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As I move through the middle of my third week on Atkins Induction, I thought I’d share a few thoughts about motivation.
Initially, Atkins was all about losing weight – physical well-being. I became immediately focused on counting carbs – minutely – and planning meals. In fact, I found that I was spending an abnormal amount of time thinking about food, even though I was not hungry. With thinking came temptation, angst and a bit of frustration.
Then I realized that I was doing exactly what I had done before Atkins while I was busily destroying my body – obsessing with food. During a two year recovery from a traumatic event, life became food and food became life – my comfort, my solace and most importantly – my reward, my pleasure. Good day at work? Eat. Bad day at work? EAT. 30 minutes on a treadmill? Good boy! Go ahead and EAT! Ah, and let’s have a drink with those cheesies. You deserve it.
Does that sound like a familiar litany? I was carbing at well over 300 g a day and I ballooned to 240. And of course this made me angry (EAT) and depressed (EAT).
That created a passive lifestyle. Get home as quickly as possible after work and head for the couch, the chair, the bed. Stop at the fridge or the cupboard on the way. Lay back, lay down … and EAT (until it was time for dinner.)
On Atkins, the obsession was different but as intense. Now it was Don’t eat that, Must eat that, Wish I could eat that, How do I find something that tastes like that? Food, food, and more food thoughts. What to do? How to forestall the breakdown.
As an ethicist, I teach people theories concerning the pursuit of pleasure. I realized from my own lectures that I was embarked on something similar to Aristotle’s “Too High for Humanity” approach to Good. I was ignoring short term concrete quickly achievable pleasures and chasing a long term almost spiritual commitment to good health via denial and physical stress (exercise). I felt happy at my weekly weigh-in but that didn’t stop the food thoughts – in fact, it encouraged them.
So I decided to practice some anti-Aristotelian “good” and get into short term pleasures AND break routine. It meant reading and having coffee at Starbucks instead of home, or getting off at a different subway stop and walking 20 minutes somewhere unfamiliar, or buying a book on sale (for the same price as a tin of cashews) or – the most fun – planning the wardrobe I would buy when I reached my goal.
By the end of the second week, I was focused on rewards, on feeling idiotically good about a prospective new shirt or a pleasant encounter on the street. I was not just thinking about the diet. I’d plan the meals in the morning and more or less ignore it until dinner. Suddenly Atkins was easy and becoming easier. I wasn’t trying to find an ersatz pizza. I wasn’t thinking about pizza at all. I was thinking Armani (or as close as I could come to that at Sears).
Fear and Disgust drove me to Atkins – fear of what I was doing to myself and disgust at what I had done. Fear and Disgust are powerful motivators, but Pleasure is far more powerful than the two together. If pleasure is your enemy, Atkins will become harder to do.
Remember as a kid when teams were picked one by one by the two captains? Remember how everyone wanted the best on their side? Doing Atkins is the same. On your side, the facts, the experiences of others, the goals, the will-power. On the other side sits habit, routine and remembered (often dangerous) pleasures.
Get short term rewards and pleasure on your team, and see if that provides the motivation you need. Would Aristotle approve. Nope, but who cares. He’s dead.
Next week – new jeans. YES! And is that vanity? YES!!! But so what. Atkins may be the “road to Damascus” but the occasional side trip to Paris might help get you to that holier destination faster.
Cheers from Canada
Initially, Atkins was all about losing weight – physical well-being. I became immediately focused on counting carbs – minutely – and planning meals. In fact, I found that I was spending an abnormal amount of time thinking about food, even though I was not hungry. With thinking came temptation, angst and a bit of frustration.
Then I realized that I was doing exactly what I had done before Atkins while I was busily destroying my body – obsessing with food. During a two year recovery from a traumatic event, life became food and food became life – my comfort, my solace and most importantly – my reward, my pleasure. Good day at work? Eat. Bad day at work? EAT. 30 minutes on a treadmill? Good boy! Go ahead and EAT! Ah, and let’s have a drink with those cheesies. You deserve it.
Does that sound like a familiar litany? I was carbing at well over 300 g a day and I ballooned to 240. And of course this made me angry (EAT) and depressed (EAT).
That created a passive lifestyle. Get home as quickly as possible after work and head for the couch, the chair, the bed. Stop at the fridge or the cupboard on the way. Lay back, lay down … and EAT (until it was time for dinner.)
On Atkins, the obsession was different but as intense. Now it was Don’t eat that, Must eat that, Wish I could eat that, How do I find something that tastes like that? Food, food, and more food thoughts. What to do? How to forestall the breakdown.
As an ethicist, I teach people theories concerning the pursuit of pleasure. I realized from my own lectures that I was embarked on something similar to Aristotle’s “Too High for Humanity” approach to Good. I was ignoring short term concrete quickly achievable pleasures and chasing a long term almost spiritual commitment to good health via denial and physical stress (exercise). I felt happy at my weekly weigh-in but that didn’t stop the food thoughts – in fact, it encouraged them.
So I decided to practice some anti-Aristotelian “good” and get into short term pleasures AND break routine. It meant reading and having coffee at Starbucks instead of home, or getting off at a different subway stop and walking 20 minutes somewhere unfamiliar, or buying a book on sale (for the same price as a tin of cashews) or – the most fun – planning the wardrobe I would buy when I reached my goal.
By the end of the second week, I was focused on rewards, on feeling idiotically good about a prospective new shirt or a pleasant encounter on the street. I was not just thinking about the diet. I’d plan the meals in the morning and more or less ignore it until dinner. Suddenly Atkins was easy and becoming easier. I wasn’t trying to find an ersatz pizza. I wasn’t thinking about pizza at all. I was thinking Armani (or as close as I could come to that at Sears).
Fear and Disgust drove me to Atkins – fear of what I was doing to myself and disgust at what I had done. Fear and Disgust are powerful motivators, but Pleasure is far more powerful than the two together. If pleasure is your enemy, Atkins will become harder to do.
Remember as a kid when teams were picked one by one by the two captains? Remember how everyone wanted the best on their side? Doing Atkins is the same. On your side, the facts, the experiences of others, the goals, the will-power. On the other side sits habit, routine and remembered (often dangerous) pleasures.
Get short term rewards and pleasure on your team, and see if that provides the motivation you need. Would Aristotle approve. Nope, but who cares. He’s dead.
Next week – new jeans. YES! And is that vanity? YES!!! But so what. Atkins may be the “road to Damascus” but the occasional side trip to Paris might help get you to that holier destination faster.
Cheers from Canada
It's great advice too, for newcomers to this way of eating... and we old timers too. 
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