STEP FOUR: Stimulus Control
Been very busy with other Rokslide and business stuff, but I'm back. Thanks for participating everyone.
I've been teaching this stuff about 20 years and this next step has proven the most important for a big majority of clients we've helped AND most importantly, the data keeps confirming that successful weight managers (can't be significantly overweight and be as healthy as normal weight no matter how much you work out) practice this step regularly.
Stimulus Control (SC) is just a fancy phrase for controlling your food environment- keeping it free of "trigger foods".
We all learned about Pavlov's dog in high school. Remember him? Pavlov would feed the dog and turn on a lightbulb at the same time. After many times, this association between the light bulb and the food became a conditioned response. Light bulb would come on, and even with no food present, the dog would begin to exhibit hunger cues like increased saliva, excitement, etc. The light bulb became the cue for the food instead of the food itself.
What in tarnations does this have to do with us?
We operate the same way. We have all kinds of associations in our brains related to eating. If we are raised by a caring mother, who builds structure into our day with regular feeding and healthy food, and teaches us to pay attention to natural God-given hunger cues, these associations are usually pretty healthy. Example, it's noon, I ate a moderate breakfast 5 hours ago, it is time to eat both physiologically (body needs fuel) and emotionally (brain needs the pleasure of eating, the relaxation of sitting down for a meal), etc. I eat a moderate lunch and my body is satisfied for hours to come. Snacking isn't really needed and my ability to resist crappy temptations is strengthened as the body is satisfied.
For thousands of years, this pattern served man well. Obesity and overweight were almost non existent (around 5% of population by some estimates- it's pushing 80% in US now).
Now in modern society (rich by all world standards), we don't have these natural cycles anymore. We're living in a completely different world than virtually any human being has ever lived in: 24/7 food availability, massive amounts of sugar and fat in our processed foods (drives up calories), really no set limit on how much we can eat (virtually no one reading this stopped eating last night because there may not be enough food for tomorrow- a common reality just 75 years ago), and tons of cues (remember the light bulb) to eat all around us: commercials, foody environments that should have nothing to do with food (I'm in a hotel lobby right now and they serve FREE warm cookies and milk-300 calories each and milk 150 calories per serving- every night), out of control portion sizes at restaurants that people think are normal sizes, virtually no convenience foods that are high in nutrition and low in calories...on and on and on. Humans were not designed to live this way and America's (and other developed countries with food to spare) waist line is proving it everyday. This is our culture now and is why in my writings you hear me refer to successful weight managers as being anti-culture. They have to be. Our culture is simply a recipe for weight gain.
The data says that people who choose to control their food environments- the environments they spend the most time in like home, work, and eating establishments- do the best at losing fat and keeping fat off.
There are two types of Stimulus Control (SC): Negative and Positive.
Negative SC is what most people think of: removing junky, high calorie food choices from our immediate environments and is where is all starts for most of us.
Positive SC is less obvious, but just as important: surrounding ourselves with healthy food choices.
This is not rocket science people and is why I find it so humorous when the diet gurus sell millions of books on food magic and the sort. We just eat too much because there is too much crap available. Pretty simple.
Many of the posters on this thread stated, without even my asking, that cleaning out the crap from around them got them on the right track to health. No wonder every time a researcher studies successful weight managers they find that they practice SC- it works!
The real power in SC lies in understanding what it is not: willpower.
Willpower is the natural human response to a foody environment "I want to get healthy, lose fat, so I'm not going to eat that cookie, or drink that pop, or go back for second helpings... whatever". The problem with that approach is that if people are overweight, they have "habits" of eating/living a certain way that got them overweight. They are so accustomed to eating the way that got them overweight that they don't even have to think about it- they naturally fall back to that habit because willpower is not strong enough (for most of us mere mortals) to kick the habit.
I'll give you a crude example. Looking out the window of the lobby, I see an overweight maintainence guy working on an air conditioning unit. Next to his cordless drill stands at least a 44 ounce Mountain Dew.
50 years ago, most workers in the job would be of normal weight, but now this guy is packing an extra 30 pounds around, yet he has an active job. Why? Well, I don't know him, but it's 10:30 am. I assume that for his morning break, his environment is fueling his habit to just grab a pick-me-up. He probably got it at the gas station on the corner where 25 years ago, the fountain pops used to be served by the attendant and maxed out at 16 ounces but now are self serve and go to half-gallon size. His habit is to just grab a pop, which just happens to be 600 calories and won't provide one drop of nutrition that would reset his hunger cues (lunch is in 1.5 hours and he'll be hungry as pop, junk food doesn't fill us up) and that habit is, in part, driving his weight gain.
Years ago, that morning break would have been coffee or tea(5 calories before additives) as drinking pop in the AM was a cultural taboo, or milk (150 calories) and maybe even a donut (back then would have been about 150 calories- now they are 300 plus). Easy to see that "habit" of his is netting him at least 300 more calories at one snack than a generation ago. Times that by a year and I'm surprised he's not more overweight than he is- but that will probably come in time unless he changes that habit by changing his environment.
Almost guarantee if he and I struck up a conversation and it turned toward what I do for a living, he'd offer up 15 myths that are causing his weight gain (myths the diet gurus are promoting every day) with no comprehension that how much his little habit is costing him. Not knocking the poor guy, he's just a product of his environment.
If he is concerned about his weight (might not even care- many don't), but can't stop drinking pop, the first thing I'd do is point out that he is relying on willpower not to get a pop every morning. Almost surely it will be an unawareness of how much his environment is affecting him. He doesn't even want to to drink the pop, but can't resist the urge when he walks into that same gas station he has for years and that big fountain calls out to him. I'd start by suggesting he stay out of that gas station (negative SC) unless he's fully satisfied. The only way he could do that is by practicing positive SC- like packing his own lunch/snacks with healthy foods like maybe nuts and a whole fruit, or whole grain bagel, or a lower fat protein like venison, and milk or coffee or some lower calorie drink. Then when break time comes, he can satisfy the body and walking in that gas station without filling up on a 44 ouncer doesn't have much to do with will power.
When a person practices SC, they live in a clean food environment most of the time and his stimulus to eat is low and his weight follows. When a person lives in a foody environmnet with all kinds of cues to eat, it will be constant struggle: "do I eat it or do it not, do I eat it or do I not" is the conversation in his head. Most often the conflict is resolved by "eating it" and the bad cycle continues.
I'm very passionate about this STEP as it is the one that made the biggest difference for me from weighing 200# in my 20's (I'm less than 5 foot 9) to the 180 or so I maintain year round now. I changed my food environment and my weight followed. This doesn't mean I don't get to live (took family to the Macaroni Grill last night) but that I don't live in a constant struggle to resist tempting food.
For this to work, you have to solicit support from those around you. If other people are surrounding you with crappy choices, you will only have willpower to rely on and it will fail you almost surely. SC will not fail you near as often. This will lead us to our final step (as soon as time allows), SUPPORT.
Until next time,
