Making Healthy Decisions – Using the Human Mind Wisely

When we live in a world filled with modern goods specifically designed to overwhelm our senses…

…with grocery store shelves lined with boxes strategically designed and placed to draw your attention, speak to your desires, and leave you reaching in

… with ice cream or bakeries on every block, sifting their aromas into the streets

… with an endless list of movies and television designed such that, without any effort, a continuous stream will play in front of your eyes while you stay glued to the couch

Living in a world filled with modern goods designed to overwhelm our pleasure centers; with technology designed to keep us in our seats; with a world that seems to have been set up to take down the health of each individual… my question is this:

What is it that gets an individual to get past these pleasure-hacking modern world creations and instead steer an individual towards a life of good health?

That is, what is it that gets the individual to make healthy decisions aligned with his or her health goals – to see the goal and behave in alignment, over and over again? Moreover, what allows him or her to stay consistent such that results are attained and sustained?

I’ll tell you the simple answer – the human mind. It is our ability to envision a desired result, understand what must be done to achieve that result, and to take the course of action that will allow us to achieve that result.

That is, it is our ability to make decisions.

What is a decision:
Thought + Action = Decision

Now, the idea of our conscious decision-making skills steering us towards good health is really nothing special and, quite honestly, not very useful on its own. In fact, this ability to choose the healthy option is what we have been told to rely upon to steer us towards good health for many decades now.

You are a human. You have the ability to make decisions.

You have the ability to choose to not eat that cupcake.
You have the ability to choose when to stop eating.
You have the ability to choose to push harder on that bike.

You have the ability to control your body. You just have to have the willpower and self-control to do it.

Sound familiar?

We’ve all heard this story on countless occasions – but has it really led us anywhere beneficial?

Considering we live in a world filled with unhealthy, overweight individuals ridden with shame over their inability to control themselves, I would say the answer is no.

So where was I with that part about how we just need to make a decision and that will solve our problems? Oh, right, the hard truth.

The truth is, you don’t have the ability to turn down baked goods every single day if that’s what you’re body is really wants.

You don’t have the ability to keep pushing during every workout to burn off those excess calories from eating too many baked goods.

You don’t have the ability to control all of your body’s programmed desires. Your willpower (i.e. your ability to overpower your automatic impulses) will not get you through this life making the healthy choice time and time again.

And… that’s okay – because this isn’t the type of decision-making I have planned for us to work towards. But, before we get to that, we have to understand why willpower is not a good method to steer us through a healthy life.

Willpower
The idea that we can overpower our impulses with willpower and self-control is an idea that has been hammered into our minds for decades. The thing is, over those decades there have been a lot of really smart scientists researching whether or not this is good advice, and what they have found isn’t so promising.

We now know a lot about willpower, and to sum it up with a few key points:

1. Using willpower is energy intensive, and our brains only have a limited supply of energy that can be used for this*
2. Willpower is highly unreliable – its efficacy fluctuates throughout the day, with certain times of the day (e.g. before lunch) proving to be a complete failure when it comes to conscious decision-making.
3. And, just from personal preference – it really just plain sucks to have to rely on willpower and self-control day in and day out. Personally, I don’t like it when I have to deprive myself of what my body is telling me it needs (but really, Katie, one or two cookies is okay!) It flat out sucks to shut that down over and over again, and those times when I inevitably do fail, I feel terrible for giving in.

Which is why we get extra advice to manage these failures – we are told that everything is okay in moderation – that we should let ourselves indulge in these industrial not-so-foods so we don’t feel deprived.** Which really just leaves us with more problems juggling how much is moderation, how much is deprivation, and how much is indulgence.

Regardless of techniques to improve or manage your willpower usage, the bottom line is, your ability to use your human mind to overpower your body’s desires – this power is much weaker than we like to believe.

Now listen up, because this doesn’t mean that you can’t use your willpower to overpower your impulses on occasion, and it certainly doesn’t mean that when the time comes to face down that muffin that you shouldn’t tap into this power. Instead, it simply means that when it comes to a process that we can rely on to steer us through the modern, industrial world and its over-abundance of brain-hijacking goods, we need a better approach.

