Eating Right: A New Self-Control Paradigm
(Continued From the Front Page)

In the battle to eat the right foods in the right portions, have we outgrown willpower? In the 2009 book The End of Overeating, former FDA commissioner David A. Kessler, MD, builds a strong case for rethinking deprivation. Drawing upon a clever mixture of recent recovery literature, classic delayed gratification studies, and research on American eating habits, Kessler shows the way toward permanent dietary change for the better, without the sense of loss the traditional dieter can feel.

Avoiding unhealthy eating and/or overeating has everything to do with taking an abstract desire to eat right and turning it into a concrete series of actions in the present. Rather than relying on sheer force of will, there are better steps to take to reroute our powerful desires in a given situation. The first line of defense is awareness. Conscious knowledge of the risks—of the specific situations that lead to overeating—is crucial. A plan against the overeating impulse connects specific actions to specific possibilities, and it has clear rules. Simply put, rules are not the same as willpower. Willpower merely pits the force of the stimuli against your determination to resist it.

The second line of defense against the passing hors d'oeuvres tray is to divert attention from it: competing thoughts. Along these same lines, competing behaviors, essentially replacing a bad habit with a good one, is highly effective. Many people take up running in lieu of smoking, for example, because the two are so incompatible.

Kessler speaks of support as another vital component—surrounding yourself with people who share your goals. It is well known that commitment to others is powerful; not wanting to leave a running partner standing on a corner can get you to the park at 6 a.m. for your daily jog.

Emotional Learning. But perhaps the most important of the strategies against unhealthy or binge eating, in Kessler’s view, is that of emotional learning. The impulsive nature of the overeating act lies at the heart of it, and is stimulated by a person’s oversensitivity to food cues. It’s important to think of these stimuli as emotional. This component has sometimes been overlooked, but long-term success only comes when the emotions become disassociated from the stimuli.

Like the ex-smoker who adds running into his life, the best strategy for learning to act in a new way is being pushed away from something that no longer seems desirable while at the same time being drawn toward something else. Emotional learning means seeing in a food not just its appealing taste, but what memories, expectations, and associations we see when we look at that food as it provokes our craving.

When we deconstruct it in this way, the food becomes something very different. You begin to recognize your capacity to assign food a value—good or bad. Learning to view the pursuit of sugar, fat, and salt in a negative light and to give equal but positive emotional significance to turning away from it can result in long-term change of habit. It’s possible to move from one highly-charged appraisal to another, even its opposite. Perhaps good habits are as easy to start as bad habits; they are, after all, both habits.

Desire Diminishes. Human beings, to at least some extent but possibly far more than previously thought, can rewire their brains, restructuring neural pathways to learn new tasks or relearn old ones after, say, stroke. The emotional version of this relearning may be equally powerful. Remember that desire decreases over time. The more times you pass by the fatty buffet table, sit further away from the potato chip bowl when it comes out at the party, simply keep driving when the fast food restaurant comes up on the car ride home—the easier it is to continue to do so. Kessler points out that we have evidence this works: when subjects were placed on a low-fat or low-calorie diet, they did not develop or experience cravings for the restricted food. Once the stimuli that has been paired with the food are gone, the desire diminishes—and ultimately, is entirely diminished.

Sometimes, a little tying-in to the physical world can help these appraisal-changes. For example, in his book Kessler relates the story of a colleague who, whenever he felt a craving for smoking tobacco, would actually stick his nose in a jar of old cigarette butts and ashes and inhale deeply. This sufficiently repulsed him each time enough to move him from the abstraction I should quit smoking because it’s bad for my health to a deep and real understanding that cigarettes are a detested enemy. Overtime, his brain activity then becomes the sole mechanism to steer him away from smoking.

Fighting Dirty. Our appetites were built in a world where plentiful food was inconceivable. Getting started on a new relationship to food means, in the short term, counteracting our mean genes, as it were, and this takes more than willpower. If, after a full day of resisting gnawing temptation to consume sweets, we break down and eat a chocolate bar with 60 grams of fat, 23 hours and 59 minutes of discipline are completely undone in a moment of weakness.

It might just be the case that real strength comes from the knowledge that we will be weak. A few strategies, then, may help you start on the path to emotionally distancing yourself from the impulse to eat fat, or salt, or simply too much:

1. Eat something comparatively healthful before going to the barbeque where you know tempting treats will be thrust upon you. Have a bagel before being exposed to cheeseburgers and nachos.

2. Have only rice cakes available in the cupboard for when late-night snacking urges strike.

3. Control portions by dividing the bag of potato chips into portions ahead of eating them, and then eat only your allotment. If necessary, throw the rest of the chips away. This may require ignoring your inner voice that says it’s wrong to destroy or waste food.

4. Shop for food only after eating.

5. Give to departing guests “dangerous” food items that can turn into tempting leftovers after a party.

Be Patient. In the movie Groundhog Day, Bill Murray’s character is forced to repeat the same day again and again until he finally gets it right. Both the viewer and the character slowly realize that this is in many ways exactly how life really is. So much of what we do involves incremental choices that, over time, accumulate to either a very significant good or a very significant bad aspect of our lives. The time, one learns by watching the movie, is going to go by either way—you may as well begin a positive process. Bill Murray’s character becomes a jazz piano aficionado to win the heart of the woman he loves. For the rest of us, the incremental upward climb could mean the health, fitness, and happiness of a lifetime—indeed, for a lifetime.

The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite by David A. Kessler, MD, 2009, Rodale Press, pp. 181-198

Mean Genes by Terry Burnham and Jay Phelan, 2000, Perseus Publishing, pp. 35-56

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