The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite by David A. Kessler

Author:David A. Kessler
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Rodale Press, Incorporated
Published: 2011-01-11T05:44:22+00:00

The second component of habit reversal is engaging in competing behaviors.

To resist what Miltenberger calls “the pull of the behavior,” we need to develop and learn alternative responses that are incompatible with it. Rather than coming home at night and going straight to the refrigerator, you change your routine and don’t even enter the kitchen. You drive a different route to work in order to avoid the fast-food corridor that tempts you, or you make a list and ask a family member to go to the grocery store so you don’t risk off-limits purchases.

To compete successfully with old habits, this competing behavior needs to be planned before you encounter a cue. You need to know exactly how to respond when your brain receives an unwanted invitation.

“You’ve got to be prepared with some other behavior, because the closer you get to eating, the more powerful it becomes, the more reinforcing,” said Miltenberger. “If you intervene early and start a new chain that will prevent you from going down the other path, then you’re more likely to be successful.”

To break the pattern of stimulus and response, you must have a road map to guide you through high-risk settings. Substituting competing behaviors for habitual responses demands that you use your executive control functions, which can override the more primitive, hardwired circuitry of the brain. Doing that, said Leckman, requires a lot of new learning.

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