The brain works in interesting ways.
Have you ever had the best intentions to stick to your eating plan, and then suddenly, you choose to eat something so far off your plan that you thought you’d never recover?
Here’s what I mean.
You’re out with friends for dinner.
You look over the menu to create a meal that fits your intended macros and calories.
You actually get excited that you can have a great time with friends AND achieve your behavior of eating to support your health and fitness goals.
The next thing your know your just told your waiter that you’ll have the giant bowl of pasta with some sort of creamy sauce with enough calories to feed a small village of 500 people. It’s as if someone took over your brain and made a bad choice for you.
What just happened?
In her book, The Willpower Instinct, Dr. Kelly McGonical outlines just such a scenario.
It seems that you can get so excited about the fact that you can stick to your goal, your brain substitutes that feeling for actually achieving your goal. Having just achieved your goal (at least seeming to do so), immediate pleasure takes over and you make a bad choice.
The fact that this can happen makes me think that we can actually use this fact to our advantage.
I call it Imaginary Dessert.
Call me kooky but I’ve actually use this method to overcome some of my cravings (Dr. Mike will vouch). It’s an interesting mental exercise.
Chances are that whatever you’re craving, you’ve eaten before. You know what it should taste like, so you have mental “image” that you can use.
Just imagine eating whatever you crave in the greatest possible detail. Don’t rush. Take your time. It gives you a pause to let your craving pass and feel the experience as if you’ve really eaten dessert.
You 1, Brain 0.
Get started on your pain-free comeback to the gym today
