Welcome to the continuing diary series "Let's Read a WHEE Book Together!" This week, we're continuing with David Kessler's The End of Overeating, Chapter 13. If you're just discovering this diary series, you will find links to the previous installments at the bottom of this diary.
WHEE (Weight, Health, Eating and Exercise) is a community support diary for Kossacks who are currently or planning to start losing, gaining or maintaining their weight through diet and exercise or fitness. Any supportive comments, suggestions or positive distractions are appreciated. If you are working on your weight or fitness, please -- join us! You can also click the WHEE tag to view all diary posts.
The End of Overeating, by David Kessler, M.D.
Chapter 13: Eating Behavior Becomes a Habit
Chapter 13 is the last chapter of Part 1 of the book. Part 1 is subtitled "Sugar, Fat, and Salt," but it's more than the sum of those ingredients. Looking back at the previous twelve chapters, we can see that Part 1 has been focused on giving an introduction to the science behind eating, reward, taste, and other effects of food on its consumers. Before turning to an examination of the The Food Industry in Part 2, Kessler wraps up Part 1 by looking at eating habits.
Habits are patterns of behavior, sequences of actions that "run" automatically. Kessler asserts that habits
...develop more quickly and become stronger when the stimulus driving our behavior is reinforcing.
An important aspect of a habit is that it "runs" at least partly unconsciously or subconsciously. In fact, says Kessler,
Researchers have been able to measure movement before subjects know they're going to move. Brain activity stimulates a motor response in advance of awareness.
(emphasis mine - Ed)
Habit-driven is distinct from goal-directed or motivational behavior. From the description in the book, it seems goal-driven behavior, as the term is used by Kessler, involves much more conscious awareness. However, if one repeats a given sequence of goal-directed behavior (e.g., "...thinking about ice cream, desiring ice cream, and then taking deliberate steps to obtain ice cream."), it can turn into an unconscious habit.
Dopamine, the brain chemical introduced in chapter 8, plays a part in both habitual and goal-driven behaviors:
...revving up the motivational circuits of the brain and strengthening the power of habit.
Why do humans and other animals form habits? Kessler quotes Joshua Berke, who says "A habit is a way of saving cognitive effort." Or, as the old bumper sticker said about voting Republican, "It's easier than thinking."
Kessler describes a pair of experiments that, he says, illustrate the difference in the effects of goal-directed versus habitual behavior patterns.
In the first experiment, a group of unspecified lab animals learned that sucrose pellets could be found at the end of a runway in the lab. The animal subjects quickly learned to run down the runway to scarf down the sweet, sweet sucrose pellets. After one week, the animals were moved to another room where they could eat as many sucrose pellets, but the animals were deliberately made ill after eating. The next day, the animals were brought to the runway once again - but after the experience of illness associated with the sucrose pellets in the other room, they were much less eager to get to the sucrose pellets at the end of the runway, and did not gorge themselves on the pellets when they finally reached them.
The second experiment was much the same as the first - except that the second group of animals had THREE weeks of the "Project Runway" part of the experiment before getting to the "Fear Factor" room where eating the pellets was followed by induced illness. The next day, the second group was re-introduced to the runway -- and they dashed down it and began eating the sucrose pellets as quickly as ever. The habit of three weeks standing overcame what might otherwise have been the animals' caution at eating something that had made them sick the previous day.
Kessler winds up the chapter (and Part 1 of the book) by noting:
The more rewarding the food, the stronger the learning experience that creates the automatic behavior. That's the danger of habit. But habit formation has the potential for good as well. If we can learn to turn all of this around, we can eventually create new habits, ones that motivate us to pursue other, healthier sources of reward.
But that, presumably, is a discussion for a later chapter.
Scheduled WHEE diaries:
October 11
Sun AM - louisev - Turtle Diary
Sun PM - debbieleft
October 12
Mon AM - NC Dem
Mon PM - ???
October 13
Tues AM - ???
Tues AM - Clio2 (Kessler, Ch. 14)
October 14
Wed AM - ???
Wed PM - Edward Spurlock (special Geek My Fitness bicycling issue!)
October 15
Thurs AM - A DC Wonk
Thurs PM - ???
October 16
Fri AM - ???
Fri PM - ???
October 17
Sat AM - ???
Sat PM - Edward Spurlock (Kessler, Ch. 15)
Update: I promised the links to previous episodes, but forgot to include them before this morning (Sunday). Here they are:
Introduction (written by me)
Chapter 1: Something Changed . . . America Gains Weight (me).
Chapter 2: Overriding the Wisdom of the Body (Clio2)
Chapter 3: Sugar, Fat, and Salt Make Us Eat More Sugar, Fat, and Salt (me)
Chapter 4: The Business of Food: Creating Highly Rewarding Stimuli (Clio2)
Chapter 5: Pushing Up Our Settling Points (me)
Chapter 6: Sugar, Fat and Salt Are Reinforcing (Clio2)
Chapter 7: Amping Up the Neurons (me)
Chapter 8: We Are Wired to Focus Attention on the Most Salient Stimuli (Clio2)
Chapter 9: Rewarding Foods Become Hot Stimuli (me)
Chapter 10: Cues Activate Brain Circuits That Guide Behavior (Clio2)
Chapter 11: Emotions Make Food Memorable (me)
Chapter 12: Highly Rewarding Foods Rewire the Brain (Clio2)
Also, I think I'll start over in Part 2 with the list of links, so in the future, I'll just link to this diary for the links to Part 1. That will help keep the list of links manageable.