No matter what health issues drive clients to seek out my help, at some stage we’re going to end up discussing something that they need to give up. Whether it’s smoking, alcohol, ultraprocessed food or sleep-stealing late-night television, there’s always something (usually, multiple ‘somethings’) that’s standing between the client and the health, vitality and optimal weight that they desire.
And more often than not, the client has already identified most or all of their health-destroying habits before coming to see me. However, awareness of the need to change doesn’t automatically result in change, as anyone who has ever come face-to-face with their bad habits would be well aware!
Why is it that smart people who are highly motivated to improve their health, experience such inner turmoil over letting go of bad habits that they know are costing them dearly?
We humans pride ourselves on our ability to think through our options and rationally choose our course of action, but the simple reality is, the vast bulk of our decision-making occurs beneath the level of our conscious awareness.
Deep in our brains, a set of structures known collectively as the basal ganglia process information arriving from multiple regions of the brain, run a sophisticated cost-benefit analysis of available options, and present the decision about which behaviour to engage in to the cerebral cortex, which then takes ownership of the choice and executes it.
The shocking finding from human brain research is that the vast majority of our ‘choices’ aren’t really chosen in the sense that most people understand the word. In a sense, they’re chosen for us – that is, our conscious selves – by the basal ganglia.
The problem with this arrangement is that the basal ganglia that guide the decision-making of modern-day humans are essentially unchanged from the basal ganglia that developed in the brains of primitive organisms 560 million years ago.
Back then, the choices faced by living creatures were fairly simple: when confronted with something in their environment, their basal ganglia had to decide whether the thing was good to eat, was likely to eat them, or was a potential sexual partner. Feed on it, flee it or f*!k it. A fairly basic set of options, which made decision-making quite straightforward.
Furthermore, the choices which furthered these organisms’ individual survival chances, and the survival of their species, generated feelings of pleasure in reward centres of the brain. Eating felt good, and the food that they ate was good for them. Escaping predators felt good, and was definitely good for them. Sex felt good, and was good for the survival of their species. Basically, if it felt good, it was good.
However, in the 21st century, human beings face a myriad of behavioural options – activities we can engage in, foods we can eat, drugs (both prescribed and illicit) that we can use to alter our psychological state – a large proportion of which are not good for us.
However, these activities stimulate the same reward centres of our brains as healthy activities, with one pivotal difference – the pleasure response is more intense. That is, most of the things that are bad for us feel good. And the things that are really, really bad for us (such as illicit drugs, hyperpalatable junk foods and smoking) feel really, really good to our brains.
It’s not just humans who are susceptible to this highjacking of our brain’s reward centres: lab rats who are deliberately addicted to cocaine will press a lever that delivers coke to their brains over and over again, ignoring food and potential sexual partners, until they starve to death.
This capacity of hypernormal stimuli to make things that are bad for us feel good, seriously compromises the ability of our basal ganglia to run accurate cost-benefit calculations on the myriad of options we face, and present our conscious minds with the best decision – best for our health and long-term happiness, that is – to execute on.
You see, when your basal ganglia process the cost of ‘giving up’ one of your bad habits, the inputs that are taken into account are short-term.
For example, if you don’t indulge your ice cream craving, your body will miss out on an incredibly energy-dense food (which your basal ganglia, calibrated for an environment of food scarcity in which significant physical energy had to be expended to secure enough calories, always judges as ‘good’).
As a consequence, you’ll forgo the sensory pleasure of eating the ice cream. That sensory pleasure derives mostly from the hypernormal concentration of fat and sugar in ice cream.
The basal ganglia run the cost-benefit analysis, decide in favour of eating the ice cream, and communicate that decision to the cerebral cortex, which then activates the muscles that cause you to extend your hand to reach for the ice cream, which ends up in your mouth before you even realise you decided to eat it.
The fat and sugar set off the reward centres in your brain, informing the basal ganglia that they made the right decision – after all, if it feels good, it must be good for you, according to this ancient region of our brains – and the basal ganglia ‘file’ this information to facilitate quick decision-making next time. The habit loop is complete. Next time, the decision to eat the ice cream will occur even faster, because the whole point of the brain’s reward system is to lock in place the memory of activities that feel good, so that we’ll seek them out again in future.
But there’s another set of costs that occur after you’ve eaten the ice cream. Your conscious brain processes the consequences of the ice cream binge – “How many calories did I just eat? I just sabotaged my efforts to lose weight! I can’t believe I just ate all that ice cream – why can’t I stop myself after a couple of spoonsful rather than eating the whole tub?”, and you experience regret, remorse, guilt, frustration and a host of other unpleasant emotions.
It turns out that there is a long list of things we give up when we don’t break our bad habits. We give up on enjoying better health, inhabiting a body that is the size and shape we’d like it to be, and having consistently high energy levels. We give up the peace of mind that comes from knowing we’re doing everything we can to prevent chronic diseases such as coronary artery disease, type 2 diabetes and Alzheimer’s. We give up our autonomy – after all, a 560 million year old region of our brain is making decisions on our behalf, aided and abetted by the multimillion dollar marketing budgets of transnational food corporations that know just how to speak to that primitive brain region. And we give up our self-respect because we’re acting in ways that aren’t in alignment with our principles.
Becoming consciously aware of the important things we’re sacrificing when we indulge in bad habits is crucial to breaking them. In other words, your conscious mind needs to take back the responsibility for running the cost-benefit analysis on your habitual behaviours from your basal ganglia, which are not well equipped for many of the decisions that we face in the 21st century.
Once you’ve become fully aware of everything that you’re giving up on by continuing to engage in your bad habit, you’re ready for the next step – setting clear guidelines for yourself about what you do, and what you don’t do. More on that in the next post!
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