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The Behaviors That Helped Me Lose 25 Pounds

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Courtesy of maHidoodi via Creative Commons license.

Today I’ll talk about behaviors that helped me lose 25 pounds. In my last two posts, I discussed the why and the how for this weight loss. When tackling something significant like weight loss, you need motivation (the why), the tools (the how), and the habits (the behavior) to get on a path and stick with it. Establishing these behaviors and sticking with them turns this into routine.

Behavior Number 1 – Admit There Are No Shortcuts

Really. No diet pill, shot, gadget or other mechanism is going to help. At least not in the long-term. Surgery is an extreme option, but even that requires behavior modification so why not try changing your behaviors first?

At my highest weight, 215 pounds on my 41st birthday

Behavior Number 2 – Accountability

I could not have done this alone. My wife and I have both been on this journey together. I needed her full support, and she needed mine. We kept each other on task for both diet and exercise. Accountability also gives you someone who you can share your struggles and your celebrations with. We both have needed that at points along the way.

Behavior Number 3 – Exercise Even When You Don’t Feel Like It

My original goal was to exercise four days per week. There were days when I was tired and many days when it was late in the evening before I went walking or running. But I did it.

Behavior Number 4 – Log Your Exercise

I got a Nike Plus tracker a couple of years into my trek. I’ve loved it. It’s very motivating to see the progress that is tracked on the Nike Plus site. You can also do this manually but there are a whole suite of products in stores like Best Buy that make tracking your activity easier than ever.

Behavior Number 5 – Keep A Food Diary

This has been the most eye-opening experience. I had always heard that if you track your food you’ll eat more sensibly, but the idea of whipping out a notepad at every turn sounded like a lot of work. Enter the calorie-tracking app MyFitnessPal. Available for PC, Mac, Android and iPhone, MyFitnessPal is a free app that lets you track your food AND nutritional intake as well as your workouts and your progress. It took a few days to get in the rhythm, but if your family is like ours you tend to eat the same meals periodically. MyFitnessPal lets you copy foods or meals from one day to another so that you don’t have to enter them every time. And with over a million entries in their database, you are likely to find most grocery products already keyed into the app.

I cannot begin to tell you how this behavior affected my progress. Tracking my food in this app opened my eyes to just how many calories were in the common foods that we eat. As we got better with the app, my wife and I began to plan the next day’s food in advance so that we could see just how many calories we had for each meal. Instead of restricting us, we felt like it gave us more choices to move our food around as we saw fit.

This app also let me set a weight goal and decide how quickly I wanted to reach that goal. Then, automatically, it figured how many calories I should consume per day to reach that goal. This was much better than the low-carb diet because I sure was missing sugar, bread, pasta and more. But once I started using the app, I began to realize how many calories were in most foods. No wonder we’re becoming a nation of fat people. Do you know how easy it is to hit your 2000-calorie needs as an adult? Scary easy. Seeing this in an app helped me realize when to say no to certain foods.

Behavior 6 – Track Your Progress

It is very important to track your progress. Whether you just log your weight or inches lost too, be consistent about it. The times that I slipped backwards in this journey, I wasn’t tracking regularly. It also motivates you to do more when you see progress.

Me this morning, weighing in at 148 pounds.

Behavior 7 – Keep At It

Every day on this journey was not in the positive direction. There have been holidays, birthdays, and days where I just blew it on either diet or exercise. There are days or weeks when you plateau and think you can’t lose any more weight. Those can last awhile too, and can really be discouraging. You just have to keep going. If you have a bad day, start again tomorrow.

So, after beginning in March, I have successfully lost 25 pounds. The net total loss over five years was 67 pounds, but since I lost 13 of those pounds twice I can say I’ve lost 80 pounds altogether. Over the last 25 pounds I averaged one pound per week by this one simple formula – eating fewer calories than my body burns each day. One pound equals 3500 calories. The math on that works out very nicely to 500 calories per day to lose one pound per week. And doing this alongside my wife has made this much easier. We both feel a lot better and look better too. Our youngest has gotten in on the act, and in a future post I’ll write more about how this has helped our family as a whole. In the meantime, you just have to get started. You owe it to yourself, to your spouse, and to your kids. It won’t happen overnight, but it will happen – just stick with it.

