Chapter 8.
Get Ready: Managing Time, Money and Social Support
It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.
—Eleanor Roosevelt
It’s an axiom in the business world that if you fail to plan, you can plan to fail. Achieving fitness, health and weight loss is no different, which is again why I don’t advocate the “just do it” mentality.
“Advance planning is essential to getting in shape,” says Jim Taylor. “It creates a mind-set of commitment and it creates the process. Without those, it’s not going to happen.” Taylor, a San Francisco–based expert in sport psychology who has consulted for elite professional and Olympic athletes, states that most people approach getting in shape without a proper plan, and are hence doomed to fail.
“After six months, half of New Year’s resolutions have gone by the wayside,” Taylor told me. “And after a year only about 10 percent have stuck with it because there is not a lot of planning behind it.”
And according to a 2012 study by researchers at the School of Public Health from the University of Minnesota and published in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, higher use of strategizing for weight control led to better outcomes for improving diet, exercising, and losing weight. Those who rarely planned exercise, for example, burned half as many calories per week via physical activity as those who were frequent planners.1
So it’s time for James to show off his MBA. Here are a few things you need to do to get ready. This isn’t the actual exercise and diet plan yet. This is the pre-exercise and diet plan plan. (Screw you, spell check. I did mean to write plan twice.) I told you this was more complicated than “eat less, move more.”
Time Management
I’ve read a lot of fitness surveys, and I can tell you that the number-one excuse people give for not exercising is lack of time. I’m certain that lack of time has been a boon for fast and prepared food industries as well. What it means is that people are allowing work to run and ruin their lives.
I’m not going to preach a bunch of time management theories. Several books have been written on this subject; some of them are okay, others not so much. To be honest, I’m dubious about it as a discipline. For me, it’s aligned with what I call “self-help bs.”
A former employer of mine had a policy that all executives had to take a well-known two-day self-help course on being exceptionally productive through adopting a (lucky) number of mannerisms. I’m being somewhat vague because I’m going to slam the course now. It was the most mindless drivel I’d ever been exposed to. Two days of having common sense you should’ve learned by age six twisted and paradigmed and proactivated into management mumbo jumbo until my brain turned into protoplasm. Then they try to sell you day planners and software and … and just barf. I’m skeptical about whether a time management guru ever helped anyone manage time better. Nevertheless, I didn’t want to crap on the entire industry after taking just one course, so I read a couple of the most popular time management books on the market. They confirmed my suspicions that this is common sense overcomplicated so someone can sell a book or a course, along with a bunch of add-ons.
Anyway, I guess I can’t just rant about how it’s all a bunch of fluff and not give you any advice at all, because that wouldn’t be productive, so here is my common-sense-based time management advice.
Prioritize
When it comes to time management, nothing is more important than prioritization. Another oft-used axiom in business is that if everything is a priority, nothing is a priority. You must decide that getting in shape is important to you and that you will put it before many other things. It is said that no one lies on their deathbed wishing they’d spent more time at the office. But I think there are plenty of people who lie on that same bed wishing they’d spent more time taking care of themselves, especially since if they had they wouldn’t be dying right then.
Jenna Lee is a national anchor for the Fox News program Happening Now. I spoke to her as things were heating up for the 2012 American presidential election, and even though work was chaotic, this triathlete still found time to exercise.
“I’ve always found that no matter how crazy the schedule is, exercise has to be a priority for myriad reasons, including the vain ones, but also the health ones,” Lee told me. “I never let anything get in the way of exercise.”
And it’s important to take some “me time” as well.
Jen McKinnon has four children. “After the third kid I didn’t bother doing any kind of exercise,” she said. “It was too hard. Women have an issue with doing things for ourselves. We feel like we have to martyr ourselves.”
By deciding to make holes in her schedule to exercise—taking her “me time”—everything in McKinnon’s life changed for the better; it even made her a better mom by making her more energized and less stressed out.
Speaking of which, time management does not just mean making time for exercise. It also applies to making time to eat properly. You have responsibilities in your life, but you have to make the decision that it’s okay to put yourself first sometimes. If you don’t look after yourself, who will look after your family when you die young? Also, being in great health can make you more productive at everything else you do, including looking after those you love. If you make exercise and healthy eating a high priority, you’ll find the time to do it.
One way to find that time is to take it out of TV (or the Internet).
