Unsafe at Any Size

We have such great intentions.  Eat well!  Exercise!

But somehow, those good intentions sometimes fly out the window.  Eat well!  But that brownie looks so good.  Exercise!  But it’s more fun to watch TV.

Why do we trip up?  Why can’t we follow through?  Are we just weak people who can’t make up our mind?

Actually, we’re many different people, according to an article, “First Person Plural” by Paul Bloom in the November 2008 Atlantic (yes, you read that right, I’m a little behind).

According to Bloom, the reason why it often feels like we are at war with ourselves is because we are.  Instead of a unified “I” who makes decisions and then acts on them, we have a multiplicity of selves who are constantly jostling.  One self may say, “no more brownies!”, but another self may say, “ooo, but brownies are many kinds of awesomeness, and there is one right here.”

Drawing on the research of the psychiatrist George Ainslie, we can make sense of the interaction of these selves by plotting their relative strengths over time, starting with one (the cake eater) being weaker than the other (the dieter). For most of the day, the dieter hums along at his regular power (a 5 on a scale of 1 to 10, say), motivated by the long-term goal of weight loss, and is stronger than the cake eater (a 2). Your consciousness tracks whichever self is winning, so you are deciding not to eat the cake. But as you get closer and closer to the cake, the power of the cake eater rises (3 … 4 …), the lines cross, the cake eater takes over (6), and that becomes the conscious you; at this point, you decide to eat the cake. It’s as if a baton is passed from one self to another.

Furthermore, these selves may try to self-bind, meaning they try to prevent other selves from getting ahead by setting things up against them.  For example, a healthy eating self might try to prevent the compulsive eater self from getting the upper hand by throwing away the brownies, or not walking by the bakery with brownies.  If the healthy eating self is really sharp, it would probably refrain from writing or reading about brownies.

So if each of us is actually a multiplicity of selves, some thinking long-term and some thinking just as far as the brownie in front of us, how do we win?  The answer is to do as much self-binding as we can.  Make it hard for that brownie eater to get what it wants, and use productive self-talk to keep that long-term thinking self on top.

Does this kind of research help you stay focused?

Did you know that exercise is not only good for your body, but for your brain, too?  In Tara Parker-Pope’s Well blog, she outlines the research on both animals and people that shows that aerobic exercise improves cognitive function.

It makes intuitive sense: the brain is an organ, and increased blood flow to it will help it work.  But how many of us “knowledge workers” spend our days on our tushies, getting the bulk of our exercise walking from the parking garage to the office elevator.

Kids intuitively know that they need to move their bodies, and get squirmy when asked to sit for too long.  My kids (twins in 1st grade) get THREE recesses in school.

As we get older, we lose sight of our real physical need to move our bodies, thinking of it as a nice-to-have or something we do when we have time (which is never) as we sit and sit and sit in front of our computers (yes, I’m talking to you!).

Yes, my job is important, and I’ll do it even better if I take a few 10 minute walking breaks.  My exercise classes aren’t only an investment in my appearance (which frankly I gave up on so long ago it’s hard to consider it again) but in my ability to be smart and work smart.

So how about you?  Have you taken a recess today?

Great article about addictions in the Harvard Magazine.  It would be worth reading  just for the story of how a researcher got zebra fish to crave cocaine.  The article doesn’t discuss food addiction much, but does lump it in with other kinds of addiction:

Some of my takeaways:

1. Eat with someone.  Research shows more addictive behavior when people are alone:
   

   Connections with other people interrupt the addictive cycle; they redirect attention away from the self-reinforcing feedback of the addictive activity that can quickly escalate to excessive levels.

   When we are with a group, the norms of the group rule and all of a sudden it’s not acceptable to eat a pint of Ben & Jerry’s (unless they are like me).

2. Ask for help:  According to clinical instructor in psychiatry Stephen Bergman ‘66, M.D. ‘73,
   

   “All addictions feed the ego, the self. The ego is insatiable. If you are into your ego, you can never
   get enough–not enough drugs, sex, money, alcohol, relationships, not enough anything. Enough, that is, to feel ‘not bad.’ Many of these people don’t like it if they have to be in a room by themselves for a while. In 12-step programs, those who recover do it by asking for help. The connection has to change, from the self to a we. The only thing that helps is getting beyond yourself.”

   Some of us do that when we join programs like Weight Watchers. George Vaillant, M.D. and professor of psychiatry at Harvard, finds that having accountability, an external superego, helps.

3. Find a behavior that’s not so bad for you:
   

   “Say a drinker goes to Alcoholics Anonymous, sobers up, and starts drinking a lot of coffee and smoking cigarettes,” [Vaillant] says. “Then he quits smoking, by chewing the erasers off pencils and overeating, so he gains weight. Now his problem is obesity, so he winds up hanging around Overeaters Anonymous and drinking a gallon of water a day. It’s what teachers call ‘redirecting.’ You may not be able to stop two four-year-olds from fighting, but you can say, ‘Let’s go get ice cream cones.’”

   Speaking as a mother of twin five-year olds, this analogy speaks to me!  Let’s go get ice cream cones!  No, wait…