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!