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.

Sticker-ing To It

From Wallpapers Wide

Well, I've been continuing my sticker charts to keep track of my eating and they are still working! I've run out of "meat" representatives (carnivores, that is), and so I had to make some of my own stickers. They look like this----------------->

They should last for a little while, anyway. Then I'll make some more! This is fun!

I found, too, that even when I overeat for the day, if I record the food I ate I have an easier time getting back on track the following day. If I don't hide it or pretend it didn't happen or see it as a reason to go off track, then I can simply carry on with my eating plan the next day.

Spoonful of "Sugar"

I've come up with a new way to track eating that is, at least for now, more fun. And the more fun it is, the more likely I am to do it. I decided that doing a more visual record would be more appealing, so I came up with a way to use all my many, many stickers (mostly provided by charities) to record my eating each day.

Here's the first installment, an example of how I plan to do this:

I don't have to write down exactly what I ate, only what sort of food it represents. That takes much less time, and the result is a more appealing chart. The smiley faces are for having properly measured. The gold star at the end means a successful day.

Next Step -- Start the Eating Plan

Taken from HZGH Scales

Okay, after a week of rewarding myself for weighing and measuring, I've been fairly consistently doing that, though I haven't been sticking to the eating plan. Will the measuring behavior continue as I segue into the eating plan? I'm hoping it will.

So, the next step is to start the eating plan. How to reward myself for that? Shirley's idea was to write everything down and check off the hours as you go, and that check was supposed to be your reward. That sounds good except for the fact that the writing itself is kind of tedious and time consuming. One needs to be rewarded for that by itself, let alone the behavior it is supposed to record.

How else can I work on that? Keeping an eating journal is one way for a person who likes to write, but what alternatives are there? Need to brainstorm that.

Penny for My Deeds

Well, I've decided to try rewarding myself with points for good behavior, such as measuring and weighing my food before eating it. Those points will be represented by pennies. So today I gave myself a penny for each food I weighed or measured yesterday. Once I've accumulated a certain amount of points, I'll trade them for some as yet undetermined treat.

Right now, that behavior is being rewarded. I'll work on other behaviors later.

To Treat, Perhaps to Lose

What does it mean to reinforce desirable behavior? The below chart graphically depicts what's involved:

So, in order to reinforce the desirable behavior of, say, measuring and weighing foods before eating, one would add a pleasant stimulus, either before or after the behavior.

Just as training a dog to perform certain tricks (or training chickens not to rob banks) involves rewarding the dog (or chicken) with a treat, a person who is trying to adopt new behaviors might reward herself with a "treat" of some kind before or after she performs it.

What might that treat be? Well, it's probably not a good idea to use ice cream as a reward. What else, then? I'll have to think on that.

Starting Over with Chapter 1 - Conditioning

"Learning is the key to change," says Shirley. But she's not saying to stop there. Just knowing what to do will not change behavior. Knowledge has to be followed by doing.

Talking about conditioning, she says, "In order to develop firm connections, the learner must be repeatedly reinforced for making the desired responses to the appropriate stimuli." She then goes on to say, "To promote desirable behaviors, the learner must engage in them."

So how does one go about reinforcing desirable behaviors? Certainly undesirable behaviors have been repeatedly reinforced.

Eating out of the carton, for one: an undesirable behavior to be sure, but how does it get reinforced?

For me, it provides a physical stimulus of immediate gratification, but also a mental stimulus from getting away with something, a kind of rule-breaking, a liaison dangereuse, you might say.

Below is a depiction of classical conditioning:

Taken from Flatworld Knowledge

So, with conditioning, pairing a behavior with a neutral stimulus will produce the behavior even without the original, unconditioned stimulus.

We can see this with the behavior of eating while watching TV.  We might eat potato chips when we are hungry, stimulated by hunger and the smell of the potato chips. This is a natural, unconditioned response. Now, if we never eat while watching TV (neutral stimulus), watching TV does not cause the desire to eat potato chips. But if we watch TV and eat potato chips at the same time often enough, just the stimulus of watching TV will be enough to produce the response of eating potato chips, even when we are not hungry.

Hungry------->Eat potato chips
Watch TV (not hungry)-------->No desire to eat potato chips
Watch TV + Eat potato chips (8 times)-------->
Watch TV (not hungry)-------->Desire to eat potato chips

What conditioning have I been conducting over the years? Well, that's a good question, one I'm going to try to answer in the coming weeks.