Now, I began this article talking about how special the human mind is, only to shut it down by bringing up how weak it is in comparison to the body’s natural impulses, and this may have left you a bit confused. If humans are so special because they can make decisions, and yet these decisions are nothing when compared to the power of the animal inside them that is naturally drawn to all of the highly-stimulating modern goods, then what are we to do when it comes to making healthy choices?

Stick with me here, as I believe there is a way to reconcile this by being a little wiser. To be a little wiser, we have to first gain some background knowledge on the mind, itself.

The human mind
To understand your ability to make decisions, it is useful to understand a bit about how the mind operates.

While we, as conscious beings, have come to rely on our conscious ability to use conscious thoughts to make conscious decisions, the reality is that this conscious ability is really only a tiny percentage of the overall processing power of the human mind. The rest of the mind is subconscious – that is, it is not an accessible part of our conscious experience of the world. Instead, this mind operates beneath the surface, constantly computing away to make sense of the innumerable sensory inputs, the internal state of the body, and integrate this with our past experiences to make its own decisions.

Even though we do not directly perceive this part of the mind, it is always there working behind the scenes, making decisions based on its values, knowledge, and desires. These decisions may then be presented to us in the form of automatic thoughts, or they may go completely unnoticed at a conscious level while significantly influencing decisions.

An important note: I am doing the mind an injustice here by discussing it as two separate entities (a conscious “you” and a separate, subconscious mind). This model is not as accurate as I would like. However, as we do tend to think of ourselves as the conscious component of the mind, I find it useful to speak in terms of separate entities (you and your subconscious mind).

There are more accurate ways to differentiate you, your subconscious, your consciousness, your mind, your brain, etc. For example, it is more accurate to discuss you as the sum total of your entire brain, which is mostly subconscious along with a conscious component. If you are interested, you can check out the following article where I develop The Reprogrammed Mind Models and aim for better accuracy and a more thorough explanation.

For now, we will continue with what I believe is a more useful approach to understanding our decision-making abilities. To do so, I will make slight changes to the model above to make it approachable.

To get us started, a truth that we must understand is that we humans are really just slightly evolved mammals, which themselves are really just a branch of the evolutionary tree that is the animal kingdom. This means that our minds operate like that of any other animal – that is, we take in external stimuli via our bodily senses, our brains integrate that information within the internal neural network, and an automatic output is produced in response.

That output can be in the form of a thought (ooh that smells good!), an automatic action (looking towards the location of the smell), or a change in internal state (release of ghrelin, your hunger hormone). Chances are that some combination of these occurs all at once, along with many more outputs.

Now, since we are indeed human, we have evolved an enhanced ability to manage that output. This means that the output of our subconscious minds doesn’t have to always take the form of action, as it would for your dog that always comes running at the sounds of any object falling on the floor. Humans have evolved an extra step that arises in response to a perceived stimulus – that is, an arising thought that (often) proceeds action.

This, my friends, is the miracle that is a human being. This rising thought, along with the ability to hold that thought in our minds, debate possible outcomes, and eventually act on that thought – this is what makes us humans so special.**

This is where willpower and self-control enter the picture. When a stimulus (e.g. the aroma or sight of a cookie) is perceived by the body, the brain’s subconscious network goes to work computing possible outputs. One such output may be a thought in the form of (oh! A cookie!). Another may be a step towards the cookie or some stomach rumbling.

Now, this is where you have an opportunity to prevent the body from walking towards, picking up, and consuming that cookie by overruling your subconscious decision to eat that cookie. That arising thought may be accompanied with additional thoughts about stronger values or health goals, which may lead you to overrule your body’s natural impulses to go eat that cookie.

Which, we decided, is not an ideal method to rely on because its success depends on numerous variable factors, including blood sugar levels, time of day, and emotional state. The truth is, while you have the ability to overrule your body’s impulses, relying on this power to consistently take the right course of action does not consistently lead to success.

Fortunately, there is another option – one that does not depend on our constant vigilance and ability to overpower our natural desires.

Using the Model of the Human Mind to Make Wise Decisions

Let’s look at the facts: we don’t do well when facing stimuli directly – that is, we don’t do well achieving long term goals of good health when we rely on willpower to overcome stimuli that we are regularly exposed to. We may be able to temporarily force ourselves to eat foods we dislike and avoid foods we intensely desire in the name of a greater goal (e.g. good health), but eventually, this willpower is going to break down and we will find ourselves back in our old situation.

