Hi All,
Woah...there's some great energy going on this month. Congratulations to all for the effort and perseverance you are putting forth towards your weight loss goals.
Though this isn't the case with everyone,
Lizzy's comment about being a
serial restarter resonates with me and my experience eating this way. Similarly, so does
Marilyn's comments about restarting but getting better at following the guidelines with each new trial. Being able to picture yourself doing this forever is an important, possibly integral, part of your personal long-term success at the weight-loss game.
Those comments had me thinking about a McDougall Webinar called
Dare to Be Lousy, from Dr. Lisle, the staff psychologist. In this lecture he discusses the forces that stop us from improving and being inspired referring to a dynamic that goes on between encouragement and expectations.* He identifies 3 major ideas around the notion of what stops us:
Part 1: Fixed or Growth MindsetThe first notion comes Stanford professor, Carol Dweck, and her work on how people think about their ability to do something. She did research with both children and college students and identified that the way a person is reinforced after a task will affect their desire to continue to perform additional tasks. If she indicated she was impressed by their talent or innate ability in the task performed they were less likely to wish to continue onto a more difficult task than if she praised their effort and hard work. She called these
The Fixed Mindset (thinking you can either achieve something or you can’t due to innate talent) and
The Growth Mindset (being willing to fumble and stumble and learn but that you can get better). She saw 2 problems with the Fixed Mindset:
1) You may not think your effort matters very much and thus won’t take advantage of what happens when people apply themselves.
2) We can sometimes protect our egos by not trying very hard.
Part 2: Self Esteem TheoryThe second notion comes from the work of Mark Leary at Duke University about
Self Esteem Theory. During lab controlled interactions students were either told they had been accepted or rejected for an additional get together. The people accepted felt good about themselves (high self esteem**) and those rejected felt bad (low self esteem). Leary discovered that feelings of what he refers to as self-esteem are much less fixed than was once believed, even in people identified by others as having very high self esteem or as not caring what others thought of them. He identified a mechanism he called an
esteem meter within each of us which seemed to be tracking what other people think of us in order to guide our behaviour. Negative feedback causes us to feel worried, depressed, anxious or embarrassed. Positive feedback gives feelings of happiness, pride and/or confidence. We receive esteem from 3 primary groups: trade partners, friends and mates. This esteem meter is a way to track what we have done right through positive feelings and do it again and again. Humans are different from animals in that we practice what are called competitive displays - athletics, singing, dancing, beauty, art. These displays are our advertisements saying I have good genes. The effort we put into practicing these displays enables us to look fancier than we really are, our efforts can help us outcompete someone with more
latent talent. This creates a problem unique to humans: How hard should we try?
We are motivated to act like we’re not trying that hard in order to have our extra efforts appear like natural ability. Since we don’t want to rehearse in front of others there needs to be a mechanism to let us know how we’re doing during these practices. So we have evolved an
imaginary audience to give us feedback as if it were real people.
Part 3: The Truth about PotentialIn this third section Dr. Lisle describes the myelination process of nerve cells and how it is related to effortful, repetitive practice. No genius is born just having an ability. The brain goes through a set of procedures in order to make an action more and more efficient (guided by the principle of energy conservation discusses in The Pleasure Trap). This myelination process occurs most efficiently if you have to struggle to learn whatever it is you are trying to figure out. Dr. Lisle cites the work of a music educator Gary McPherson who was trying to figure out why some kids ended up great musicians and some did not. He asked them if they planned to play the instrument they were currently learning 10 years from now and if the answer was yes he found when those kids practiced they were serious about it and wrapped the myelin sheath (which makes physical movements quicker and more exact). If they weren’t really focused and were just fiddling around and didn’t have their heart in it then the sheath doesn’t wrap very well. Those kids who decided they were in it for the long term became much better musicians than the fiddlers, latent ability notwithstanding.
With these things in mind here is Dr. Lisle’s Process for Human Improvement:
1) Accomplishments of any type look complicated
2) Break them into small parts
3) Practice slowly (errors will occur and we need this struggle while practicing for myelin sheath to form)
4) Practice makes myelin, myelin makes “perfect”
When you witness someone doing something really well this never happens by accident, or natural talent alone, it happens by this slow methodical struggling practice.
5) Learning never ends - whether you’re 6 or 60.
So dare yourself to be lousy and you’re DOOMED to improve. This is how we end up with the life we deserve.
And that is the summary of
Dare to Be Lousy summary.
Keep up the effort and learning and you will improve at following the MWL program.
Best wishes for the coming week,
Amy XO
PS. Be sure to listen to hear what motivational speaker Jim Rohn said that inspired a young Doug Lisle.
* I'm paraphrasing and outright quoting Dr. Lisle throughout this summary, without identifying the difference. I hope that's okay with everyone...take a listen to the lecture to see what I skipped or had to leave out for space considerations. You won't be disappointed. It's about 40 minutes in length.
** Dr. Lisle's definition of self-esteem is different than Dr. Leary's. What Dr. Leary describes here as self-esteem, Dr. Lisle would call esteem.
Here are the results for the first week in August:Next Weigh-In is on Friday, August 10th, 2018Total group loss reported in 2018: 358.3 pounds
August 2018 Weight Loss Group :: Monthly Weigh-In Results
Total group loss in January 2018: 54.7 pounds
Total group loss in February 2018: 49.3 pounds
Total group loss in March 2018: 52.5 pounds
Total group loss in April 2018: 26.9 pounds
Total group loss in May 2018: 50.8 pounds
Total group loss in June 2018: 54.3 pounds
Total group loss in July 2018: 50.3 pounds
Total group loss in August 2018: 19.9 poundsWeek ending 08/03/2018: 16 participants reported a total loss of 19.9 pounds
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Total gains: 0.0
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Jobet - 1.1
Addicttofood - 2.0
Idgie - 2.8
Rosey - 3.6
Mark Cooper - 2.6
Victw - 2.6
Lizzy_F - 2.0
VegSeekingFit - 0.8
Lyndzie - 0.0
Svenja - 0.0*
Cherrydale - 0.0
Moonspirit - 2.4
Moonchild - 0.0
Squealcat - 0.0
Moonlight - 0.0
Amandamechele - 0.0
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Total losses: 19.9
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Total group loss in August 2018: 19.9 pounds
Week ending 08/03/2018: 16 participants reported a total loss of 19.9 pounds
Last edited by amandamechele on Sun Aug 05, 2018 10:33 am, edited 2 times in total.
by Lyndzie » Fri Aug 03, 2018 7:09 pm 