The A.C. Neilsen Co. reports that the average American watches more than four hours of TV a day.2According to Statistics Canada, up north we’re closer to three hours a day.3 Either way, THAT IS A MEGA-BUTT-LOAD OF TV!
There’s a lot of wiggle room for the average North American to cut into these brain-rot sessions to make time for exercising and preparing healthy meals. Would you really rather keep up with the Kardashians than sweat?
Adapt
Does this even require explanation? This is the “if-then” planning we discussed earlier, because things don’t always work out the way you plan, so don’t give up on the fundamental goals—just change the plan and try again. Jenna Lee doesn’t always get the time she needs for a full workout, so if she has only a short time, she’ll crank out a quick 30-minute exercise session and then shower just from the neck down so she doesn’t have to redo her hair and makeup.
And my friend Barney Barnowski, a 41-year-old father of two with a demanding job in the technology sector, decided that the only time he was going to find for weightlifting was late at night, so he built a home gym.
“It’s more convenient,” he told me. “Quite often I will do my workout after the kids are in bed.”
Be Efficient
Thirty minutes of going hard with weights is better than an hour of farting around in the gym. Running hard for 30 minutes burns more calories than walking for an hour; it’s also better for your heart, lungs and cholesterol. Leaving your front door and running outside takes a lot less time than driving to the gym to run on a treadmill. You get the idea.
Walking and running are two activities that require almost no preparation and can be done anywhere. They are efficient. I have to drive my kids to a one-hour karate class three times a week. Once I actually get them there, I’ve got an hour to kill. Regardless of the weather, I’m always suited up for a run. As I leave I see many other parents sitting in their cars, reading the newspaper and eating fast food. These are the same types of people who say they have no time to exercise.
You don’t need a gym, you can go out your front door; you can walk or run on vacation or during business travel. You can explore new territory, kill time while the kids are at the mall, piano lessons or soccer practice. The ways to insert walking and/or running into your life are endless. They are the best exercises for maximizing use of time that I know.
Running is physically demanding, and because of that it pays you back with tremendous results, but this doesn’t mean walking is not also awesome. Walking is the number-one form of exercise on the planet. More people do it for fitness than anything else, and it bestows many, many health benefits. Remember, burning calories is the least important thing in all this. If you like to walk, then walk.
Buy a Slow Cooker (and Some Glass Lock Containers)
Consider this the “be efficient” section on the eating front. Thanks to my slow cooker, I can get a healthy stew, curry or some other feast ready in 45 minutes flat. I can do the prep the night before, put the whole thing in the fridge, then plop it in the slow cooker when I get up. A calorie-controlled and preservative-free dinner is ready for my family of four that evening, and there are two or three more batches—each enough to feed all four of us—that I can put in Glass Lock and freeze.
This is important. Having a few frozen slow-cooked meals is HUGE to prevent eating out. I know the thought process: I didn’t thaw anything out. I don’t know what to make tonight. I don’t want to go to the grocery store. I don’t feel like cooking … I have freakin’ been there, man. And so it’s pizza or the drive-through to the rescue. Well, if you have something from the slow cooker in the freezer, it can go straight into the microwave and you only have to scoop it out onto plates. If you feel ambitious, you can serve it on rice. Throw a bowl of grapes on the table and it’s a party.
You go buy one. Buy a big one.
And while you’re at it, try to embrace being a “good enough” cook. You don’t have to spend hours cooking every day. I’m the cook in our house, and I don’t spend that much time at it. There are simple and healthy things you can make that everyone will like that don’t take a ton of preparation time or cost much. Sure, I cook big meals sometimes, but I enjoy doing it when I crank the stereo, crack a beer and have some fun whipping up something healthy and tasty.
When It Comes to Exercise, Earlier Is Often Better
The later in the day you push your exercise session, the more likely you are to bail out and instead plow butt-first into a Doritos-covered couch.
Barbara Brehm is a professor of exercise and sport studies at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, and in her 2004 book, Successful Fitness Motivation Strategies, she outlined how self-control is a limited resource and that the stress we experience during the day erodes our willpower to exercise. “People who exercise early in the morning have the highest adherence rates; they have not yet expended time and energy overcoming the barriers that inevitably develop during the day,” she states.4 I’ve had a number of email and phone conversations with Barbara. She’s cool.
And I can vouch for what she writes. Back in the bad old days when I had an office job and my boss was doing her Donald Trump impression, I was more interested in hitting the liquor store on the way home than the gym.