And yet, we do have a remarkable ability to think – to understand our desired goals and the actions that we need to take to achieve them.

So, what do we do with this information? How about the following:

What if, instead of waiting for situations to pop up in which we will have to use our willpower, we can pro-actively use our remarkable human minds to make healthy decisions.

Which, let’s be honest, still isn’t novel, exciting news. We all know that planning ahead is a good idea – we should try to avoid walking by the bakery so we aren’t tempted. We should prepare our own lunch so we aren’t tempted by the vending machine. We should lay out our workout clothes the night before so we are less tempted to opt out of our scheduled workout in the morning.

This advice to be pro-active is useful and is definitely an important tool in your toolbox. However, I don’t believe even this is enough to allow us all to reach the ultimate goal – a life of good health. Relying on our ability to outwit our subconscious minds will help us navigate through this world filled with temptations, but it is not going to lead to a life filled with success.

Which means we need to go even deeper into this topic to find a better answer. To do this I want us to walk through a little exercise:

Imagine that you are walking into your local grocery store. Now, are there any unhealthy indulgences that you are commonly drawn towards? Maybe it’s the bagels, or maybe its ice cream. How about chips or cookies?

I can tell you mine – it’s the chocolate chip cookies that are always by the front door, the fancy chips that they are always advertising up front, and the raspberry licorice by the checkout. Those are the three that often catch my attention when I catch sight of them.

Now, a question – do these match your natural cravings?

Are you, too, drawn in by red licorice, or can you leave it alone? Maybe it even repulses you?

What is it that is in your place? Is it ice cream (which I happen to be able to walk right past without a glance), or maybe bread (which gets me only on the rare occasion, depending on the freshness and aroma)?

Now, another question – why is that? Why is it that I am so drawn to red licorice while you are drawn to (ice cream, bread, __fill in the blank___)

Let’s go through one more example…

Think about that time of day when your willpower starts to break down (for me it’s when I get home after work). What foods tend to end up in your hands, even when you planned not to touch the food again.

For me, it’s chips, popcorn, and (again) chocolate chip cookies.

For you, maybe its pasta, cake, or brownies. Or maybe it’s candy.

Once again, why is it that my answers don’t match your answers? Sure, there’s probably some overlap, but there are going be differences – after all, no two people are alike.

Now, here’s the important part, so pay attention:

Given that there are differences in our food-based intrinsic desires – that is, the food we are automatically drawn to and have to use our willpower to overcome – given that these exist, it means that there is something different between you and I in regards to our subconscious programming.

The fact is, our subconscious minds are programmed differently because we have had different life circumstances.

And this means that there is room for us to step in – to reprogram the subconscious mind with newer, healthier automatic responses.

Now, I know that may sound a little whacky on the surface, but I assure you there is nothing metaphysical here – this is pure physiology, as I’ll explain shortly.

Think about – do you have any of these natural food cravings that you have developed (or let go of) over time? I’ll tell you a couple stories of examples in my life.

In the case of the licorice, the thing is, I had never really liked licorice that much. Both of my parents always loved licorice, but I nor my siblings could ever really understand why. Then, one day after working out I headed to the grocery store and for some reason decided that raspberry licorice sounded amazing, and even though I don’t usually let myself buy candy, I purchased the raspberry licorice and ate it. And to this day, whenever I go to that grocery store my mind goes on a hunt for it (that is, my subconscious mind receives the stimuli (checkout), it sends a signal to my conscious mind (licorice!) and ends up at my motor cortex (turn head to search for licorice)).

Or, there’s the case of peanut butter. Years ago I decided to try out the whole paleo thing, and while doing so I learned of all these reasons why I shouldn’t eat peanut butter. Fine then, I’d switch to almond butter – no biggie. At first I didn’t love the exchange, but after a few months I had a realization – peanut butter tasted disgusting! For a while there, I could not fathom the taste or even the smell of peanut butter. I was repulsed by the stuff. My subconscious mind responded to peanut butter as if it was cooked up spinach (or maybe for you a better analogy for repulsion is to sardines, a fish I happen to have come to love).

