May 22, 2009

175lbs.  Rode 1hr 21m.  My mind is racing, let me see how much of it I can grab. 

The Psychology Of Change

Who is that little voice inside your head?  I think I’ve got it figured out.  But I’m going to have to go all the way around and come back to it to explain.  We’ll start with a scientific approach.  Here I go…

It takes 3 weeks to establish a new behavior into a habit.  That is what they tell us.  Ever wonder why?  And ever wonder why sometimes it takes longer?  This will actually be an unscientific-scientific approach.  (Remember, my claim to fame is that I’m fat, not a scientist.  What makes it that much more interesting is that I’m blonde, too.)  Your brain is full of neural-pathways.  This is how your brain communicates to your body.  What keeps you trapped in your unhealthy behaviors is heavily embedded neural-pathways that were established over time and reinforced continually.

Let’s recap the whole brain function thing:  The brain is made up of cells that have axons or transmitters.  These cells have nerve endings called synapses and dendrites.  Nerve endings release chemical and electrical stimuli to communicate with each other.  This brain communication forms neural-pathways in the brain and is how the brain works.  In order to make a new behavior a habit you have to first start by making a new neural-pathway in your brain.  We’ll use bike riding examples because I know that best.  Let’s say when you push off to start riding, you always start with your left foot, even though you’re right-handed.  Here we have isolated the bad behavior.  When a right-handed person pushes off to start riding with their left foot, it’s is less efficient.  So the new behavior will be pushing off using your right foot instead.  Ever tried that?   Ever tried to get started on your bike using the foot you don’t normally use.  It’s hard.  You are real uncoordinated.  Your fight or flight response kicks in.  Your whole body goes on alert because your brain thinks somethings not right.  You’re in unfamiliar territory.

But if you keep doing it over time, over & over again – you deepen the neural-pathway for that behavior and your brain gets comfortable with it.  Over time, your brain prefers that behavior; so long as you keep doing the new behavior.  Every time you do the new behavior, that neural-pathway actually gets stronger.  What makes it take longer is when you fall back into the bad behavior.  Each time you do causes delays in habit-forming.  You accomplish 2 things by forcing yourself into the new behavior.  First, you are making the good behavior neural-pathway stronger from use.  Second, you make the bad behavior neural-pathway weaker by lack of use.  It will reach a point where it’s so weak and faded, it’s almost invisible to your brain.  The reason you must be strict with yourself initially is because your brain, under stress, will automatically use the more heavily embedded neural-pathway.  And when you slip up and it uses the old one, it will stay strong and not fade.

So, there you have it.  Reinforcing healthy behaviors over time causes new habits.  Falling back into bad behaviors make habit forming take longer.  Now, let’s apply this to other things and see how it works.  Let’s first try discouraging talk while you exercise, which is a limiting behavior.  Most people claim to hate riding hills.  Most people struggle on hill-climbs.  We isolate the bad behavior as ‘your thought that you hate hills’.  As you approach the hill, you continually reinforce how much you don’t like hills- how hard it’s going to be- how you’re going to struggle.  All of those thoughts cause physiological changes to take place in your body, causing you to be weaker and distressed.  When you’re body is distressed, your pain-receptors kick in to rescue you.  So now your body thinks it’s weak AND it hurts to climb.

New behavior – ‘your thought that hill-climbing is enjoyable’.  As you approach the hill, you force yourself to think positive thoughts.  I like hill-climbing- it makes me stronger- I’m strong enough to do this- it will only last a short time- Yes, I can do this.  Now your body responds physiologically to those thoughts and prepares to bring additional power to what you are doing.  Also, you’re not wasting energy in distress, so you have more energy available.  As your body steps up for a reasonable request for added power, it doesn’t feel distressed, so it doesn’t send pain signals.  As you climb, continuing the positive thoughts, your body focuses on being stronger and you get through the hill with relatively no pain.

How you reinforce the new behavior is to force yourself every time you see the hills, to immediately think of them in positive terms and get excited.  Keep in mind to control your thoughts so you are not reinforcing the unwanted behavior so it will weaken and fade.

Now let’s attempt to apply this to dieting, because it’s a little more complex.

Being overweight comes from a lot of bad choices over time.  So, we have a lot of neural-pathways to rebuild.  With eating, you have to add to that the hormonal reaction we have with certain foods.  Carbohydrates increase appetite.  Protein decreases appetite.  Malnutrition causes cravings as our body tries to regulate itself.  We usually misread our cravings.  (See, our body isn’t actually craving choclate cake)  Many overweight people are addicted to unhealthy carbohydrates, those that cause large spikes in our glucose levels, increasing the production of insulin, causing our bodies to store more fat.  It is a vicious cycle.

So, you can see this is more than just rebuilding healthy neural-pathways.  (It gets even more complicated as you look into hunger hormones and metabolic reactions to decreased food intake, but I really want to find an ending point.  Scientifically-accurate weight loss is the proverbial can of worms.)  I’ll simplify it by stating that you have to build healthy neural-pathways and make food choices that do not sabatoge your dieting efforts by causing you to store more fat.  And you need to be careful not to restrict your calorie intake so much that your body’s defense mechanism kicks in and tries to save you from what it thinks is starvation.  You also have to be careful with your self-dialog….. to be continued…