Chris Shandley is a 43-year-old father of three in Philadelphia, and he’s one busy dad. “I just don’t have time after work,” he told me. “It has to happen in the morning because there simply is no other time.” From a motivational perspective, he likes the fact that he’s in the gym almost before he’s made the decision to be there. “I’m there before I have a chance not to go. I don’t have any excuses.”
It may not work with your schedule, and it doesn’t mean you’re doomed if it doesn’t, but this is one powerful adherence tool. Figure out what works for you, and go with it.
Cathy Beddia did just that. The 39-year-old works at a pharmaceutical company in Montreal; she organized her schedule to make time for exercise. “I picked lunchtime because that was the only time I could do it and stick with it,” she told me. She had to talk to her boss about this and get some wiggle room for a longer lunch break, but she found that as long as she put in the required hours, management was cool. And spending her lunch hour working out means she has to bring a lunch instead of eating out. “The exercise definitely reinforces the better eating,” she said.
Finances
Getting in shape isn’t free.
Gym memberships cost. Slow cookers cost. Workout clothing and shoes cost. Personal music players cost. Good personal trainers and registered dietitians cost a lot.
It’s all worth it.
I’m not saying you should let your kids starve or send them to raid the lost-and- found bin at school for clothes, but putting some resources into your quest for better health and fitness is one financial investment you won’t regret.
Think of it this way: this is your new hobby, and hobbies cost money. This is not some pain-in-the-butt endeavor that’s just going to suck dollars out of your wallet; it’s something awesome that you like spending money on. Do you play golf? Think about how much that costs.
Compared with golfing, getting in shape should be affordable. Also, if you do eat out or order in a lot, you’re probably going to save money on that side of things. As New York Times food columnist Mark Bittman pointed out, it’s a myth that junk food costs less than real, healthy food.5 Booze is expensive too. If you cut down on the restaurant eating and give your liver a break, it should even accounts.
Following the advice in this book is more or less certain to help you achieve the following goals:
- Better-looking
- Healthier
- Higher performance
- Improved feelings of wellness and boosted self-esteem
Those things are pretty awesome all on their own. However, recall what I wrote in chapter 3 about how a higher state of wellness can do other things too, like make you more successful in your career. Also think about the sense of accomplishment you’ll have. I have reported time and again that getting in shape is not an easy undertaking. By succeeding at this you’ll have a strengthened will to succeed in other areas of life. It is possible that getting in shape will give you the determination to go after and achieve a big promotion, or perhaps launch your own business. You never know, this may end up being the catalyst that makes the rest of your life much more successful.
Shopping! Hooray!
Building self-confidence prior to engaging in a new physical activity helps you persevere.
If you dig up your ratty old sweat pants from high school, put on a paint-splattered T-shirt with a big hole in the armpit, lace up some worn-out tennis shoes and then go for a run, that run is going to suck. But if you go to a running store, get professional help in picking out shoes that are right for your foot shape and your stride and purchase clothing that’s comfortable and looks good, you’re going to feel a lot better about your first outing. The same is true for any activity, so start planning with care what your chosen activities will be, and get yourself appropriately outfitted. This is money worth spending.
It doesn’t have to be a lot of money. If you start with just walking, it can be no money at all. Additionally, you could Google “body weight exercise videos” and also spend no money. Beyond that, the only advice I can give is not to financially overcommit to anything. If it requires expensive equipment, trying renting first to make sure you like the sport. Try drop-in classes/passes before buying a membership at a club. When it comes to running, start with shoes and socks, and build your wardrobe from there as your passion grows.
When you’re starting to form a habit, when you begin to feel the desire to get better and better at something, that’s the time when you’ll be ready to prioritize more of your paycheck toward it.
Spending Money = Self-Efficacy
I’ve peddled the self-efficacy theory like a Kardashian flogging a fake wedding. Now I want to give you a personal anecdote showing what it means to me.
I’m not just a runner, I’m a Canadian runner. Who hates treadmills. Think on that.
I run outside year-round. I remember running a 10K in hideous below zero temperatures in an attempt to impress my wife. I ended up finishing in a panic, worried that I’d frostbitten a sensitive part of my male anatomy. That sordid tale was the first fitness article I ever had published, which tells you something about my writing career.
Now I have thermal underpants. They cost $35 a pair.
And a pair of thick running tights that are like pulling on a wetsuit. They do make my butt look good, though. Cost: $95.
My thermal running socks were $16.
