight?

If you are celebrating an occasion at a restaurant, you may choose to consider this a celebratory meal and plan for extra calories so you can include a glass of wine (or two) and a shared dessert, if these are important ways for you to enjoy the experience. In contrast, if you are dining out because you didn't have a chance to grocery shop, you may choose to consider this a functional meal — a meal you would otherwise eat at home, such as a healthy entrée. Prioritizing your value for health in this case might mean avoiding the bread basket, appetizer, dessert, alcohol, and fried foods.

Values are different from feelings

It is very common for people to pursue weight loss to feel better about their appearance, to feel more attractive, to be more satisfied with how they look, and to feel more confident as a result. Although weight loss may help a person feel better about their appearance, it is generally an ineffective way to improve body satisfaction in the long term. Body dissatisfaction is less about your body and weight, and much more about the thoughts and beliefs you have about your appearance.

You can work on improving body satisfaction independent of weight loss. Cognitive-behavioural therapy can help you change the thoughts you have about your image, and thereby decrease your feelings of dissatisfaction. By changing your thinking, you can improve body satisfaction, self-esteem, and confidence.

Read more on body satisfaction in the Resilience module →

Step 2 · Behavioural goals aligned with values

Now that you have identified your values, think about what eating habits and exercise habits reflect them. When making decisions about food, drink, and exercise, ask yourself: Is this decision aligned with my values? "Of course I can eat this, drink this, or skip this activity — but is this decision in line with the direction I want to be going in, towards the things that are most important to me?" It is amazing how powerful pausing and asking these questions can be.

If values are the reason weight management is important to you, behavioural goals are within your control and can help keep you in line with your values. Setting daily behavioural goals — such as "I will pack a healthy lunch instead of going to the food court" — can increase the likelihood of behaving in a way that is in line with your values.

Step 3 · End-of-day reflection

This may sound obvious, but behaviours that are followed by a positive experience tend to be repeated. Behaviours that are followed by a negative experience tend not to be repeated. This simple learning principle was embedded into psychology in 1898 by Edward Lee Thorndike when he introduced his law of effect. B.F. Skinner later studied and defined this principle with the term reinforcement.

The exercise of values reflection is based on this simple learning theory. The values-reflection exercise invites you to ask, at the end of the day: Did I move in the direction of my values today? Were my decisions around food and activity in the direction of what is most important to me?

When the answer is yes, this reflection is naturally followed by positive emotions — satisfaction, happiness, hopefulness. These emotions reinforce the behaviours and increase the likelihood that they are repeated.

What if the answer is no? "No, my eating and activity today were not aligned with my values." In that case, the reflection is naturally followed by mild negative emotions — mild dissatisfaction, unhappiness. These mild negative emotions do the opposite of reinforcement, making the off-track behaviours less likely to be repeated. In this model, off-track days become important learning opportunities, potentially leading to behaviours that are next time on track.

An important caveat — beware of self-critical thoughts

The end-of-day reflection exercise carries some risk. Reflecting on your day can generate self-critical thoughts.

The goal on off-track days is to experience mild negative emotions that promote learning and positive change. The strong negative reaction described above puts you at risk of not being open to that learning. Fortunately, the Resilience module covers this comprehensively. If the end-of-day reflection on off-track days feels demotivational, please reference the Resilience module.

Read the Resilience module →

The end-of-day reflection exercise

All too often, people look for reinforcement in the wrong places — the scale, how their clothes fit, compliments from others, whether health goals are being realized. The problem with using these outcomes to reinforce our behaviours is that they don't happen immediately adjacent to the behaviour we are looking to reinforce. If you are teaching a dog to roll over, you do not bring the cookie the next day. You give it right away — the emotional reward comes right after the behaviour, and the behaviour is reinforced.

Looking to the scale for reinforcement is the equivalent of rewarding a dog the next day, or at the end of a week. The scale is also not always a reliable indicator of progress. Rewards should come adjacent to the behaviour you are trying to reinforce — not the next day or week.

Values are a direction, not a destination. You never achieve values — you hope to be continually working towards them, and living them. When considering food and activity decisions, "Is this aligned with my values?" can be the most important question you ask. Values serve as the compass that provides direction and willingness to manage weight long into the future.