The 7 Principles of permanent diet change
How to create a habit
Ok so most articles with this title will follow up with a series of points that will total up to, ‘change your food so that there is sufficient protein and a small calorie deficit sufficient enough to create fat loss’. If that was working for you then you are likely already doing it.
When I asked 100 people the question do you A. struggle knowing what to do or B, struggle to consistently do it. Over 90% came back with answer B. There is a wealth of information in the world about what to do. Knowledge is not the problem, the problem is putting it into practise.
This is obviously an article on diet so I will refer to it and even offer some nutrition principles but for the most part we will be addressing the really challenge rather than giving a tonne of advice that is already out there.
The pleasure principle
What fires together, wires together (Heibb 1949) What this means is that the emotion that accompanies an experience places that experience firmly in the category of pleasure or pain.
Think of a song that was constantly playing during the best summer of your life, it evokes happy memories I imagine. Now think of a song that perhaps played at the funeral of a loved one, this likely evokes painful memories. The experience, the sensory stimulus and the emotion wire together. This so that we can move towards pleasure and away from pain should one of those ingredients arise in the future.
This is not a complex and discerning system capable of rationalising situations, it is an ancient part of the brain that severed us in simpler but more dangerous times. If you’re having negative feelings about something then you brain will not create a habit, it will not allow the basal ganglia in the brain to adopt the behaviour as one to repeat.
If you are having a positive experience then adoption by the basal ganglia can be rapid, even immediate.
In order for a diet to become permanent pain must be limited and pleasure maximised. Pain can be perceived inconvenience, disgust, hunger, isolation from loved ones, confusion, boredom.
Pleasure can be taste, texture, smell, visual stimulation, progress, energy, satiety, the mere absence of perceived pains.
Build your plain and even every aspect of your life at this stage around maximum pleasure and the new habit will more rapidly stick. This doesn't mean avoid discomfort and live the easy life, it merely means that you assess what you are doing day to day and ask yourself, what would make this more fun.
The principle of progress
Going deeper into this one because it is so important. Forming a habit requires pleasure and pleasure is the word we use to describe the chemicals in our brain that make us want to do THAT again. Seratonin, Dopamine, Oxytocin, Endophins all the happy chemicals, the reward chemicals.
Dopamine is the chasing hormone, our brain is flooded with it when we are progressing and achieving our goals. Big goals are great but it is little goals that keep us chasing and moving forward. The thing about progress is, it is entirely about perception or noticing. If you haven’t actually noticed that you’re improving then there is no dopamine reward and if there is no dopamine reward you quit.
So set the bar low and keep stepping over it. Enjoying a meal is a win, eating what you said you’d eat is a win, feeling good after is a win, improving a recipe is a win, more sustained energy is a win.
Then there are all the possible ways that you could be moving towards your goal, (reason for changing how you eat) list the things you might or have noticed. Give yourself a little tick for each win, tell someone about your win, reflect briefly on your wins at the end of the day.
Each interaction with the win and the winning thought will spark a dopamine release and work towards creating a habit. Losing kgs or lbs or inches will rarely be enough to keep you going, perceived stagnation will create withdrawal symptoms which will result in going for a quicker dopamine fix via comfort food or drinks.
The principle of experimentation
If you are trying something new, it is an experiment, YOU are the variable. Regardless of what the science says, what you are about to ‘test’ has never been conducted under the conditions of you.
Your lifestyle, nervous system, hormones, tastes, health, history, and a million other variables mean that your experience will not be exactly the same as anybody else’s, ever. The results might be similar they might not, you are an enigma.
Have a method, Have a series of measurable’s, Set realistic expectations, run the test for a sensible amount of time to see progress, check your results, then draw a conclusion as to whether expectations, enjoyment and progress align enough for you to want to continue.
If you didn’t enjoy it, bin it. Take no meaning about yourself or your abilities from the experiment. Just move on to the next one and take the lessons with you.
The principle of Digestion
Digestion best occurs when the nervous system is being dominated by the parasympathetic branch known as rest and digest. Digestion is poor when the nervous system is being dominated by the sympathetic branch known as flight or fight.
Our health is the product of the nutrients that we digest and absorb. Poor digestion results in poor absorption, poor absorption results in poor health.
Of course there are foods that we digest better than others and there are foods that are nutritionally superior but you already know most of that, you already know that if your diet consisted of mostly nutrient dense food like meat, fish, veg, fruit, nuts and seeds you’d be healthier.
Optimising the system that processes all of this means that you get the most out of what you put in, what ever that might be. Not optimising the system that processes what you consume is to deliberately deny yourself the very health you are eating to achieve. Its like buying 12 eggs and immediately throwing 6 away.
Digestion is a process that begins with the imagination, there isn’t one of us that hasn’t made our stomachs rumble simply by talking about food. The anticipation makes the mouth begin to produce saliva and the body starts to divert blood to the digestive system, this is where the principle of pleasure links with the principle of digestion. Desiring your food means that you can sustain a lower nutrient diet and get better results than someone who suffers their food in order to achieve a higher nutritional value.
The next step is an extension of this imagination, creating the visual, the smell, the taste, the texture, the experience that you imagined, right down to the presentation. The next step is to consume your food like it were a work of art. Imagine the best chef in the world has prepare a masterpiece just for you and is now sat watching you to enjoy you appreciating her food.