On a super-cold day I’ll wear a few layers of long-sleeved running shirts. They’re all high quality and come in together at around $200.
My gloves have a wind-stopper cover and were $60, but there was a sale and I got them half price.
I have a nice running jacket. I look good in it: $100.
I have three different toques depending on temperature, but when it gets Russian-winter-killing-the-invading-army kind of cold, I go for the balaclava. Cost: $22.
The running shoes were $140, and we finish things off with the iPod Shuffle at $50. Grand total of all this gear for one run is $688. Plus tax.
It can be cold enough to have to chisel your dog off a fire hydrant, but to me it’s like a challenge issued. Once, on a particularly frigid day, I took all the gear on the above list and laid it on the floor, then took a picture and posted it to Facebook, telling people I was suiting up for a run. There was an equal mix of encouragement and “Are you friggin’ nuts?” in the comments. This made for some theory of planned behavior and extrinsic positive reinforcement thrown into the mix for additional motivation.
I’ve run in extreme cold enough times to learn what clothes I need for what weather conditions. I have a cell phone and emergency Mylar blanket in my pockets, and my wife knows where I’m going and when I’ll be back.
Because I have all the gear for cold-weather running, and the experience with using it, I have something else too: confidence.
I know I can handle it, and it’s an ego boost. Doing something most other people won’t do because it’s difficult makes me feel good. The hot shower afterward makes me feel good too.
All it takes is a little cash, wisely invested, to get an all-important confidence boost.
Support Structures
There are benefits to going public.
Beyond the managing of time and financial commitment, a lifestyle overhaul requires support. Lots of it. That support can come from a spouse, an encouraging work environment, friends, workout partners, instructors and trainers, even your children.
These people can be a cheering section, or just do things to make your life a little easier, things that allow you the time you need to engage in this transformative process.
Significant Others Are Significant
A significant other can be an important part of your support structure. This is the person you spend most of your leisure time with, after all. If you used to park yourself on the couch every night and watch three hours of reality TV, and are about to give that up for workout sessions and fitness classes, you’re affecting his or her life as well. You need to fill that person in on your plan and, if possible, get them onside. Does your partner already exercise? If so, he or she will understand and be encouraging of your efforts. Depending on what they’re into, you may even want to exercise with them. Be careful about this, though; what works for them may not work for you. Do your research and don’t try to fit into another person’s mold.
If they aren’t into exercise, your attempt to get more active can be a great motivational tool for both of you to start doing it together. They may not want to start, however, and that’s okay. Just don’t allow that to derail you in your efforts to get in shape. Instead, be a role model. I was a fitness role model for my wife for 10 years before she caught the bug.
On the healthy eating side, things can also go either way. If you run the show when it comes to meal prep, this makes things easier. Discuss with your partner your desire to begin eating more mindfully, then take the gradual changes outlined in Stage III to make incremental steps toward healthier eating.
But if your significant other is in charge of the groceries and cooking and prefers unhealthy eating (and is not eager to change), you have a problem. This isn’t a relationship book and I’m no expert in such counseling, but I can give you some basic advice on this subject:
- Talk to your partner about your need to switch to healthier eating. Make this about you. Don’t bring up your spouse’s eating habits, weight or health. Chances are they know all about their own bad habits; they don’t need you to get all self-righteous on them. Appeal to the fact that they care about you and want you to be happy. Tell them this will make you happy.
- Assure your partner that you don’t need to adopt 100 percent healthy eating habits overnight. That can be intimidating for anyone, never mind someone who’s less than thrilled at the idea of change. Follow the process of gradual adoption outlined in this book.
- Get involved in the process. Help with grocery shopping, menu planning and cooking whenever possible. If your partner is hesitant about you horning in on their territory, start slow, perhaps with a night or two a week. Or maybe they’d prefer you to suggest recipes and leave the cooking and prep to them. Whatever works.
The best-case scenario is that your partner may decide to hop on the healthy eating train. If so, this whole thing just got a lot easier. Now you’re in this together.
And if children are part of the equation, be sure to check out appendix C for information on making them part of your exercise and healthy eating lifestyle.
Create Positive Peer Pressure
Clara Hughes has won six Olympic medals. I remember hearing her on the radio once talking about how, when she is traveling, she will call friends in various cities in advance to book going for a run with them. She said having that pressure of a friend waiting prompted her to show up.
I interviewed Clara when she was inducted into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame.
