I'm So Effing Hungry by Amy Shah

Author:Amy Shah
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-02-27T00:00:00+00:00

Practice My 3-2-1 Technique

This technique combines intermittent reward scheduling with certain strategies used in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), a form of psychological treatment that works effectively for a range of problems, including depression, anxiety, addictions, eating disorders, and severe mental illness, among others. Unlike many forms of therapy, CBT helps you change faulty or unhelpful ways of thinking. For example, you learn how to recognize distortions in thinking that are creating problems, then change thinking patterns so that they are more in line with reality.

Here’s a specific example that relates to how you might view food: When you eat a candy bar, how do you normally feel afterward? Happy and content? Or guilty and ashamed?

A lot of people feel bad after eating a candy bar, or something they consider forbidden, and they get upset with themselves. The thought process goes something like: “I ate a bad food; therefore, I’m a bad person.” This reaction is inaccurate and irrational—food is not a moral arbiter of your character. In other words, eating a so-called bad food doesn’t make you a bad person, nor does eating a good food make you a good person.

CBT helps you make a psychological shift in your thinking regarding that particular food, so that eating it doesn’t cause negative feelings. I read an intriguing study published in the journal Appetite in which participants were asked if they associated chocolate cake more with guilt or with celebration. Those who said they felt guilty after eating chocolate cake had more health issues and problems with motivation than those who associated the cake with celebration. In fact, the guilty eaters felt out of control around food and said they were more likely to overeat.

Here’s the problem: Feelings of guilt and shame over food only trigger other negative feelings, like helplessness and lack of control, and increase self-criticism. All of these responses can snowball into poor self-esteem, a depressed or anxious mood, and further cravings. It’s thus important to disassociate negative feelings from food in order to minimize cravings. CBT helps you do that. Next I’ll explain how this works and show you how to practice my 3-2-1 technique. Make sure you read through the instructions entirely before starting the technique to understand how the three components overlap and are used together.

The 3 component. The first week, select three days—say, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday—on which to enjoy a chosen treat, such as two squares of dark chocolate or a couple of oatmeal cookies.

The next week do the same, but on three different days, such as Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.

Keep changing the schedule up each week, never following a predictable timeline. This unreliability provides dopamine peaks but without depleting your baseline. By adding the element of uncertainty to the same reward, you maintain a healthy balance of your dopamine levels. The higher the level of unpredictability of a reward, the more you maintain your baseline of dopamine, produce modest peaks, and stop ever-increasing cravings for sweets and junk food.

The 2 component. When you sit down to have a treat, first spend 2 minutes going through the following CBT exercise.

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