Random Acts of Traction

I was reading Gaping Void this morning. Hugh introduced the concept Random Acts of Traction. Now, sure, he is using this as a marketing term but let's expand the theme.

Random Acts of Traction (my interpretation): what really works for you when you are bumbling around trying to figure out what works for you.

Point is: There really isn't any telling ahead of time what is going to work to be in charge of your weight over the long-term. I can tell what you what has worked for my successful clients. I can tell you what I thought was missing for the clients who were not successful.

But for you in particular??? That is the point. Over the course of your time working on managing your weight, you have learned things about yourself. What piece of the Atkin's diet were you successful with? What about when you were working crazy-long hours at the new job and your weight was right where you wanted it to be? What little bit did you learn during that time that worked for controlling your weight? (not eating because you never had time is not a long term solution -- think harder, what else did you learn?)

Hugh goes on to quote Doc Searls and his idea of rolling large rocks up a hill (try after try of deprivation diets you play out by the book) and how much nicer it is to roll snowballs down the hill -- some of them don't go very far but sometimes you will get one that starts its slow roll, picking up more snow as it goes and using its own momentum to change the landscape.

Seems like a nice way to manage your weight doesn't it?

Collect little pieces here and there that work for you. Coordinate them into your life -- sometimes these things start out slow. But as you gain traction -- as things start to work for you, you will find more little changes to make. As you pick up traction, the whole thing starts running on the momentum you put into getting it started.

Where will your traction come from? You are the expert on this. That is why I am a coach and not an expert. -- Think about the small ways you have been successful in the past -- see if you can string some of those things together. Be on the look out for new Acts of Traction. Pay attention. Be Mindful about what you are doing.

I was reading Seth Godin’s post this morning.

“There's always room for Jello -- This is one of the great cultural touchstone slogans of our era. A culture where there's so much to eat we need to try to find a food that we can eat even if we're stuffed.
Often, we'll decide that something is full, stuffed, untouchable but then some Jello shows up, and suddenly there's room. ”

It got me thinking….

As a culture, we eat too much -- no news there. According to studies, we eat way more than Europeans do and we enjoy it much less. We worry about making “healthy choices” and it has taken the joy out of eating for lots of people.

We have taken the Jello slogan and turned it into gospel. Who wouldn’t? Bill Cosby/Cliff Huxtable would not lie to us. Our parents (“Oh, honey, just one more bit for mommy -- open the hanger, here comes the airplane”) would not lie to us. There is always room from just a little bit more.

We trust Dr. Atkins to tell us how to lose weight. We trust Dr. Ornish to tell us how to keep our heart healthy and cardiovascular disease at bay. We trust Oprah to screen out all of the wacko diets and give us the right information to live at our perfect weight.

But what about you? What do you know about you? Do you know that you need something crunchy at every meal to feel satisfied with what you have eaten? Do you know you enjoy the feeling of being very full? Do you know you are a sweet eater and realize it is more likely you will eat the whole batch of cookies instead of just 3?

Maybe you do. Maybe you don’t. But how much faith do you put into your understanding of yourself? How much do you cultivate this knowledge? What sort of actions have you come up with based on this knowledge?

When you were born, you understood how much you needed to eat. You can’t force-feed a baby -- it just runs out of their mouth or they actively spit it out. Eventually, adults wear them down. Babies are taught to over-eat -- by “experts”.

Can we learn to start listening to ourselves? Can we reconnect with our sensations of hunger and fullness? -- the same sensations we used as babies to know when we needed to eat and when we were done. Of course we can.

If you are working on that reconnection, start talking to your friends and family about the reconnections you are trying to make. Learn how to describe your sensations with words -- out loud.

Rally your support -- but learn to have more faith in yourself and be your own expert.