Curbing cravings by linking food to pain instead of pleasure
There are only two things that drive people towards change. We move towards pleasure and we move away from pain.
So if you are hungry (pain) you will seek out food (pleasure).
If being overweight embarrasses you (pain) you will make the changes required to lose weight and look great (pleasure). But the pain needs to be strong enough to drive you to do this.
Moving away from pain is a much stronger motivator than moving towards pleasure, but you can make use of both.
Survival mechanism
Human beings are programmed to link everything to either pleasure or pain. It’s a survival instinct.
What this means is, every time you experience something pleasurable, your subconscious mind searches for the source of it so it can store it away safely to remind you of it the next time you’re in need of feeling pleasure.
The same goes for pain. When you experience pain, any kind of pain, be it emotional or physical, your mind will search even harder to find the cause so it can lock onto it and store it away so it can prevent you from moving towards that pain ever again.
Now your brain is programmed to move you towards pleasure and away from pain, but pain is the stronger motivator and it will always work harder to move you away from pain than it will towards pleasure. Why? Well because it is by avoiding pain that we survive. And the number one job of your brain is to keep you alive.
That’s why, if you’ve ever eaten something bad and had food poisoning, you can probably not even look at or smell the item that made you sick without feeling nauseous. Your brain is telling you no, that’s bad stay away from it. And you probably reinforce that by telling people, “I will never ever eat prawns/ kebabs from the late-night takeaway shop/ insert food experience here, again.”
Clearing your plate as a child
When you were young you were probably made to eat everything on your plate, including those dreaded carrots or Brussels sprouts even though you hated them. And this has caused you, unconsciously, to link these to pain. And you likely don’t eat these now.
Conversely, there were probably things you were given as a reward for tidying your room, or finishing your homework, a treat of some kind, which you now link to pleasure.
And it is these unconscious links which drive us as adults. Now you absolutely crave marshmallows (I know I do) without knowing why, because you’ve forgotten that you had these during the happiest times of your childhood. And you can’t leave food on your plate without feeling guilty, so you eat everything even when you’re full, because throwing food away is wrong.
Why? Who said it’s wrong?
Well, as a child you were probably told it was wrong. “Think of all the starving children in Africa” you were told. And so you’d clear your plate never quite figuring out how you eating all your dinner was possibly going to help all those starving children.
Hey, starving kids look at me, I ate all the food on my plate. At least you know it isn’t going to waste… um no.
Linking pain and pleasure to the same thing
The problem comes in when you start to link pleasure and pain to the same food. This causes terrible confusion for your mind. So for example let’s say you love chocolate cake, but straight after eating a piece, you chastise yourself for giving in to the temptation, for eating something so fattening. Or you inhale a whole bowl of crisps in front of the telly and then tell yourself “no, I shouldn’t have done that, crisps make me fat.”
So you’re telling your brain this is great, I love it. But no I mustn’t have it, it’s bad for me. Back and forth. Back and forth. Confusing your brain until it doesn’t know what is good and what is bad for you. What gives you pleasure and what gives you pain.
The pleasure-pain principle and your appetite for food
Here’s an example of how the pleasure-pain principle is linked to your appetite for food. Imagine you’re sitting at a party at a friends house. You’re having a wonderful time, sipping on your chardonnay and feeling just great. Your tummy grumbles and you smile, you’re looking forward to the lunch which is about to be served. It’s your favourite. Medium rare steak with garlic butter. Yum.
You spot your friend walking towards you balancing your plate in one hand and a handful of crockery in the other when…
disaster.
The plate tips and your steak slides off, straight onto the grass, right next to a big pile of dog poo.
Oops, your friend giggles slightly tipsy, tipping all the crockery down onto the table. And then reaching down and scooping your forlorn steak up from the grass. Flicking off some leaves, and picking off a couple of blades of grass, she hands the plate to you and says “sorry about that, enjoy”. And pops the plate down in front of you and totters away.
You look down at that steak, and suddenly it is just not that appealing anymore. And is that a bit of dog poo on the edge over there…?
And suddenly you know, with absolute certainty, there is just no way you are going to be able to eat it now.
You have now just broken, and in fact reversed the pleasure-pain link you had to the garlic butter steak. Now you view it with revulsion, with pain and it has affected your appetite.
This is good news!
Well, guess what? This is actually great news because you can do that with any item of food you like. Any item you’d like to link to pain instead of pleasure.
If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ll know that I recommend always eating whatever you want, as long as you are truly hungry and you stop when you’ve had enough. This is for those times when you have cravings so strong that you just know you’re going to succumb, and you’re totally not hungry for food.
Creating pictures in your mind of your favourite foods covered in the most disgusting thing you can think of will put you off if you keep practising.
Go on, give it a go and see how you get on.
