I just finished reading a book called Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, by Chip and Dan Heath. It’s aimed at organizational change, but it certainly contains ideas that might be useful in improving my eating and exercise habits. And I could certainly use some help right now.
One of the ideas from the book that I keep trying to remind myself of is that of the Fundamental Attribution Error. This is the tendency to over-emphasize personality-based explanations for behaviours and under-emphasize situation-based explanations. This error leads me to think “I don’t exercise because I’m lazy” instead of thinking “How can I adjust the situation to make it more likely that I’ll exercise?” Instead of berating myself for an imagined character flaw, I should make sure that my exercise clothes are laid out the night before and that I’ve already decided exactly what workout I’m going to do. That way, there’s no thinking required in those early morning hours, when it’s oh-so-easy to befuddle myself with false logic before I’ve actually had any caffeine. I’ve actually tried this, and it works well for me.
With food, though, I’m having a bit more trouble tweaking the situation. My diet is already pretty close to what I’d like it to be. I just have a couple of weak spots that I’d like to work on.
flickr: sully213
The biggest weak spot right now is the vending machine at work. It sells those single-sized servings of chips and cheetos and pretzels, and it’s literally about twelve steps from my desk. I don’t even have to go up or down stairs, it’s just right there. In the middle of the afternoon, I crave something from the vending machine. I’ve tried bringing healthy snacks to eat instead, but I just eat the healthy snacks and then get something from the machine anyway.
So: Instead of berating myself for being weak-willed and gluttonous, I need to figure out how to tweak the situation. I can’t move the vending machine; I can’t move my office; I can’t quit my job. What can I do?
The love of my life suggests I should work on changing my mindset: remind myself repeatedly and out loud that those snacks are bad for me, they’re made of crap, they’re full of chemicals, fat, processed garbage, etc. These are things that I already know, intellectually. It’s not that I’m under any false impressions that maybe they’re not all that bad for me. They’re poison. But when those craving hit, I always manage to convince myself that one bag won’t make that much of a difference. So maybe he’s right: maybe I do need to work to bring that intellectual awareness more to the front of my consciousness.
Another suggestion is to bring lots of healthy snacks. Bring enough that I spend all afternoon munching on them and never make it to the vending machine. If the snacks are vegetables, there shouldn’t be too much risk of eating too many calories.
One idea is to make sure I don’t have any coins in my wallet. That might be hard for me because I actually use coins to pay for things (if you don’t use correct change when you can, you end up with an ever-increasing pile of coins in a jar at home, right?). But they say it takes about a month to form a new habit, so maybe if I can just keep the coins at home for a month, I can break my bad habit and go back to actually carrying change.
This morning on the way to work (when I have my best ideas), I came up with a variation of the “no coins” plan: I could keep a jar for coins at my desk, and each time I have a craving for something from the vending machine, get the change out of my wallet and present myself with two options: 1) Use the money to buy unhealthy, chemical-laden, fattening junk food, or 2) Put the money in the jar instead. Hopefully, the jar will fill up and I will be able to reward myself by buying myself a treat – something I wouldn’t normally splurge on.
So, I’m going to try these ideas out, and take it one day at a time. I’m not trying to go the rest of my life without chips, just one day. That shouldn’t be too hard, right?