Diary of a Fat Girl - Episode 7: Extrinsic Motivation is Fucking Awesome

At my school, we've been trying for years to figure out a way to motivate students to attend regularly and stay driven from September to June.  Since all the research says that negative consequences will only work for a handful of kids, we try to use positive consequences, like awards and food.  Food works sometimes.  But what we've found, and what the research also suggests, is that extrinsic motivation (that is, external forces/factors, like $5 per A, or honor roll, etc.) is limited in how much passion it can really inspire in people.  Some students will try a little harder if they know there's a prize at the end, whether it means a gift card to Dunkin Donuts or recognition at a brief awards ceremony; for the most part, though, those consequences are too distant to be truly inspirational, or not deeply felt enough to have a real effect.  The intrinsic motivation (pride, satisfaction in having done a good job, feeling hopeful and positive, enjoying just being there) is what really gets people to show up day after day, and it's not something that can be given to someone.

What I realized this week, and what should not surprise me at all, is that I am one of the few people who can be totally motivated by extrinsic factors.  In school, I really was driven by year-end grades, honor roll, certificates and awards, and recognition.  Besides making me out to be a huge teacher's pet and brown-nose, this tendency helped me be exceptionally successful in high school.  A teacher noticing and remarking that I had done a great job that week would keep me going at full speed for another week, until someone else would tell me "good job" and it would start again.  I think one of the reasons I didn't excel as much in undergrad (besides the fact that my English classes were having me read Sister Carrie and Moby Dick and other such gaaahhhhbage, kid) was that I got to know very few of my professors and rarely engaged with them in a way that made me feel personally invested in the goings-on of the class.  Some notable exceptions (Social and Civic Contexts of Education, Shakespeare Tragedy in Film, Poetry Seminar) were also where I saw some of my best grades and remember learning the most, not to mention I loved the teachers.  For me, there is no barrier between extrinsic and intrinsic motivating factors; the extrinsic things make me happy, so they instantly become intrinsic.

If I were smart, and that's an IF if I ever heard one, I might have drawn a connection between this modus operandi and my most recent attempts to lose weight/eat better/be healthier/fit into the cute size 10 shorts I bought.  To cut myself some slack, I have had some negative experiences with extrinsic motivation and weight loss in the past, namely when other people get involved.  The interpersonal aspects of fitness goals never really work with me, for some reasons I've discussed on here and probably many other reasons I have yet to even figure out myself.  My desire to please absolutely everyone I care about combined with my lack of faith in my own ability to stick with a fitness plan can make things messy that way.

But I had discounted the existence of motivators that were not people.  Of course, I have "skinny clothes" (if a fat person says they don't, either they have been at a stable weight for years and have given up on trying to lose weight OR they are a fucking liar) and goals I've given myself regarding fitting into clothes and being able to do things...for example, being able to wear my badass bomber jacket before Christmas, or being able to wear skirts without bike shorts underneath by next summer, and so on.  Recently I've become rather fixated on my newest fat symptom: back boobs.  Previously, I had as much back fat as any other kind of fat, but knew I was at risk for back boobs (it's like being pre-diabetic...in fact, I suspect it's a lot like being pre-diabetic).  Since the winter, I've actually had them.  Like, full on, droopy, fucking crenellations (or would they be merlons?).  If a dude had them on his chest, not a jury in the world would hesitate to convict him of Bitch Tits.

But looking at my back boobs doesn't necessarily motivate me.  Maybe while I'm on the elliptical and trying to visualize the effects of the work I'm doing, yeah, then getting rid of them is a factor in making me work harder or stay on longer.  But even then, the effects are limited.  I can't really explain why just observing my own overweight state doesn't make me flee to the nearest Curves For Women, but if it did, you bet your ass I would already be rather trim, and wearing a bomber jacket well before the first snow.

You know what has been motivating me this week, though?  Zombies.  The living fucking dead.  Zombies have always been able to get me to do things I don't always want to do, like read a big book (World War Z is absolutely the best epistolary novel I've ever read, and one of my top 5 favorite books of all time...yes, even if we're counting Harry Potter 7 times.) or watch movies in a foreign language (Dead Snow...pretty good!).  I've always been a fan of science fiction mythologies, to the extent that I get anxious waiting for exposition in sci-fi movies because that's the part I like.  Hell, I love the movie Thirteen Ghosts and it's not even good (Monk is the hero?  Really?), but it has a cool mythology, so I dig it.  Zombies, with the varied causes of zombification and characteristics of the zombies themselves, have thusly always been of interest to me.  I was talking with someone a few weeks ago who asserted, correctly I think, that people are interested in zombie movies not because of the zombies but because of the humans who are left to deal with the new landscape.  I couldn't help but think, "Well...that's probably true for other people.  But I need to know if this was a lab-created virus or a hell-is-full-up thing or what."  I like the first section of The Stand the best, and the only thing that happens is the release of a virus that kills everyone.  M-O-O-N, that spells fucking awesome.

