Specifically, she posits a mechanism which causes some people to eat compulsively when they believe they will not have enough food in the future, regardless of whether they’re hungry now. She actually encourages these people to keep stores of indulgence foods available in all places at all times, in order to produce a feeling of security that negates their compulsion to eat now—in effect, they can literally procrastinate on overeating, because they could now do it “any time”. There’s no particular moment at which they need to eat up because they’re about to be out of reach of food.
I strongly suspect that this trick wouldn’t work on me—the problem is that I’ve taught my brain to deliberately keep a step ahead of this sort of self-deception. Even if I started out by eating a whole pack of cookies, the second pack, that I was just supposed to keep available and feel the availability of, but not eat, would not feel available. If it was truly genuinely available and it was okay to eat it, I would probably eat it. If not, I couldn’t convince myself it was available.
What I may try is telling myself a true statement when I’m tempted to eat, namely that I actually do have strong food security, and I may try what I interpret as your monoidealism trick, to fill my imagination with thoughts of eating later, to convince myself of this. That might help—if the basic underlying theory of eating to avoid famine is correct. Some of the Seth Roberts paradigm suggests that other parts of our metabolism have programmed us to eat more when food is easily available. We could expect evolution to be less irrational than the taxi driver who quits early on rainy days when there are lots of fares, and works harder and longer when work is harder to come by, in order to make the same minimum every day.
Another thought is that it may be a bad situation for your diet to ever allow yourself to be in food competition with someone else—to ever have two people, at least one of whom is trying to diet, eating from the same bag of snacks in a case where the bag is not immediately refilled on being consumed.
’Tis a pity that such theories will never be tested unless the diet-book industry and its victims/prey/readers, become something other than what it is now; even if I were to post, saying this trick work, it would only be one more anecdote among millions on the Internet.
That might help—if the basic underlying theory of eating to avoid famine is correct.
IIRC, she only advocated this theory for people who were binging in response to anticipated hunger, and not as a general theory of weight loss. It’s only a tiny part of the book as a whole, which also discussed other emotional drivers for eating. Part of her process includes making a log of what you eat, at what time of day, along with what thoughts you were thinking and what emotional and physical responses you were having… along with a reason why the relevant thought might not be true.
I haven’t tried it myself—I actually didn’t buy the book for weight loss, but because I was intrigued by her hypothesis that it only takes four days to implement a habit (not 21 or 30 as traditional self-help authors claim), provided that the habit doesn’t represent any sort of threat to your existing order. For example, most people can easily learn a new route to work or school within four days of moving or changing jobs or schools.
That is, it’s only habits that conflict in some way with an existing way of doing things that are difficult to form, so her proposal is to use extremely small increments, like her own example of driving to the gym every morning for four days… but just sitting in the parking lot and not actually going in.… then going in and sitting on a bike but not exercising… etc. At each stage, four days of it is supposed to be enough to make what you’ve already been doing a non-threatening part of your routine.
I’ve used the approach to implement some small habits, but nothing major as yet. Seems promising so far.
I strongly suspect that this trick wouldn’t work on me—the problem is that I’ve taught my brain to deliberately keep a step ahead of this sort of self-deception. Even if I started out by eating a whole pack of cookies, the second pack, that I was just supposed to keep available and feel the availability of, but not eat, would not feel available. If it was truly genuinely available and it was okay to eat it, I would probably eat it. If not, I couldn’t convince myself it was available.
What I may try is telling myself a true statement when I’m tempted to eat, namely that I actually do have strong food security, and I may try what I interpret as your monoidealism trick, to fill my imagination with thoughts of eating later, to convince myself of this. That might help—if the basic underlying theory of eating to avoid famine is correct. Some of the Seth Roberts paradigm suggests that other parts of our metabolism have programmed us to eat more when food is easily available. We could expect evolution to be less irrational than the taxi driver who quits early on rainy days when there are lots of fares, and works harder and longer when work is harder to come by, in order to make the same minimum every day.
Another thought is that it may be a bad situation for your diet to ever allow yourself to be in food competition with someone else—to ever have two people, at least one of whom is trying to diet, eating from the same bag of snacks in a case where the bag is not immediately refilled on being consumed.
’Tis a pity that such theories will never be tested unless the diet-book industry and its victims/prey/readers, become something other than what it is now; even if I were to post, saying this trick work, it would only be one more anecdote among millions on the Internet.
IIRC, she only advocated this theory for people who were binging in response to anticipated hunger, and not as a general theory of weight loss. It’s only a tiny part of the book as a whole, which also discussed other emotional drivers for eating. Part of her process includes making a log of what you eat, at what time of day, along with what thoughts you were thinking and what emotional and physical responses you were having… along with a reason why the relevant thought might not be true.
I haven’t tried it myself—I actually didn’t buy the book for weight loss, but because I was intrigued by her hypothesis that it only takes four days to implement a habit (not 21 or 30 as traditional self-help authors claim), provided that the habit doesn’t represent any sort of threat to your existing order. For example, most people can easily learn a new route to work or school within four days of moving or changing jobs or schools.
That is, it’s only habits that conflict in some way with an existing way of doing things that are difficult to form, so her proposal is to use extremely small increments, like her own example of driving to the gym every morning for four days… but just sitting in the parking lot and not actually going in.… then going in and sitting on a bike but not exercising… etc. At each stage, four days of it is supposed to be enough to make what you’ve already been doing a non-threatening part of your routine.
I’ve used the approach to implement some small habits, but nothing major as yet. Seems promising so far.