In Behaviors, Life Skills behavior, diet, fitness, goals, habits, health, obesity, weight loss

Why It Is So Hard To Shut Up And Listen

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Sometimes it’s like I’m deaf. I won’t listen to what my kids are saying to me.

My 17 year-old son Nick was out past curfew last night. He attempted to call me on the phone a few minutes before but I didn’t answer. I called him back right at his curfew and told him to get home. He had an explanation but I didn’t want to hear it. I told him on the phone that he was grounded without even finding out what happened.

I had given him permission to have two friends over to spend the night. When they were ready to head home, the driver had to go to his house. Between getting his stuff and switching vehicles some keys were locked out. It took some time for them to get back in and get to the house.

So I was punishing my kid even though:

he called me,

he was where he was supposed to be, and

he was doing nothing wrong.

So much for that Father of the Year award. All because I failed to listen. I had egg on my face this morning when I heard the story and had to recant my punishment.

Stephen Covey writes as Habit 5 “Seek First To Understand, Then To Be Understood.” I’ve read the book. I’ve taken classes on the Seven Habits. I know this. I’ve written about this before (see “Can You Hear Me Now“). Then why do I have such a hard time putting it into practice?

Maybe it’s because as parents we think we know everything. We feel like we’re the authority figure in the home and kids should do everything we say. We get caught up in assumptions and expecting bad behavior. While we are the authority, we don’t know everything.

Sometimes we expect the worst. Our minds conjure up images of what they might be up to. Punishment seems to be the only alternative. We may want to be assertive and decisive in our parenting. We try to command respect instead of earn respect. Listening can be construed as weakness.

Seeking first to understand is about active listening. It’s not enough to simply wait your turn to talk. Seeking to understand means probing. It means stopping to evaluate what you’ve heard. It means asking questions. It means putting yourself in the other person’s shoes. It means showing the same respect that you would want.

So what should I have done instead? Several things come to mind.

I could have answered the phone when he called the first time.
I should have listened to the story instead of getting my words across.
If I wanted Nick home, I could have gone to get him myself.
I could have asked if they needed help.
I could have extended grace and not been such a stickler on the curfew.

So, more for me than for your guys, don’t be so quick to snap to judgment. Remember that we are modeling behavior for our kids every day. If we want them to grow up and be active listeners, we need to show them how. Beginning with me.

Discussion Questions – What parenting success story can you share where active listening techniques paid off?

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In Parenting Skills authority, behavior, curfew, listening, respect

Humorous Teenage Pranks From The Trenches

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One thing is for sure – your teenager will always be up to something. That age group is always seeking out ways to push their boundaries so teenage pranks make for some great stories. I’ve got a couple of stories to share and I have omitted all the names to protect the guilty and the unwitting parents, so enjoy. You probably have some even better than these, so join the conversation and comment below!

Rolling yards is one of the classic teenage pranks. While it is frustrating to the parents, it’s also a badge of honor for the teen. At least in the South, if your yard gets rolled it’s probably because you’re popular among some crowd. But if you’re out rolling yards, don’t leave any evidence behind. A WalMart bag was found among the mess, and in that bag was a logon ID and password written on a piece of paper. Enough information was there to find out exactly who was part of the toilet paper gang – busted!

Let’s just say that teens have a curiosity for the opposite sex. I’ve heard a couple of stories lately about kids experimenting in various places – on the school bus, in their bedroom while Mom or Dad is home, and others. The funniest thing about the school bus story is that although the children were both suspended from school, they were both lauded as heroes among their friends. Hmm, not sure the kids learned their lessons from that one…

Think you’ve cut off internet access? Think again. In this story, a dad thought that he could impose an internet curfew by disabling the home router at a set time each night. This worked for one kid but not the other. You see, the neighbor’s Wi-Fi access point was unprotected so one kid simply connected to their network and kept right on surfing. But the signal wasn’t strong enough to reach the other child’s bedroom. Their big mouth, though, was the end to this little trick – once the other sibling found out about this, parents were quickly informed. Dad turned on the parental controls on each computer to cut off access at the desired time, and that problem was solved.