So when a friend of mine sent a few of us a link to Run For Your Lives, my absolute initial reaction was WANT.  Now, let me put two things out there to set the record straight:

1. I hate running.  As an activity, as a method of exercise, as a mode of transportation....I hate it.  Granted, I hate it because I can't do it and it's painful, but my rage is no less intense given the reasoning.

2. I hate being chased.  Any slight stimulus of my fight-or-flight response makes me want to piss my pants and scream my head off.  As kids, when we would do something mildly intense, like playing flashlight tag in an unfamiliar area, I would become so tense and nervous that I'd get sick to my stomach: giddy and excited and full of joy, yes, but still physiologically affected.  There are very, very few situations in one's adult life where that feeling might come up, but being chased by zombies in the woods definitely counts.

That being said, I went straight home from work on the day I read about the Zombie 5k and popped Turbo Jam into the machine, punching and kicking my fat away.  The next day, I made a series of Spotify playlists for workouts of varying intensity, then went home and did an exploratory 3-mile elliptical routine (5k = 3.1mi).  The day after that, I was planning to take a rest day, then Dan offered to bring home Kelly's Roast Beef, so I did another 2.75 miles.  That was Thursday.  Friday, yesterday, I actually did take a rest day, primarily because the Alzheimer's Walk is Sunday and I didn't want to injure or tire myself to the point of not being able to complete the walk.

Tuesday, the day I was told about the 5k (as was Dan, and a handful of others), Dan saw that I had exercised after work and asked if I was training for the Zombie run.  I said, "yes," and offered no further comment nor an indication as to whether I was serious.  Thursday, he arrived home with food just as I was finishing my elliptical trek, and again asked if I was training for the 5k.  Again, in the same flat tone, I said, "yep."  Taking me at my word, he asked, "what's 5k...like 3 miles?  I can do that.  Hell, I'll do the Zombie thing."  Finding his casual commitment to it amusing, considering he hates exercise and is in just as bad shape as me (not that you can tell, with his stupid fast metabolism), I said, "Okay.  Want to train with me?"  He laughed, immediately thinking of both of us on the elliptical together, and replied, "well, not at the same time."  I then asked him if he wanted to come on the Alzheimer's Walk, something he has previously begged off and instead donated increasing amounts of money so he doesn't feel obligated to join me on it.  He cheerily replied, "nope!"

I don't know if Dan is actually going to go through with what he said, or if he'll even try to get in shape in preparation for it.  I do know that there are 12 obstacles scattered throughout the race, including some sort of faux sewer maze and a huge wall right before the finish line.  Although males have stronger upper bodies than females, I wonder, can Dan scale a wall?  Can he run without getting out of breath right away?  How would he do in such situations?  I have no idea, because I've never seen him exert himself like that.  I know his legs are long as shit, so his strides are crazy big and he walks faster than basically anyone I know (and that's just how he is, he's not trying to walk fast), so I know he'd be able to do the 5k on a basic level, but beyond that, who knows.

Right now, I don't really have the time or energy to spare worrying about Dan's physical condition or his goals.  I've never heard him talk about eating better or being healthier, so I don't think he's really motivated to make any lifestyle changes, and that's fine for him.  All I can do is worry about my own habits and my own training.  God, that sounds so much better than "my diet" or "my fitness".  My training.  Oooooh, it's delicious.

Tomorrow is the Alzheimer's Walk, and I'm hoping that my team will be interested in doing the long route.  You can walk either 2 miles or 6 miles, and while both would be a nice way to spend a Sunday morning, I'd get a lot more out of the 6-mile walk.  I suppose we'll find out tomorrow.  Of course, after the walk is the traditional brunch, so some of the calories burned in the morning will just end up returning in the form of bacon, but bacon is delicious, and I'm gonna eat it goddammit.

Hopefully, and I say that while looking at myself in the mirror and grinding a fist into my open palm, this extrinsic motivation thing sticks around a while.  Having a goal, a somewhat-distant-but-still-quantifiably-close event, has really lit a fire under my ass.  Having metrics to measure my own body's performance and improvement, rather than widely variable things like "fitting into jeans" makes me feel more firmly settled into my desired benchmarks.  Saying, "I want to do 3 miles on the elliptical in under 45 minutes next week" is WAY more concrete and independent from other factors than "I want to look good in a 2-piece bathing suit."  At this point, fuck the bathing suit, I want to survive zombie-infested woods.  I WANT TO LIVE!

"Holy crap, hey look at this; you can totally see people jumping out of windows and stuff. That's crazy."

"Miss, I want to do my research paper on Osama bin Laden."

"That's too recent; it's going to be too hard to write something comprehensive because it's kind of an on-going thing. Is there something else you'd want to write about?"

