I recently listened to an episode entitled "Help". The part the most intriuged me was right at the beginning. You can listen to this section of the program at the following link. (Its about 20 minutes, the entire episode is about an hour.)
Help! On Radio Lab
The story is essentially about this really awesome woman, who had been a huge civil rights and gender equality activist, who had been a smoker for most of her life; a heavy, 2 packs a day, smoker. She had a close friend who also smoked, and they talked about quitting a lot and her friend successfully quits. But this woman can't. Years pass and she is still just smoking away. She talks about quitting, she goes a day without smoking but relapses, but can't really quit. One day her friend says, "you're still smoking?" And it really bothers this woman.
At this point the program talks about the science behind these sitations. In this instance, the woman had many incentives for not smoking, she knew it was bad for her health, stained her teeth, was really expensive, etc etc. But those are all "future" incentives to quit. When experiencing a craving for a cigarette, it was a "right NOW" incentive. So our brains are fighting this "right now" incentive with a "future" incentive so its easy to understand which one is going to win.
So what did this lady do? She made a pact with her friend that if she ever smoked a cigarette again she would donate $10,000 to the Ku Klux Klan. Yes. That's awful. You can't even imagine giving them anything. That's why this is so brilliant. Now all of the sudden she has an immediate "right now" incentive to NOT smoke. And she did. Quit cold turkey from that day, never had a cigarette again.
I listened to this, found it facinating, but didn't think about it much more after that. Well the last couple months... let's say... I have been talking about losing weight. I get a lot of responses like, "You're just fine the way you are" although come to think of it, I am getting those response less and less... hmmm. Anyways, the point is, I really am not "fine" at my current weight. Which is frankly embarrassing that I let myself get to this point.
And I have all these "future incentives" to lose weight. I have an entire wardrobe too small to wear and I can't afford to buy an entire new wardrobe, I can't be as physically active as I like to, it is literally killing me (all the studies showing how obesity affect overall health are pretty much conclusive at this point), and I really don't like the way I look. All that being said, I still can't help myself to that extra "afternoon snack" candy bar from the vending machine at work. I couldn't find the motivation to act. I even remembered this program, but couldn't really come up with something that seemed to fit.
At the end of work today, people were talking about tatoos. And I thought to myself, "yeah right. I would never get a tatoo". And then it hit me! I could make some kind of committment to get a tatoo if I don't live up to my obligations health and eating wise!
I've ultimately decided I do need to put a time limit on this. I don't really want it to be a forever thing. And I am giving myself leeway. So the final committment is this:
I Marie Mines Paulsen will not consume more than 2,000 calories in a single day for the next 365 days as of today, March 27 2012, or I will get a tatoo "2,000" (2,000 calories?) that covers my entire back.
I announced my decision to my husband who looked less than excited about this. "I'm not really hot on the idea of you getting a tatoo. Especially one that says '2,000'." "Perfect!" I responded, "You'll be very motivated to help me meet this commitment!"
So there it is. I started today consuming a grand total of 1600 calories which when you think about, it still plenty of nutrition given a sendetary life style. I really am still giving myself plenty of cushion. But I'm so excited about this.