A whole category of teenage pranks involve being somewhere that you shouldn’t be. Parties will happen and teens want to be there. But if you put a cell phone in their hand, it’s getting to be very easy to find out where your kids are at all times. All of the major carriers now offer some form of GPS tracking to tell where all of the phones on the plan are at any time. So when a dad checked in with his daughter and she said she was at the home of one friend but the GPS locator said she was elsewhere, Dad showed up and put an early end to the night’s events for his teen. An embarrassing moment for the teen, to say the least.

Sometimes your child will live a double life – online, that is. It’s becoming more common for teens to have two Facebook profiles – one for family and one for friends. When that happens, this becomes the place where their teenage pranks are lived out online. Teens are starting to hear the message that their online reputation is important, and they don’t want their parents seeing the pictures from that party or messages from certain conversations. Those alternate profiles can be tough to find – in the case of this story, the only way it was noticed was that an unfamiliar email address popped up in the login prompt for Facebook.

My point in sharing these is more than just to provide humor. We should always be on the lookout for what your child might be up to. We can (and should) trust our children, but occasionally verifying that what they say is true will help keep them on the straight and narrow. It is their nature to test their limits and boundaries with these teenage pranks and it is up to the parents to keep those limits firmly in place.

Application Question: Are you on the lookout for these and other ways that your teen might be overstepping their boundaries?

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In Parenting Skills behavior, boundaries, cell phone, curfew, discipline, facebook, friends, internet, Online reputation management, Social media, teens

Is Corporate Punishment A Common Problem?

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I’m going to go out on a limb and coin a new phrase here – Corporate Punishment. We’ve all heard of corporal punishment as infliction of physical pain in response to an action, but what the heck is corporate punishment? It is a trap that we can easily fall into as parents and teachers because we see it happening all around us. What it is, why it is harmful, and what to do about it are the topics of this post.

Let’s define corporate punishment as the application of the same punishment to a group of individuals. That might be something as simple as putting all of your children in time-out because they’re behaving badly. We see it in schools all the time where the teacher yells at the whole class or makes them all write sentences when in reality only a couple of children are acting up. The first example is clearly OK because all of the children are involved, but the second can be problematic. The children who were not part of the problem suffer a consequence, which sends the wrong message to them about their good behavior.

Corporate punishment can show up in not-so-obvious ways, which is what we observe among adults. I’ve had to catch myself doing this in my workplace. When I come up with a new rule or policy that applies to all of my associates, I have to ask myself is it a reaction to one or two people that is penalizing the group as a whole? Applying corporate punishment in this fashion is generally a method for avoiding conflict with the troublemakers. Sometimes you discover that there is a situation or condition that needs clarification for the group as a whole, but routinely stamping out bad behavior by swatting the whole group destroys morale.

I get it that there are situations where punishing the group as a whole leads to the group applying social correction to the offenders. This might work in a group of adults or in a team environment but generally is not understood by children who are evaluated on their individual performance. I don’t think that corporate punishment is effective in the classroom. When a child is singled out for their behavior it’s tough and may create an uncomfortable conversation with that child’s parents, but if they aren’t made aware of the problem then it never goes away. Corporate punishment may address a specific situation short term, but that situation will happen again and again until the root of the problem is dealt with.

If you’re a parent whose child might be the victim of corporate punishment, follow the general guidelines below to uncover the situation.

Get the facts from your child. Be as specific about dates and punishments as possible.
Don’t discuss your actions with the child; that will undermine their teacher’s authority.
Ask the teacher if your child has been a problem and get specific details to see if the stories line up.
Discuss with the teacher your concerns about what you’ve heard and possible solutions. If you fear retaliation on your child, go to the school principal.
Be a good role model and example of the proper application of discipline in your home.

Teachers specifically, I know you have a very difficult job but no parent wants to hear that their child was unjustly disciplined. I would like to hear your thoughts on corporate punishment. Parents, do you see this happening? Have you had successful interactions with your child’s teachers on this subject?

Application Question – What can I do to recognize corporate punishment? Am I supporting my child’s teachers? Am I guilty of using corporate punishment to avoid conflict?