"Okay, I want to do September 11th."

Pause.

"Okay."

I've had variations of this conversation several times in the five years I've been teaching, particularly recently with the death of Osama bin Laden. Three of my fourteen College Writing students independently asked me if they could do bin Laden as a topic for their final papers in June, and two of them switched to September 11th when I said no.

In and of itself, reading papers about September 11th isn't excessively upsetting for me. Yes, the casual, matter-of-fact tone in which the students recount which planes were hijacked, which buildings were struck, and how many people died does irk me, but it's hard to blame them for feeling a little detached. Most of them were in first or second grade when it happened, and they often describe their feelings on that day in terms of confusion, curiosity, or sadness in reaction to their parents' sadness.

The sentiment I have most often encountered among my students, and I admit that this does not necessarily represent a true majority, but rather just the majority of the outspoken individuals, is doubt. They have heard endless conspiracy theories about explosives in the bottom of the building. They characterize George W. Bush simultaneously as a diabolical mastermind and a retarded man-child.  As far as they are concerned, Bush/the government/"we" were responsible for 9/11 for two reasons: being too incompetent to prevent it but also orchestrating it.  The simple logical impossibility of those two both being true makes me twitchy.  It's like when Picard planned to destroy the Borg by uploading a paradox to their network.  Does not compute.

But beyond the herp-a-durr factor, there is another element of this attitude that bothers me even more so.  They approach the topic, and the issue of blame/conspiracy/etc., with the same casual way we discuss the circumstances of Mr. Boddy's death when we play Clue.  It's not real to them in the sense that they are disturbed by the attacks or driven by an emotional reaction to find out what "really" happened.  I don't know if they are so desensitized to death/disaster/Sept. 11th that it doesn't strike them as an emotional issue.  I don't know if they somehow feel that if the attacks were staged/faked, then the death and sadness and shock associated with that day are less meaningful.  It could simply be that they were too young to experience those emotions at the time, so they will always be detached, like those of my generation feel about the Challenger explosion or the Lockerbie plane bombing/crash.

The passionate, superior, insistent way in which my students argue with me about the facts surrounding the attacks, call me over to watch the YouTube video that "totally proves" whatever theory they've become convinced of, look at me with skepticism mixed with pity because I've been "duped" into believing that Al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked planes without the knowledge or complicity of the US government...it makes me want to shake them.  I want to shout in their faces, "I know why you think this, and I know that you don't understand the difference between fact and suspicion...I know you want to believe that Bush was evil and that these attacks were carried out in manner entirely different from what they say on TV.  I know you want to believe these things because it helps you justify your hate of the government and authority, and it feeds into your already-established distrust of everyone with more power than you, and it makes you feel special and powerful to know the truth that other people don't know.  I know that.  But you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.  You just don't.  If you had sources of any reliability, evidence that stood up to even the slightest scrutiny, or remotely plausible motives and methods behind the facts you're presenting, I would listen to you and hear you out.  But since you don't, you come off sounding like a total fucking asshole.  Shut.  The Fuck.  Up."

But I can't say that, so I don't.  I try to teach them how to evaluate sources for accuracy, bias, and reliability.  I try to teach them not to be so gullible and trusting of anyone who has ever said anything on the internet.  I try to teach them that the government is not organized, well-funded, or aggressively dickish enough to pull of September 11th, and instead they just slowly cut funding to poor people, sometimes by accident.  I try to teach them to question, analyze, evaluate, re-evaluate, wonder, critique...all before deciding, and ultimately knowing.

The reason their conclusion-jumping bothers me so much with this topic is that September 11th still makes me really, really sad.  And angry.  When students are researching the attacks and watching YouTube clips of the second plane hitting, or the towers collapsing, I leave the room, pretending I have urgent business in the hall.  I can't watch that shit.  This week in particular has been brutal because every news station is airing 10th Anniversary stuff, with footage of the attacks and the wreckage at Ground Zero cut into every ad spot, promo, and news segment.  My mom planned a standard family dinner on Sunday, September 11th, and I don't want to go.  I want to sit alone in a room.  I don't want to treat it like a normal day, because for me, it's not.

I don't know if other people feel this way, especially people who didn't know anyone who died that day.  I don't really care if it's normal to be this upset.  But I certainly don't want to be surrounded by a group of people who aren't as upset as me.  Or, perhaps worse, a group of people who are upset and want me to be upset with them.  That's why I'm not attending any ceremonies or vigils.  Contrary to the impression this blog post gives, these feelings are personal.  Private.  I don't want to share them with anyone, especially not my students.  Thank god it's on a Sunday, I guess.

