Who is In Control?

It almost always feels like our stomach is telling us when to eat, but it most certainly is our brain. Our body does, in fact, signal the brain when it is in need of nutrition, and the subcoscious part of our brain responds to that.

Our subconscious is designed to convince our consciousness (the part that says I think therefore I am) to do its bidding. It is up to the conscious brain to decide what we actually do.

Sometimes, our consciousness doesn't really care all that much what we do, and so we linger on the sofa when we should be working, or we keep eating chips when we really don't need to.

Why Would Our Subconscious Tell Us to Eat Potato Chips?

Our subconscious might also tell us to eat Twinkies dipped in chocolate milk. It really doesn't care how the calories are formed, but there is a natural reinforcement when something tastes good and also delivers extra calories. Our subconscious has evolved to get us to eat as many calories as possible whenever they are available. The flavor-calorie association is a strong and compelling urge that is hard to resist.

Those urges are enforced with fond memories we have of the good-tasting food. Did your mother bake cookies? Was it a happy time? Your brain will recall those happy times when it sees those type of cookies.

Are there foods you love to have at special holidays, foods that you can't resist? Are those foods part of the tradition of those holidays? Of course you can't resist them, because who the heck wants to resist happy memories of special times with family at holiday gatherings?

Every Diet is a Form of Brain Washing

All the diets I've experienced have been a form of brain washing. The diet is there to convince you to eat less, and the gimmicks that characterize the diet are to distract you from the fact that you are going to be eating less than you did before. But a diet that simply tells you to eat less is a non-starter. No one wants to do that, especially here in the land of plenty. The diets tell you that you are going to eat great food, in surprisingly large quantities, and that you will then lose weight.

The cognitive conditioning diets (those that train your brain to nag you before snacking) are the most forthright about the brain washing. I am not against brain washing in the least. It is to what I owe my recent weight loss. I'm just saying that if you're going to be brain washed, it should at least be lasting and effective.

Stop That One Cookie Too Many

The best way to control an urge, any urge, but especially the urge to eat an extra cookie, is to deal with that urge as it happens. The nag approach deals with urges the moment after they occur. Consider the following sequence:

• Your brain sees an open package of cookies on the kitchen counter
• An urge is sparked in the subconscious to have a cookie
  • Cookie tastes good
  • Cookie has calories
  • Mom used to give you cookies just like those after school
  • I sure miss Mom. I miss being a kid.
  • Cookies are my best friend.
• The urge passes into your conscious brain to eat cookie
• Your consciousness allows the signal to go forward
• Your arm reaches out for the cookie.
• Your consciousness detects that you are about to eat the cookie
• Your consciousness triggers the nag sequence
• A nag is located from memory, and played back:
  • You won't feel comfortable at the beach if you keep eating cookies
  • You already ate a cookie after lunch
  • Why can't you just show some will power for once?
  • You're fat and lazy, now put down the cookie!

At this point, it's a classic standoff. The cookie may be just inches from your mouth, part of you is remembering a pleasant memory associated with cookies, you can smell the cookie, which now reinforces the original urge, and you're quietly yelling at yourself to stop. The negative feedback of the nag may work for a while, and you may put down the cookie. But when you are nagged, do you feel good about the result? Do you ever feel cheated, and perhaps hate the part of you that nags?

The Beginning of the End of Diet Control

I have noticed that nagging myself works for a period of time, but I begin to covet the thing I am refused. At this point, another sequence takes shape in my brain — the conspiracy thought, which begins to work against the nag thoughts. If it were my spouse nagging me, of course I would resent it, and I might even find a loophole to excuse myself from cheating.

Eventually, the happy associations with the calorie-rich food becomes the loophole — my mother gave me cookies, so of course it's okay to have one, and it's stupid to nag myself about it. Now the conspiracy has taken hold, and the effectiveness of the diet begins to fade away.

The conspiracy becomes so effective, that I soon forget everything about the diet, my motivation for weight loss, and my goals for healthier living. To paraphrase Lincoln (or was it James K. Polk?):

A brain divided can not stand.

So now that we know what goes wrong, we still need to know how to deal with that urge. That is revealed here, so read on.