In Elementary School, High School, Middle School or Junior High, Parenting Skills, Preschool avoiding conflict, behavior, Child, consequence, corporate punishment, discipline, parent, school, social correction, teacher

Why Is Peer Pressure So Powerful on Teens

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We all want to fit in. We tell ourselves that we’re individuals, but we conform to the societal norms. For the most part, we dress alike, talk alike, work alike, and live many aspects of our lives just like our neighbors. So is it any wonder our kids want to be like their friends? This is the genesis of peer pressure. For teens, this is an extremely powerful motivator. We’ll explore reasons why in this post and give parents some weapons to combat the forces of peer pressure.

As I wrote in a previous post, the teen mind is more susceptible to peer pressure because teens are motivated by the rewards of their behavior. Teens understand the associated risks of their boneheaded stunts, but winning the admiration of their friends weighs in heavier than backing away because of the risk. Thus, we find ourselves shaking our heads when we see our own teen or others involved in some ridiculous stunt. Thankfully, many of these are harmless and the worst thing that happens is that our teen learns a harsh life lesson. Some of these go bad and sadly, a teen may wind up behind bars or dead as a result.

And other teens don’t help the situation either. For peer pressure to be effective there needs to be peers involved in “encouraging” the unwitting recipient to engage in the questionable behavior. Often these kids see something that has been sensationalized on television or has gone viral over the internet and they want to see someone do the same in person. Or, a weaker child might get caught up with the wrong group of kids and do something they otherwise would not do in order to be accepted into that group. For boys and girls alike, the desire to be seen as a daredevil, a risk taker, a tough guy, or something similar is strong. For teens without strong parental influence in the home, the likelihood of them stepping into this spotlight is high.

How can parents cope? What strategies can minimize the influence of peer pressure on teens? For starters, parents need to know their children’s friends and their parents. Parents need to set strict guidelines on where a child can go and high expectations that the child goes where they say. Say no when you feel that it is the right thing to do – remember that you are the parent. Curfews are a must, and penalties for either breaking curfew or being somewhere other than they say need to be enforced. These activities set boundaries for your teen, something that deep down inside they need and desire from their parents.

At every turn, have discussions with your teen about actions and consequences from real-life situations. Talk to them about your own struggles with peer pressure and societal norms, and that you understand what they are going through. This might be the single-most important tool in the struggle against peer pressure. Ensure that your teen hears that you are happy and content with your life and that you aren’t unduly influenced by others and their standing in life. In other words, let them know that it is OK to be a little weird.

Build their own self-esteem by letting your child know how special and unique they are. If you don’t compare them to others, then they are less likely to compare themselves to others. Let them know that “friends” who make their friendship conditional on an action, behavior, or some material trapping are no friend at all.

No matter what our actions, we will never fully shelter our children from the effects of peer pressure. They do need to know how to recognize it and cope with it now and throughout the rest of their lives. If they can learn contentedness at an early age, it will pay huge benefits to them later on in life. Through proactive, involved parenting, you can put your child in the strongest possible position to fend off peer pressure.

In Uncategorized actions, behavior, boundaries, consequences, curfew, friends, influence, peer pressure, reward, risk, self-esteem

What to do when nothing works?

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Sometimes it seems like nothing you try works. You use the principles mentioned throughout the Affluent Student, you involve others, and you beg and plead with your child but still they don’t perform. What then? I can tell you that I too have experienced this firsthand, and it isn’t easy to deal with. Let’s talk about how you might react.

I had a therapist tell me that I care about my child’s grades more than they did, which was correct. But they also told me to just let my child fail. While the therapist may be a professional and have their own clinical answers, I just did not feel comfortable letting that happen. This leads to my first conclusion – never give up, and never appear disinterested. Your children need to know that you care. They may get angry and roll their eyes when you lay down the law, but they need the safety and guidance provided by your boundaries and expectations.

Bad results come from bad behaviors. Avoiding homework, skipping out on classwork, and not studying for tests or doing projects are the bad behaviors. The results are the bad grades that come from those behaviors. In our discussion about rewards and punishments, one of the things we learned was that putting off a punishment or a reinforcer is much less effective than if the consequence is delivered at the time of the behavior. So the second takeaway is to be more diligent about the consequences. Focus on the positive – intentionally seek out times when your child does the right things and reward when that happens. But don’t let bad behaviors go unnoticed. The sooner you correct those, the better.