“I was very fortunate to be on the receiving end of great extrinsic motivation,” Hughes told me. “My coach created an environment where teammates could feed off each other’s energy.”
I know a lot about this. For years I worked out in a crowded gym surrounded by people I knew and enjoyed being around. I was part of a lunchtime crowd of guys who went to lift weights every workday, and it was awesome. Our raunchy locker-room talk was often the best part.
“Human beings are wired to be in groups,” said Bert Carron, a professor of kinesiology focusing on sport psychology at the University of Western Ontario. “Exercising alone doesn’t work for the majority of people.”
The type of people you exercise with makes a difference. “Birds of a feather like to flock together,” Carron told me. “Geriatrics don’t want to exercise with a bunch of 20-year-olds, and vice versa. But all of them want to be in a group.”
You’ll likely want to avoid muscle heads with neck tattoos. Unless that’s your thing.
Carron was co-author of a 2006 analysis on the effectiveness of interventions to promote physical activity; it looked at 44 studies, containing 4,578 participants, that lasted anywhere from fewer than three months to more than a year. In the analysis, which was published in the journal Sport and Exercise Psychology Review, Carron and colleagues examined the effect on adherence of a variety of exercise scenarios.6
Because they were looking at numerous studies pooled together, they measured adherence with something called “effect size,” which I had no understanding of, so Carron had to spell out the bottom line in plain English. “Those who exercised alone at home had the lowest adherence rates by far,” he told me. “Comparatively, those in the ‘collective’ group had much higher adherence.” When I asked him how much higher the adherence rates were for collective groups, he said he measured “a substantial effect. It represents a very large difference.”
Carron and I discussed how even if you go to the gym solo to work out, the experience would be akin to being in a group: you’re surrounded by fellow exercisers with similar purpose and you see a lot of the same people and even make friends there. So the gym experience would have similar adherence rates to working out in a group. I know the idea of being around like-minded people has pushed me to go to the gym and, once there, stay and get it all done.
Not long ago I made the transition to a home gym, partially for time reasons, but also because I realized the gym I’d spent the past year at was rife with unethical personal training sales practices I could not help noticing (info on how to avoid this is in chapter 10), and witnessing this harshed up my groove. It was a challenging transition, but cranking up the tunes on T-Rex-sized speakers loud enough to make For Sale signs start popping up around my neighborhood made it more appealing. iPods are lame.
I digress. Just know that after 19 years of being a gym-goer, I switched to lifting weights at home alone. Some days, you can hear the Rush from down the street.
For some, exercising at home works. For most, the more Borg-like the “collective,” the better.
“It’s consistently the same group of people coming to my classes,” Chelanne Murphy, who teaches indoor cycling and circuit training classes at World Health Club in Calgary, told me. “Some of the people have been in these classes for 10 years and have developed close friendships as a result.”
You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.
“Never underestimate the power of social support,” professor of epidemiology Bill Kohl told me. “It’s critical.” The more of a situation you can create where people rely on you to be there, or will at least give you some grief if you don’t show, the better.
There have been Sunday mornings when I’ve wakened to a screaming alarm clock with a beer-to-blood ratio that was not conducive to running, and yet knowing my friend Peter would be waiting for me made me drag my butt out of bed, suit up and suck it up. I’d never have heard the end of it otherwise.
[BEGIN SIDEBAR]
The Four-Legged Motivational Force
Now don’t just go out and buy a dog as if it’s a Bowflex. You can’t cram the poor thing into the corner and use it as a coat rack. You’ve got to be a good human. If you are a good human, dogs can be terrific motivators to go outside and get moving.
“The dogs absolutely played an important role in developing my exercise habit,” Dog Whisperer Cesar Millan told me. “If I sleep in, at 5:15 I start to hear the howling. It’s like, ‘AARRROOOOHHH! Cesar! It’s time to go!’”
Millan says dogs feel as though they’re unemployed, and exercise for them is like a job, one that they want to do. “It’s a fulfillment and a way of bonding,” he said. “A lot of people see dogs just as companionship, but they can also see him as a personal coach and a friend you workout with.” (More details on how to exercise with a dog in chapter 11.)
[END SIDEBAR]
Technical Support
You now know how powerful social support is, but real friends aren’t always around to support you. When this happens, the Internet can work well for providing a motivational group hug. Facebook and Twitter are popular, and I’ve heard of, but not used, a website called Fitocracy.
