The Color of Success

From Wikimedia

So the first task has been accomplished--to establish the edge pieces (boundaries) of my jigsaw puzzle (eating addiction): foods and situations that give me trouble when I try to control them. The foods are the colors that I will try to separate out and group together. Once that's accomplished, I will further categorize the pieces by pattern, or eating situations that give me trouble.

Here is the preliminary list of the foods (colors) and situations (patterns) I find to be troublesome:

Foods that give me trouble: (Colors)

Fatty and sweet-fatty foods, special occasion foods, "bargain" foods, foods obtained at coffee houses and other nostalgic eateries, foods made to please others, foods bought to please others, family dinner foods (especially excess portions)

Situations that give me trouble: (Patterns)

Holidays, coffee houses, diners, pancake houses, between meals, dinner with family, special occasions, eating out, fast food restaurants, ice cream stands and parlors, bakery thrift shops, grocery shopping when hungry, watching a movie (esp. at a theater), bake sales, traveling, stopping at gas stations on the road, when hungry, baking, cooking for family or friends, treating myself for comfort or celebration.

Using the method I use for jigsaw puzzles where I start with a bright color such as red, I’m going to start with the easiest food to recognize and segregate: ice cream. Since it’s winter, this will be one of the easiest foods to eliminate from my diet, although it will still be a challenge as I truly love ice cream (the ultimate sweet and fatty treat). So, I (mentally) gather up all the ice cream from all the situations where it seems to fit nicely, and put them aside. 

What’s more important, perhaps, than setting this food aside, however, is to pay close attention to how I am affected by removing it from my diet. What is my brain telling me about missing ice cream? While I’m doing that, too, I need to be trying to find a substitute for the neurochemicals that food stimulates.

If this kind of analysis seems familiar, it is: Shirley Simon devotes Chapter 2 in her book to helping us figure out what are our particular "subterfuges of fat"--excuses we give ourselves (that the addicted brain induces) that ultimately make it okay to eat to excess. Simon's behavioral modification approach is a scientific approach, after all, and doing the research is very important.

But there's more to it than that. The genius of the exploratory or scientific approach is that the research and study of the phenomenon of eating addiction is helping to substitute for the food's addictive effects by giving me a scanning activity to carry out in its wake.

So, I'll keep working at this and keep you updated. Stay tuned.

The Puzzle Project

Well, the joy of stickering faded after a while and I was back to not measuring what I eat. But I had the right idea, I think, in trying to reward myself for actions that will help me recover from food addiction.

But, I've come up with a new solution, related to my brain chemistry research, and that is, to activate the BAS instead of the FFF system. The FFF system--fight-flight-freeze--comes into play when the person feels threatened, impelling the person to immediate action, whether it's to flee, to fight, or to freeze in place, a la possum.

The BAS system is the Behavioral Approach System, which is activated when the person anticipates reward of some kind, impelling the person to explore his surrounding to look for that reward.

Psychologist Philip Corr explains the process in his book, Understanding Biological Psychology: “In order to survive and reproduce, animals need to do more than avoid danger; they must also approach appetitive stimuli [‘things that the animal would work to increase’ (218)]. The [brain’s] behavioral approach system (BAS) . . . is the system responsible for achieving this goal. The function of the BAS is to initiate exploratory behavior that brings the organism closer to final biological reinforcers (food, sexual partners, etc.)” (541).

Exploratory behavior is, therefore, one of the important tools an animal (or human) needs to help him survive. Running from danger is adaptive, it is true, but so is carefully approaching a possible good, such as clean water or food. And exploratory behavior chiefly involves gathering sensory data through the use of scanning. And that behavior can cause the animal to feel better, having gained knowledge of his environment that will help him find something he needs.

So far, in my efforts to change my eating behavior, I've felt genuine fear of the food's power over me, causing me to respond as if I were in survival mode. Many people characterize their struggle with addiction as a war, where the enemy is the food and its power to control them. Sometimes they try to fight it by following a drastic diet of only cabbage, or never sugar, or never processed food, or always protein, only to be ultimately defeated when the diet is over or loses its appeal. 

And there is the response of fleeing from the "bad" foods by staying away from them; but the first time there's a holiday or a family gathering where people insist that they try Grandma's special potatoes or Aunt Tillie's special pie, the food addicts find themselves confronted with the enemy once again and surrender. Even Shirley Simon suggests that the face-to-face confrontation with troublesome foods is a battle. This FFF approach has its serious limitations, it seems.

But what if I approached the problem as an opportunity for exploration rather than as a battle I must win? What if I saw my eating addiction not as an enemy but as a puzzle that needs to be solved that once solved will bring a reward, a "biological reinforcer" (more energy, less pain, more flexibility)? What if I saw the problem as a jigsaw puzzle, for instance? After all, I enjoy putting jigsaw puzzles together, and doing so involves scanning, which helps my brain by inducing good neurochemicals. In other words, such an activity activates my behavioral approach system.

So how is a jigsaw puzzle like an eating addiction?

Well, to solve a jigsaw puzzle, I start with the edge pieces, then categorize pieces according to color, then pattern, then shape, putting small segments of the larger puzzle together. While doing this, I have to look very closely at those pieces, notice subtle color variations, different textures as they are represented in the two-dimensional form, see how the tiny parts make up the whole, like a pointillist painting held close to the face, or like the pixels that make up a photo seen up close. I must imagine how that little piece fits into the big picture.

Can I do that with eating addiction? Well, the edge pieces are what? Maybe the boundaries of my problem. Maybe I should start there by seeing what I am addicted to and what I'm not addicted to. Start with the edge pieces, and then work from there.