Diary of a Fat Girl - Episode 6: When Action and Consequence Seem Unrelated

The past couple of weeks have been strange, not in any single way but in a few dynamics.  Dan and I went on the cruise, which was exactly as you would expect - lots of pools, beaches, fruity alcoholic beverages, overeating, the works.  I feel bad when people ask me about the cruise; I have nothing remarkable to tell them.  There aren't many stories.  We went on a boat, which was exceptionally large.  The boat took us to three islands, none of which had substantially different cultures from ours (and none of which spoke a primary language ahead of English).  It was hot, but usually a pleasant kind of hot with low humidity.  We got mildly sunburned on our shoulders.  The food was good but not great, and the service was outstanding throughout the cruise, though I find it hard to center a story around Trevor being a really good waiter.

The real shift for me was that I was gone for something like 9 days.  I was here, then not, then back again.  I didn't do dishes or walk dogs or play Zynga games for that time.  In fact, excluding some 3G usage in port and at the hotels, I was essentially offline for that time.  It was pretty refreshing, but not something I found to be life-changing.  I like being on a computer, just in general, but I don't find myself so Facebook/internet/computer addicted that I got the shakes on the cruise.  I find it comforting, I suppose, to realize that my time spent online in any given day is not some warning sign or red flag suggesting a larger problem.  At least, probably not.

The most surprising thing, I think, is that I didn't actually gain weight on the cruise.  Yes, it was a relatively short period of time.  But considering my two staple beverages on the trip were Coke and whole milk (not by choice...why are all hotels/resorts/restaurants obsessed with ONLY whole and skim milk?  Do they not realize that many, many people drink 1 or 2%?), and considering that I had chicken fingers and french fries at least once a day, if not twice...well, I should have blown up like Violet in Willy Wonka.

Instead, when I weighed myself back at home after the cruise, I appeared to have gained a little less than one pound.  A few days later, the pound was gone.  And now, about a week and a half after getting home, I'm down another 2.5 pounds.  Don't get me wrong, I'm delighted with these continued results (now down about 11 pounds from my heaviest), but here's the thing...

I haven't been doing, well, anything.  I mean, I'm still avoiding going out to eat constantly, but it's hard because Dan's been home with me since the cruise (long story, but he goes back to work when I do), and his idea of "doing something" follows the formula of "getting food + x".  So I'm not getting take-out every day, or even every 3 days, but it's still more than I would if I were only concerned with my own meals.

Also, I haven't been exercising.  While some of this is laziness, and I assure you that I delight in laziness, the main reason I'm on the couch most of the day is that I fucked up my knee on the cruise.  I don't know what I did, and I don't recall any moment where I was like "ow motherfucker, ow!" but we spent pretty much all day every day walking around (hence the lack of weight gain, I suspect), so it could just be overuse.  The problem is that it hasn't fixed itself, despite me resting it a fair amount over the last 10 days.  Most of the time it feels fine, but if I have it bent for a long time (like now, sitting and working at the computer), it can hurt rather acutely to straighten it back out.  Walking is fine, but stairs make my knee ache a little. 

The internet tells me everything from slight sprain/strain all the way to meniscus tear and ligament injury.  I have a regular check-up in just over 2 weeks, so if it's not getting better by then, I'll check with my doctor, but for now I'm worried that overzealous exercise could make it worse.  I've had minor knee problems (especially in my right knee, which is the injured one) since college, primary as a side effect of my weight, but nothing beyond soreness.  I already have many knee braces/supports, none of which are the right size, because my knee isn't fat, but my thigh is.  Apparently the knee brace companies don't realize that, other than athletes, the biggest demographic buying their products is We, The Fat.  I need something that's 16" around the knee and 24" around the thigh...that is so far out of whack with the proportions of the standard sizes that I would have to get a three-figure custom brace made.  And, well....no.

It's funny....my knee hurts because I'm fat.  I'm fat because I don't exercise.  I don't exercise because my knee hurts.  How appropriate.  Of course, losing weight is not a function solely of exercise, so restricting my food intake could be just as beneficial as cardio kickboxing in my living room.

The thing is...I'm not sure whether I should pay attention to my own assessment of my efforts or the apparent results of those efforts.  If I listen to the scale, which says "good work!", then I should keep doing what I'm doing.  But if I reflect on my eating and exercising habits, I don't find myself putting in nearly the amount of effort I'm capable of.  When the results don't match the efforts, most of the time it's "I'm doing all this work but no weight is coming off!"...my 'problem' is substantially less upsetting, but just as perplexing.  Is my metabolism just sort of awake now?  Was I really snacking so much and eating such large meals before that it's enough to simply not eat like an asshole?  Or is this weight loss the result of efforts from two or three weeks ago, and the rebound will appear soon enough?

I don't know the answers, of course.  If I did, this blog would be called Smarter Than You.  But for now, I'm going to put on the best-fitting of my ill-fitting knee braces and get ready for our friend to come over, at which point I have no doubt we'll order food.  Sigh.