Another lesson for the parent here is about motivation. If this is going to be a problem, it begins to appear in middle school for some reason. It probably has a lot to do with peer pressure, adolescence, and a variety of other factors. If you find that you continually have to provide the motivation for your child to do their schoolwork, then you’re probably frustrated. Motivation that doesn’t come from within will last only temporarily. Talk to them about the benefits of doing the right things instead of trying to motivate through fear or bribery. Help them see the longer term goals that they can reach through discipline and hard work. I’ve made this mistake more often than I care to admit, but if you can convey a vision then it is more likely that your child will get onboard. It won’t happen overnight, but it will happen.

Final thought - remember that your child is a gift from God. Just as we are all God’s children, He is crazy about us and loves us no matter what we do. He may be disappointed in our choices from time to time, but His love for us never diminishes. Treat your child the same. Your love and adoration for them should never be based on their performance in school, on the sports field, in the dance or piano recital or anywhere else. Let your child know how special they are to you and never let them think for one moment that you love them any less because of their grades.

It’s tough being a parent – please don’t ever give up on your children, whether they are natural, adopted, step or otherwise. If you took on the responsibility for raising them, it is your duty and obligation to be the very best parent that you can be to them.

In Uncategorized behavior, consequences, failure, grades, love, Motivation, parenting, punishments, rewatds

Ideas for punishments and rewards

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At The Affluent Student, we’ve talked about the importance of having good rewards and punishments as a way to shape the behaviors that we want in our children. I’d like to propose some examples here, but it would also be neat to hear some of the ones that have worked well for you.

For starters, keep in mind the purpose for punishments and rewards. Punishments are to stop any behavior that you don’t want to happen again, and rewards are to encourage more of the behavior that you do want to happen again. That being said, both come after the behavior that you are working on, which means that they are consequences of the behavior. Rewards should never be used as bribes to get something to happen in the first place, nor should punishments be used like a threat to get something to happen. You must know your children. You have to know what things they like and dislike and what things make them tick, You need to understand their personalities and their motivators. But I would be cautious about using, as punishments, things that we want to see our children doing. Just as important, we need to be careful that the rewards we use aren’t things that we would not want our children to have or be involved in.

So, what are good rewards? How about these:

Extra play time
A day where the child selects the activities
A special meal
A small toy, or article of clothing for older children, that they’ve been wanting
An opportunity to help Mom or Dad with something that they don’t normally do
An impromptu party
Tickets to an event that the child would really love
Praise and compliments

Now, some examples of good punishments

TIme out
Withholding of an allowance (be careful with this one; if the allowance is based on completion of chores and they do them, give the allowance)
Removal of a toy or game that they like
Early bedtime
Grounding or loss of a privilege
Spanking (spare the rod, spoil the child)
Isolation from friends

Both rewards and punishments should be dealt, as equally as possible, with both mom and dad involved from time to time. That way your child doesn’t associate rewards with one and punishments with the other, or worse doesn’t ever expect to get either from one parent or the other. Upon delivery of either, it is critical that the child understand why they are being rewarded or punished so that the behavior modification can take hold. Hopefully you can see how these can shape behaviors and help raise your child to understand what is expected of them. Let me hear your thoughts!

In Uncategorized behavior, Child discipline, consequences, Family, punishment, Reinforcement, rewards, Spanking

The ABC’s of good behaviors

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As parents, you want the right behaviors taking place in your child. The right behaviors almost always lead to the best results, right? So, if we can get our children to perform those behaviors repeatedly, this will help them create their own success. As we look at this, it is important to remember that everything a child decides to do or not do is a behavior. Behavior can be good or bad, and it’s important that we understand how they work in order to put them to their best use.