There are a variety of groups out there that create online social support for exercise adherence, but be warned that such groups are also rife with terrible advice about weight loss, diet and exercise. Use them for motivational support, yes, but be cautious about listening to Internet “experts.” Bovine droppings abound.
Motivation can be as simple as posting on Facebook about the exercise you’ve done. My friend Kris, whom you’ll read more about in chapter 13, often asks for motivation on Facebook. Encouragement shows up in the comments, and it always gets her moving.
And your fitness friends don’t need to be carbon-based. Mobile apps are plentiful for getting you to move (and eat better), though the jury is out about how effective most of them are. Perhaps more motivating are things like pedometers, heart-rate monitors and GPS devices, all of which allow you to support yourself by keeping track of your performance.
In chapter 7 I spoke of keeping track of important numbers, like miles run, lengths swum, weight lifted, etcetera. I also advised paying less attention to numbers on the scale, because it’s a damn liar.
The key with record keeping is more about the fact that you keep track rather than what you keep track of. People who keep an exercise log are more likely to succeed long term, regardless of the content of the record keeping.7
“I noticed a slow and steady progression in terms of what I was capable of,” Susan Sadler told me. “I noticed I was getting stronger, more competent and faster. I’ve become big on tracking data. I plan every workout. This has been instrumental in terms of my motivation in learning to love exercise,” she said. “I fill up notebooks.”
Tune Up Your Workout
I know people who are incapable of running without their iPod. I used to be one of them. If the battery was dead, so was my motivation to run.
“These are a class of tools called disassociation,” James Annesi, an exercise adherence researcher and director of wellness advancement at YMCA Metro Atlanta, told me. “You’re using things like music and television to distance yourself from the discomfort of your workout.” What happens with new exercisers, he said, is that they wish to avoid adverse feelings, and something like listening to music can disrupt the negative sensations they feel.
I still listen to music often while running, and blast my stereo while in my home gym. But once I got into training for races, I learned that you need to be in “an associative state” in order to embrace the pain (or something like that). When I’m training hard to make a certain time, I ditch the music because there’s no fear of running boredom when you’re pushing to the wall.
But the situations in which music hinders performance are rare. It’s only for extreme effort that it can get in the way. For the majority of people, music creates a tremendous motivational benefit to their exercise regimens.
Just be careful not to crank it so loud that you go deaf.
A Message from the Dying
After reading this chapter, you may think this all sounds like a lot of work, and you’d be right. Living a healthier life involves a shifting of priorities, but let me tell why you should absolutely want to make that shift.
Bronnie Ware worked for years as a nurse for the dying. The top two things dying patients said were they wished they lived a life truer to themselves (rather than to what others expected), and that they hadn’t worked so hard.8
George Carlin once said something that covered similar territory: “Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by those moments that take our breath away.”
So think about this: you could be breathing in and out working on an expense report, watching TV or doing email. Or you could hike to the top of a hill with someone you love to see what’s on the other side, only to have your breath taken away. Such moments can define you.
If you’re overworked and it’s getting in the way of living a healthy lifestyle, it’s time to reinvent yourself. This is your chance to be true to yourself and not regret the way you’ve lived your life. Start working on a plan to change the way you live, where being healthy is your primary focus.
Make it happen, and that deathbed will be much further away. In Stage III, we’re going to provide you with the plan for change. The rest of your awesome new life starts now.
NOTES
- “The Cross-platform Report, Q4, 2011,” http://nielsen.com/us/en/insights/reports-downloads/2012/the-cross-platform-report-q4-2011.html. Accessed November 23, 2012.
- “Television Viewing,” March, 2006, http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/060331/dq060331b-eng.htm. Accessed November 23, 2012.
- Barbara Brehm, Successful Fitness Motivation Strategies (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 2004), 65.
- Mark Bittman, “Is Junk Food Really Cheaper?” New York Times, September 24, 2011.
- Shauna Burke et al., “Group vs. Individual Approach: A Meta-Analysis of the Effectiveness of Interventions to Promote Physical Activity,” Sport and Exercise Psychology Review 2, no. 1 (February 2006): 19–35.
- Megan Oaten and Ken Cheng, “Longitudinal Gains in Self-Regulation from Regular Physical Exercise,” British Journal of Health Psychology 11 (2006): 717–33.
- Bronnie Ware, “Regrets of the Dying,” http://www.inspirationandchai.com/Regrets-of-the-Dying.html. Accessed November 17, 2012.