Over time I loosened up my dietary restrictions and peanut butter found its way back into my life. Today I consume both peanut and almond butter, and I find them to be both delicious parts of my diet (although, I will admit that almond butter is probably the healthier choice).

The point is, over time our preferences change. In one case I happened to develop an unhealthy habit of purchasing licorice, and in the other I went through phases of peanut butter lovin’ and hatin’.

I’m sure you have your own stories – that over time you have lost or developed preferences that I didn’t (maybe you’re repulsed by sardines while I’m repulsed by cooked spinach).

So, what does any of this mean for us and our ability to make healthy decisions?

Over time our subconscious minds become wired to seek out specific foods. Given these deeply programmed automatic desires, we as our conscious minds have the ability respond.

In the case of automatically desiring unhealthy foods, the conscious mind’s job (if we choose it) is to overrule the automatic response and instead choose the healthy option (via willpower).

Now, here’s the key to all of this:

In the case of automatically desiring healthy foods – our conscious minds don’t have to do anything! When our subconscious desires are the same desires that our conscious minds aim for, there is no need for the conscious mind to step in with an energy-intensive, often unpleasant choice.

When the subconscious decision is the healthy option – the option aligned with our goals – there is no need for willpower. There is just an automatic response to avoid the unhealthy options while we reach for the healthy options.

Which leads us to our new approach to making healthy decisions:

If, instead of focusing our time and energy on overruling the unhealthy programmed responses and instead focus our time and energy on reprogramming these responses, maybe we could engineer a subconscious mind that walks right past the bakery, ignores the candy, doesn’t even register the chips, and heads straight to the produce.

This is The Reprogramming Process at its core – the process of making decisions that lead to a lifetime of being free from the need to overrule the subconscious mind’s unhealthy output (i.e. using willpower to overpower our natural desires. The aim here is to make decisions that fundamentally reprogram the subconscious mind so that it regularly makes the healthy decision. When we aim in this direction, over time we take the burden of healthy choices off of ourselves – the decisions become automatic.

This means no more battles with baked goods, no more feelings of guilt or shame, and results that are attained and sustained.

The Reprogramming Process – What to expect on your journey

To finish up, let’s have an honest chat about how this process works.

First off, understand that this process is going to take some time. When you start off on your Reprogramming Process you are going to have to rely on your willpower to overcome your current programming. If, today, your diet is largely based on industrial not-so-foods, it is going to take a strong effort on you (as your conscious mind) to prevent your subconscious mind from reaching for the cookies, chips, candy, and whatever other industrial not-so-foods that you are currently programmed to desire. Moreover, if you are starting out in a place where you have to overcome aversions to consume healthy foods, you are going to have to use your willpower to make yourself eat these foods that you don’t naturally enjoy (that is, that your subconscious mind doesn’t automatically respond to with joy).

The important piece is that you are not going to use this willpower to moderate how much unhealthy junk you indulge in. Rather, the secret is that you are going to replace those cookies with actions that fundamentally reprogram your subconscious mind.

This means you are not going to tell yourself “I’ll just have one cookie” for the rest of your life. By keeping cookies in your life, your subconscious mind is going to remain programmed to seek for them. Instead, you are going to replace those cookies with healthy options – options that you may not automatically enjoy at first, but options that will, with time, come to bring joy to your day.

Now, above, I assured you that there is no metaphysical magic going on here. This process is completely based in neuroscientific principles. So, how does this work?

Thanks to the plasticity of your brain, your preferences are actually quite adaptable. As was the case with my brain changing based on my shift away from peanut butter and to almond butter, you too can make dietary changes that lead to a change in preferences.

Now, there are any number of methods we can use to accomplish this, but to get you started we’ll begin with the basics.

1. Reward healthy behaviors: Instead of limiting your unhealthy behaviors, you are going to replace your unhealthy behaviors with healthy options, and then reward that behavior. In doing this, your subconscious mind becomes less likely to send your conscious mind a “cookie signal,” and instead it becomes more likely to send your conscious mind a “veggie signal.”
2. Consistency builds liking – expose yourself to the same food over and over, and eventually you will enjoy it. For example, if you consistently eat broccoli when you don’t love broccoli, over time your body will likely change its preferences. This may sound too simple, but I have done this with numerous foods that I used to think I could never like, including onions, tomatoes, and sardines.

