In the last newsletter, I asked what eating sugar and scratching an itchy bug bite have in common. Here's a link to the newsletter, which might be helpful to read if you haven't before going on:

 

 

The short answer (in my opinion) is that they're both addictive. When you scratch a bug bite, it keeps itching, so you scratch more...and it keeps itching the more you scratch.

 

It's the same with sugar -- or any food that you find addictive, such as bread, pasta, desserts or chips -- the more you eat, the more you want. Even if you stop eating the addictive food that day, the next day, you'll be more likely to want it.

 

This newsletter, I'd like to ask a related question: How is eating sugar not like scratching a bug bite?

 

I thought about this while driving the other day (don't worry, I can think and drive simultaneously--fairly well...). I think that what the two don't have in common, is that when you scratch a bug bite, it begins to itch immediately afterward. When you eat sugar, there's no bad feeling right away. Nothing negative happens immediately afterward.

 

The "pain" of eating sugar comes later. The bad parts about eating addictive foods are things like:

 

- You begin to feel like you can't stop, can't control yourself.

 

- You get a sugar rush, followed by a sugar "crash" which can make you feel groggy and low-energy

 

- Your immune system suffers when you overeat, especially sugary or starchy foods

 

- You gain some weight and because of this...

 

- You don't fit into some of your clothes, which feels bad

 

- You don't feel as fit and may not feel like exercising as much

 

- You don't look the way you'd like to

 

- You know you're not as healthy as you could be and this feels bad

 

- If eating the addictive food leads you to eat more addictive foods,

over time, your health can suffer and lead to major illness like heart disease, diabetes, cancer, high blood pressure, arthritis and autoimmune diseases

 

There are more "pains" to eating addictive foods. These are just the ones I could think of offhand.

 

I'm not listing the consequences above to make anyone feel guilty. I just wanted to point out that we don't feel these things immediately. They're all separated in time from the pleasure we get out of eating food.

 

With a bug bite, you scratch and immediately it itches more, etc. With addictive foods, you eat a little and you feel great. The "itchiness" or bad feelings don't come until later.

 

That's why in some ways it's easier to stop scratching a bug bite than it is to stop eating addictive foods. The pain and relief of scratching are closer in time, so we can more easily associate them.

 

Unfortunately, with addictive foods, the pain and pleasure are separated in time. In the case of the negative health effects of overeating, it can take years to feel them.

 

If there were some way to join the pain of unhealthy eating habits with the pleasure you get from eating the foods in the same moment, I believe that the negative feelings would outweigh the positive and we would stop doing the things that cause us pain.

 

I recently had the experience of someone performing a technique on me called "Neurolinguistic Programming" (NLP) and in particular something called "anchoring," where you associate two things in your mind to help you deal with a situation better.

 

I can't say as yet whether I advocate NLP but I did get an important insight about associating events. If you can connect any habits that you wish you could stop more directly with the pain they're causing you, especially in the moment when it's tempting to do them, it's a lot easier to stop.

 

The moral: if you want to stop eating foods that cause you immediate pleasure but then lots of pain later on, realize that you're being blocked because the pleasure and pain are are separated in time.

 

Think of the pain these foods cause you at times when you're thinking about eating them. If you can really combine these two things in your mind at the same moment: the pain and pleasure, it will be crystal clear to you that the benefits aren't worth the consequences.