Life is Healthy

Create a plan to you success

We set goals and make resolutions. Some of us are more successful than others reaching our goals. Why is that? According to January 3, 2011, Associated Press article, New Year's Resolutions? Brain Can Sabotage Success, we're hardwired to seek immediate reward over a delayed one.

Bad habits become as much as part of our thinking as good ones—perhaps even more so. Whatever it is that gives us pleasure or comfort we will seek out before something that will get us to a long-term goal. When you look at changing long-time dietary habits this way, it's no surprise that great taste beats great nutrition almost every time. But that's no reason to give up. It just gives you more ammo to get to where you want to be. The more you understand where your craving is coming from, the more likely you will be able to overcome it, according to Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

In Volkow's experiments, she studied how the pleasure-inducing chemical dopamine affects people, and how just a little bit of happiness turns into a habit. She says the right cue in the right environment will make the temptation too hard to resist virtually every time. In addition, she says that people believe they can handle more than they can. And it's these people who fall off the wagon more than people who have a more realistic view of what they can handle.

In one experiment, Loran Nordgren, an experimental psychologist and an assistant professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, measured whether heavy smokers could resist lighting up while watching a movie called "Coffee and Cigarettes." Participants were given the choice of watching the film while holding an unlit cigarette, leaving the pack on the table, or leaving the pack in another room. Those who thought they were in control and could hold the cigarette were more likely to lit up than those who left the cigarettes in another room. The temptation turned out to be more insidious depending on how close the cigarettes were.

So what does this tell us? I guess it's what Dr. Oz among others have been saying for a while:
1. If you want to lose weight, get the snacks out of the house,
2. Make your environment conducive to meeting your goals.
3. Use non-food rewards,
4. Repeat the new behavior over and over until it becomes a habit, and
5. Seek support that doesn't jeopardize your success.

Do you think that sticking to a diet is all about willpower and dedication? Well, not so, according to a study printed in the February 2010 issue of Appetite and posted on Science Direct. While motivation and dedication play a role in diet adherence, diet complexity matters more in whether you will stick with it.

The researcher team, lead by by Juta Mutta, found that people were more likely to stick to diet that was simple and laid out menu plans and recipes like Brigitte, the German diet program. They compared two diet plans, the German recipe plan and Weight Watchers points plan, in a sample group of 390 participants. Perceived rule complexity was the strongest factor in whether the participants stuck with the program.

"Even if you believe you can succeed, thinking the diet is cognitively complex can undermine your efforts," said Mata, now a professor of psychology at Stanford University.

Mata added that dieting is more than just in your head and relies on environmental factors, such as removing the cookies and other snacks from the pantry, as well as choosing a diet plan that will work for you. Should you decide to choose a plan that's more complex, evaluate the diet rules before beginning to make sure it's plan you can stick with. If it requires doing a lot of calculations and monitoring, you may give way to the complexity after a while and "fall off of the wagon."

This is where many dieters resign themselves to failure. In addition, the researchers said that the longer you can stick to your diet plan, the more likely you are to be able to maintain the weight loss in the future.

What about me?
In truth, I've never liked diets that made me think too hard. I've always liked plans that were pretty much laid out for me. And I've done the best when I have sample menus to go by. So, for me, there seems to be something to this research. What do you think?