Every behavior, good or bad, follows the A-B-C model according to behavioral psychology. A-B-C stands for Antecedent, Behavior, Consequence, which you can read more about here. In short, it says that every behavior is brought on or triggered by something (the Antecedent), then the Behavior occurs, and that is followed by a Consequence. What we may consider a bad behavior may be more appealing to the child than the opposing good behavior. That could very well be because the consequence of the bad behavior is not as bad as the consequence of the proper behavior. For example, let’s talk about homework. If your child chooses to not do their homework, it could be because the immediate consequence of getting to play outside, talk on the phone, or watching TV is more appealing to them. The additional consequence is that they will have to do their homework later, or if they do not do it at all then they get a bad grade. What may have been the antecedent to this behavior? It could be that little Jimmy across the street called to play, or that your child had a tough day in school, or that they got a bad grade in class and if they pull out their homework then you’ll have to see the grade. The magic of this is that a consequence of one behavior can be the antecedent to the next behavior. If your child goes unpunished for a bad behavior, then that consequence will be the antecedent to the next time they repeat that behavior. Or, if they are rewarded for a good behavior as a consequence, it will drive them to do the same thing over and over again.

Children want to know what you expect from them. They want you to set safe boundaries and to let them know when they are doing the right things. They may not ever say it, but they also want to know when they aren’t doing the right things. Only by applying meaningful, immediate consequences that have significance to the child for both good and bad behaviors will we be able to use this to our advantage. The hard part is to know what things motivate your child to perform those right behaviors – that is, identifying the right antecedents and putting those in place to set your child up to succeed. If you’re dealing with some challenging behavior, a good behavioral therapist may be able to help you work through the model and put some good antecedents and consequences in place.

In Uncategorized antecedent, behavior, children, consequence, psychology, therapist

A strong bond

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This post is for married parents of school-age children (and children of all ages). One of the traps that society today has set for us is the myth of the easy-in, easy-out marriage. The common thought is that if this marriage doesn’t work out, I’ll find someone who will make me happy. Divorce is never that simple, and its complexities are increased tenfold when children are involved. Divorce leaves an indelible mark on children that affects every aspect of their lives. God designed marriage as the union between man and wife, and children as the gift to parents to raise together. No matter how well you think you might cooperate in divorce, the fact that two adults are on a separate journey will always lead to conflict that has, as it’s common bond, a child in the middle.

Children feel safest when their parents are together. Each parent offers a unique quality, a different kind of love, and a personal relationship with their child that is significantly weakened when the parent is absent. It is believed by many that some of the childhood behavioral disorders are aggravated by the strain of separation. Even if they appear unaffected on the outside, no child is immune. They undoubtedly grow further apart from the non-custodial parent. Sometimes they are forced to choose between parents, which is never a fair situation to put them in. Generally, the economic condition in one parent’s home changes significantly which creates stress that the child feels. They can also feel guilty about the divorce, believing that they were the cause or that if they did something differently then their parents would be together. This can lead to low self-esteem.

We all know someone who has gone through the trials of divorce or separation. I personally have been there. If you are there, this is not a guilt trip nor an indictment of your situation because all we can do is grow and learn from our past. Sometimes it is inevitable when one cheats on or abuses the other spouse, and nobody should remain in such a situation. However, marriage is tough. We all grow as adults and things change. Goals, dreams, desires come and go. Jobs, houses, possessions are material and temporary. Sometimes one mate will fail the other one, expectations will be unmet and feelings will be hurt. But a marriage is intended to be permanent. It is a bond between man and woman, a lifelong contract that is not to be taken lightly. It is the most important relationship you will ever form on this earth. We should never run for the door just because things look greener on the other side.

Marriage is all about compromise, it’s about love and respect, it’s about give and take, it’s about forgiveness, it’s a commitment. Teach your children the value of that relationship by example, and hold tight to one another. You can do everything else that I write about in the Affluent Student, but if you will do this it is the greatest gift that you can give your child. One day when they have graduated and become adults, you are left alone with each other. Remember why you married in the first place and go back to that. Do what it takes to keep your family together. Work on your marriage so that you can be the best that you can be for your children – you owe it to them, you owe it to your mate, and you owe it to yourself.

In Uncategorized behavior, children, custody, divorce, marriage, relationship, separation, stress

Archives For behavior

The Behaviors That Helped Me Lose 25 Pounds

Why It Is So Hard To Shut Up And Listen

Why Is Peer Pressure So Powerful on Teens

What to do when nothing works?

Ideas for punishments and rewards

The ABC’s of good behaviors

A strong bond

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