Have you heard of The Whole30? It’s a diet that focuses on eating the right things, and only the right things, for a 30 day period. At its core, it’s more than a diet; it’s promoting a behavior change.
Here’s how it works. For 30 days, you may eat only whole foods. Eat all you want (no calorie counting, no points, etc.), but only eat the approved foods – meats, vegetables, fruits and most nuts. No alcohol, no dairy, no wheats, no legumes, no sugars, and most additives are off limits. Fortunately for me, there’s a website (www.whole30.com) and book which gives you a discrete list of what’s in and what’s out. Let me tell you, I became an expert at reading labels!
Here’s the key – there’s no cheating. No days off. It’s all about cleansing your system of the wrong things and retraining your body to process the right things. If you follow this, you will lose weight, and you’ll also feel better, have more energy, have healthier skin, and a plethora of other benefits.
But here’s the kicker – it’s hard! If you read the book, which I would strongly advise, it starts with the following comment “It is not hard. Don’t you tell us this is hard. Quitting heroin is hard. Beating cancer is hard. Drinking your coffee black. Is. Not. Hard.” (The Whole30; The 30-DAY Guide to TOTAL HEALTH and FOOD FREEDOM; Hartwig and Hartwig, p. vii)
And let me tell you, it IS hard. The first week was a piece of cake (figuratively – cake is off limits!). I was thinking “This is easy. I’ve got this.” I was so amped up on doing this thing, and I had drank the Kool Aid (again figuratively – ok, enough of the bad metaphors). The second week is the toughest. As your body is not getting the quick fix in various sugars and carbs, you do actually feel more tired. Push through. By week three, the energy starts to return, and you actually start to feel healthier.
BUT, by the beginning of week 4, around days 22-24, I was DONE. I was tired of eating eggs. I was tired of having to pass on my favorite food of all time – Oreos. I just wanted a glass of wine! I was tired of happy hour consisting of a flavored seltzer water over ice with a lime. I wanted out.
But I thought back to the book, and more specifically, that first chapter, where the authors of the diet explain “the why” of the diet. What it’s doing to my digestive system, how it’s attacking the areas of my body where I store fat, why I need this, etc. That’s what had hooked me in the beginning, and that’s what kept me going.
Can you see the parallel here to changing behaviors in the project world? When we want a behavior change, we have to focus on the “why,” or we will fall short of long term success. Yes, people might adopt the system and behavior changes at go-live for a period, but if they’re not bought in to why this is good for them in the long term, they will naturally revert back to the old ways of doing things. It’s a natural phenomenon.
I have no idea if Melissa and Dallas Hartwig, the authors of the Whole30 diet, have any behavioral change experience, but they get it. They did a fantastic job of explaining the why to me and other followers of the diet, and that’s what kept me going when it got hard. And like I’ve said, I’ve now finished it twice, and I couldn’t be more pleased with the outcomes!
What if we did a better job of that on our projects? What if people REALLY understood the core benefits and bought into the WIIFM (what’s in it for me)? I daresay we’d have better short and long term adoption, and we’d meet, even exceed, our project objects faster than we ever have before.