Duhigg’s The Power of Habit is great but very hard to use. The idea is to keep the trigger, keep the reward, but change the action that leads to the reward. But it is not trivial to find less harmful or more helpful actions leading to the same rewards. Can we try to make a list together? I.e. e-cigs, non-A beer, similar ideas.
The stupid part is how incredibly hard to come up with replacements that in the hindsight seem extremely d’uh. I mean people are still buying the sugared version of Coke not the Zero, right? Probably more ugh field than cognitive difficulty, still.
In one study, published in 2008 in the journal “Obesity,” researchers studied more than 5,000 participants for up to eight years and found that the waistlines of people who drank diet soft drinks increased 70 percent more than people who didn’t drink diet soda.
Yes, but you know the “with fries and make it large, but diet coke, I am trying to lose weight tee hee hee” stereotype, right? :) Usually diet coke is drunk by people who are fighting their unhealthy habits, as it seems people who always had healthy ones are more content with water.
It should really depend on what is to be replaced. It’s difficult to think of examples otherwise. Maybe, make yourself a special cup of tea—like, it is five o’clock, I shall drink this my very favourite cup of tea with lemon and 1 1⁄5 lumps of sugar on my balcony, and count the day as a win?:)
I mean people are still buying the sugared version of Coke not the Zero, right?
Not sure that artificial sweeteners are ok for humans. Specifically, at least one of my family members is allergic to aspartame (sp?), so I tend to consider the stuff more dangerous than sugar, which I at least know I can metabolize with fairly predictable effects.
Duhigg’s The Power of Habit is great but very hard to use. The idea is to keep the trigger, keep the reward, but change the action that leads to the reward. But it is not trivial to find less harmful or more helpful actions leading to the same rewards. Can we try to make a list together? I.e. e-cigs, non-A beer, similar ideas.
The stupid part is how incredibly hard to come up with replacements that in the hindsight seem extremely d’uh. I mean people are still buying the sugared version of Coke not the Zero, right? Probably more ugh field than cognitive difficulty, still.
It’s not a straightforward case:
Yes, but you know the “with fries and make it large, but diet coke, I am trying to lose weight tee hee hee” stereotype, right? :) Usually diet coke is drunk by people who are fighting their unhealthy habits, as it seems people who always had healthy ones are more content with water.
The fact that the stereotype exists doesn’t mean that the strategy works. It only shows that the marketing works.
It should really depend on what is to be replaced. It’s difficult to think of examples otherwise. Maybe, make yourself a special cup of tea—like, it is five o’clock, I shall drink this my very favourite cup of tea with lemon and 1 1⁄5 lumps of sugar on my balcony, and count the day as a win?:)
Not sure that artificial sweeteners are ok for humans. Specifically, at least one of my family members is allergic to aspartame (sp?), so I tend to consider the stuff more dangerous than sugar, which I at least know I can metabolize with fairly predictable effects.