If you cannot do these things at this time then, in my opinion there is little point in eating an you should wait for a time when it is possible. Then of course is the follow up. In an ideal world you would relax, maybe even snooze and allow the 4-6 hour digestive process to take place unimpeded by the sympathetic nervous system that dominates when we are racing around or working. I appreciate though that this isn’t always possible. My own personal way of dealing with this is to consume all of my food when I am relaxed and able to relax afterwards.
This means that I tend to eat at 6pm onwards and consume very little or nothing during the day unless I'm not working in which case I eat with my family. Your own system might include going for a walk post lunch or eating breakfast early and taking your time getting ready for work afterwards.
All of these words boil down to, eat food you love, eating it like you love it, stay relaxed as long as you can afterwards. How you do that is of course up to you.
The principle of Emotion
You have them, emotions that is. You might have the volume turned up to 11 and be totally aware of them all of the time or you might have the volume turned down to 1, either way, they are the motivator of your actions.
When you go to the supermarket and you come out holding a box or chocolate cornflakes and a bottle of wine neither of which you had any intention of buying when you went into the shop it was your emotions that motivated the decision.
Your emotions were triggered by your environment. In fact a tonne of money is pumped into creating an environment that triggers an increase in spending as a result of emotional decisions.
Distance allows more rational, close proximately creates more emotion, this is why many military decisions are made by those on the back line rather than the front. The more we use rational though to map the territory the better we can handle or avoid being confronted or over powered by emotional triggers.
If we accept that willpower is finite or not even present during heightened states of emotion then we can set a course that both increases access to our willpower but also doesn't require its constant presence.
In dietary terms this means limiting access to those things you wish not to consume perhaps by removing them from your environment or publicly declaring that you won’t be consuming them.
Shopping online, having a shopping list, avoiding shops, stating out loud what you will buy in the shops, publicly declaring that you DO NOT consume sugar at work because it negatively affects your performance.
To sum up, we increase our chances of success if we identify in advance those situations where we are most vulnerable to diverting from what we said we would do and then design an action plan.
If the trigger is environment, can you avoid the environment or change the environment to support the goal?
If the trigger is human influence, can you create a story that you are comfortable saying to those influencers that lets you off the hook?
The above is the first part of emotion, the second is comfort. Often feeling stressed can trigger us to want create comfort. Learning to notice this and identify the triggers is the first step to breaking them or replacing the comforter.
For example, a smoker might go for a cigarette when they are stuck on a particular task or overwhelmed by a collection of tasks. The discomfort was the trigger, the cigarette the routine and the resultant comfort the reward.
This is a habit - unwanted feeling - routine - desired feeling.
We can most easily break this pattern by identifying that what the routine is, isn't important, as long as it moves us from one feeling to the next.
It could be as simple as voicing the discomfort and taking 5 deep breaths. It could be getting a glass of water, talking to a colleague or going for a walk.
What ever it is, identifying these challenges and having a strategy is more likely to result in success eventually. Having no strategy and hoping that eventually you’ll have the “willpower” to not create comfort is unlikely to ever work.
The principle of Expectations
Quitting a method is a product of an undesirable method and so a pretty sensible thing to do. Quitting an objective while still desiring the result is a product incorrect expectations.
If the expectation going in is that sticking to a planned way of eating requires changing how you feel in every environment, changing how you present to every person and will be met with frequent mini failures then your expectations are accurate.
If your expectation going in is that progress will be slow and sometimes will stagnate or even feel like you’re going backwards then your expectations are accurate.
If your expectations going in is that it will take planning in advance of conscious effort and organisation at the front and evaluation and reflection at the back before re-organising and planning again until an enjoyable and effective system becomes habitual. Then your expectations are actuate.
But if you don’t expect the above then you will meet every challenge or set back with resentment and frustration and eventually give up.
What ever you have decided to achieve, lower your expectation and be clear on how hard it will be.
Be honest, how many people do you know who have achieved and maintained this goal? Probably very few, but for the most part this isn't because it’s hard it’s because so many marketers espouse how easy it is with their system and when expectations and reality don’t meet we quit.
The principle of Desire, Attention and Discipline - DAD
You want this thing, this goal you have decided to achieve, but you want other stuff too and that’s cool. Some of that other stuff you want more than this result, you call those things your priorities.
You might know them as your priorities, you might not know them as priorities at all, they are the things that get all of your attention at the moment. The thing is that you only have so much attention and in order to create a new habit you are going to have to divert some of it towards this goal.
So it’s important that you are clear on why this is important to you and how it will benefit your priorities and then make sure it gets the daily attention required.
Our habits aren't a product of what we say is important they are a product of what is actually important and often those things don’t align especially when life becomes more stressful.
Before your new diet becomes habit life will increase its demands on your time and attention and it could very easily pull you away from this goal. Having documented plan of your daily minimums, minimums that could survive an increase in stress is the way to survive this. Systems that do not place excessive demands on your time.
That could be a simple as fasting til lunch and two litres of water because the require no time they are less likely to be derailed by increased stress. Once you have the plan, make it visible. Put it on the fridge, put it on your desk. Put it where you will see it often. lose sight of DAD at any point and the new habit won’t stick. Always put your tent up with the expectation of stormy weather.
If you made it this far then you likely have a desire to change something that has previously alluded you. Hopefully you now see that change isn't about the action as much as it is about how you approach it.
If you would like some help achieving your goals and you would like to achieve it with more freedom, fun and fulfilment then send me an email and lets have a chat ed@edley.net
Ed Ley
