Habits of Successful Weight Managers: A Triggering Event

[caption id="attachment_7189" align="alignright" width="420" caption="My granddaughter, Anna Leigh"][/caption]

A triggering event is an event, situation, or may even be a comment that makes you think about something differently. The National Weight Control Registry (NWCR), a study that I refer to often, has been collecting data for the past 15 years about the habits and characteristics of those who have been successful at losing  a lot of weight (50 – 70 lbs.), and kept it off for a long time (5 – 7 years). They found that a number of the people in their database had what they referred to as a “triggering event”, an event that made them think about their weight in a different way and made managing their weight, or getting healthy more important to them than  it had been before. The triggering event could have been a bad medical report, seeing their reflection in store window or mirror from an angle they hadn’t seen before, being unable to do something because of their weight, seeing a close friend or family member have a serious health problem or anything that made losing and maintaining their weight more important to them than before this event.

One of my favorite examples of this from the NWCR was a young, single father of a 4-year-old daughter. The daughter had some friends over and they were playing and talking and the father over heard one of his daughter’s friends say “your daddy is really nice, but he sure is fat.” While he knew he was overweight, he had never heard anyone say it so bluntly—and he said to himself at that moment, she is right, I am fat, and I am the single father of a 4-year-old daughter. That day he hired a personal trainer, joined weight watchers and now many years later, he is fitter, leaner and much healthier than before. While he always knew he should do something about his weight, it took that comment to motivate him to act.

I had what I consider to be a triggering event on Wednesday January 11, at 12:58 pm. Anna Leigh Fraser came into the world and changed my world forever. Yes, I am now a grandfather (papa) to a healthy baby girl. I am a pretty healthy guy, who has lived a pretty healthy lifestyle, but things are different now.  I am already finding myself thinking, I want to be there when she graduates, gets married and has kids herself ( I literally just shed a tear, I am not making this up). I have been a grandfather for about a week and I am already looking ahead to being a great grandparent. So as important as health has always been to me, it’s much more important now. As much as I try to practice what we preach, I have to be a better practitioner. You might have heard me say one of my favorite quotes, “habits are caught not taught,” now I have someone else to “catch” my habits. My favorite phrase,” unwise, better, best,” has new meaning to me. The point is, the stakes have changed, and they changed the minute is saw her for the first time. I know I will be more conscious of my health because of her.

It is important to point out that not all of the successful weight managers in the NWCR had a triggering event—in fact, most didn’t. Having a triggering event is not a requirement for or a prerequisite for success, nor does it make it any easier to succeed. But it does provide a rallying point; helps focus your attention, put perspective on why it’s important to keep working toward and achieving your health goals. If you have had such an event, use it to keep you focused. If you haven’t had one, don’t wait for it—look for other sources of motivation and inspiration; but be on the lookout, you never know when that potentially life changing triggering event will occur.