There is a second piece here that is important to address: right now you are probably hesitant – maybe even fearful – of having to give up your favorite unhealthy foods. You are likely deeply attached to many of these unhealthy options, and the thought of giving them up is enough to throw the entire process out the window for some not-useful moderation idea that gives you an excuse to keep indulging in these unhealthy choices under the pretense that you are making positive change.

If this is the case, then this might be the most important piece of information you hear all day.

Understand that, right now, you are where you are in your own process. You may have preferences for certain foods – preferences and unhealthy habits that may seem impossible to ever rid yourself of. If you take this reprogramming journey with me, understand that these preferences – they are going to change. Although you may not be able to fathom the idea that your love affair with candy bars or blueberry muffins will ever change, the truth is that it will. Your mind is incredibly malleable. There is potential for anything.

And, even in the case that this love affair doesn’t change – even in the case that the stars aligned and you and chocolate kisses are destined for a lifetime of desire – I am not asking you to give this up forever.

Instead, I am asking you to embrace a process in which you say goodbye to the old you:
– a you that is overwhelmed at the sight of anything containing chocolate
– a you that has to use willpower to make it through every item in the grocery store to get to the produce.
– a you that feels sad eating a salad when you want to be eating the burger and fries.
– a you that feels sad saying no to dessert
– a you that gives into the burger and fries and/or dessert and then feels regret for the rest of the day.

I am asking you to embrace a journey where you will put in the work to create a new you – that is, a you with a subconscious mind that automatically turns towards the salad, says no to dessert, walks past the candy bars and to the produce without a thought, and feels great at the end of the day because you made healthy decisions and enjoyed the ride.

And the best part – this new you, with your new healthy-decision making mind – this new you will be capable of understanding when you really want a piece of cake, because it’s your daughter’s birthday and your sister spent all day working on it. You and your healthy-decision making mind will be capable of understanding what moderation really means – that when you have an unhealthy indulgence that you absolutely love, it is okay to enjoy it once in a while.

Finally, I’d be lying to you if I told you this process is going to go smoothly and that you will become a veggie-seeking cookie-ignoring super-human in 3 short weeks. I’d be lying to you if I told you that you will automatically be able to ditch the use of willpower forever and instead go on with a reprogrammed mind that effortlessly makes all the right decisions. Remember, this is a process – one that is going to take some time, during which you will probably have to face down many a cookie. Just keep mind, the aim is to make sure our efforts are leading to lasting change and not just towards a temporary win – that our efforts are going beyond willpower battles and instead are aimed at fundamentally disrupting the programmed responses to our environment.

And, honestly, sometimes you’re going to eat that cookie, and that’s okay. As long as you are moving in the direction that has the ultimate goal of a body programmed to eat real, whole foods – one that tends to walk right past the junk without a glance – as long as you are headed in this direction, then you are doing great!

Because, remember, the alternative is an entire life filled with cookie battles – a lifetime of forcing yourself to avoid foods that you really want. The alternative is a life filled with forcing yourself to eat foods you don’t enjoy in the name of inconsistent progress towards better health. I, for one, enjoy it when I am (relatively) free of these willpower battles and can instead turn my attention to what matters most to me as I continue on my path to good health.

 

Notes

* I know I’m greatly oversimplifying things here. The willpower energy reservoir isn’t best thought of as a pool that empties as the day goes on, but rather as a reservoir that fluctuates throughout the day. Still though – my point remains. I personally do not want to rely on a source of energy that depletes regularly throughout the day.
**That, as well as our upright stature, ability to sweat, opposable thumbs, etc. These also make humans special – but these are not so relevant to the decision-making process
*** I wish to clear this concept up.
****The triune brain – although it may not be entirely accurate evolutionarily and anatomically, I have found the triune brain model incredibly useful and close enough to the mark for our purposes. The reality is, as always, more complex, and instead of three distinct stages of development, the true evolution of reptiles —> mammals —> humans is probably more blended.