I haven’t actually made any New Year’s resolutions, but ’tis the season for reflecting on good and bad habits, no? So get ready for a couple of anti-gluttony* posts, starting with this one.
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As part of marking my weight goal anniversary (three years this past November — can you believe it?) I took a step back and surveyed my eating and exercise habits: what was working? What wasn’t? Were there any good habits I had abandoned out of sloth and gluttony? Had I discovered any new ones, or thought of any potential new ones that might counteract problem areas?
It is a bit hard to tell if my anxiety is ill-founded (this being the nature of anxiety), but I still feel as if I only barely can keep my weight down. Probably I have an unhealthy obsession with it — but, to put it bluntly, I do not wish to let go of my possibly unhealthy obsession because I would rather be obsessed than put the weight back on again. The story of the last three years has been the story of trying to externalize the obsession, find ways to live and to see myself that are balanced less precariously. I think of wrapping little packages of anxiety up in my mind and transferring them somehow outside myself, one at a time, into tidy little stacks. Turning this balance into something that is maintained by things I simply do and forget about, rather than things I turn over and over in my mind. From head to hands.
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Here is my husband’s idea, which has merit: “Make a list of habits that you can add or subtract as necessary. Put them in order from the easiest and most painless to the most difficult and annoying. Then, if your weight spikes up, start adding habits in order, only one or two at a time. If that doesn’t help, add more until your weight goes down again, and then you can stop the habits, starting with the most annoying ones.”
The idea of ranking behaviors by annoyance level was a new one, and I thought I would give that a try. I started making a list of things like “don’t eat sweets” and “keep the serving dishes in the kitchen” and “put a stick of gum by my plate at dinner” and “one egg is enough eggs for breakfast” and the like.
But as my list of former and current and potential weight-controlling strategies grew longer, I began to feel uneasy about calling them all “habits.” And as I began to shuffle them around to figure out which ones I enjoy the least (“no wine with dinner” and “pre-count every calorie” are two examples of behaviors that work extremely well but that exemplify the life I do NOT want to lead), I became even more sure that “habit” is absolutely the wrong word for many of these behaviors.
What Mark is suggesting is not a ranking of habits, but a hierarchy of compensatory deprivations.
A habit is not like a toggle switch; it is more like a houseplant or a tropical fish or a puppy. It requires care. Yes-no choices do go into it, though. Choose often enough to feed it and it thrives; choose often enough to neglect it and it withers. Useful habits are habits to live with: not necessarily permanently, but for long periods. They can be tried for a while to see if they are pleasant to live with and if they have desirable effects, but this is not the same as toggling them on and off; it is more like a temporary adoption, to see if an attachment will deepen.
Compensatory deprivations are less like a companion pet and more like a spare folding table or a turkey roaster: an unwieldy, occasionally used piece of furniture or appliance that you get out of the basement from time to time when necessary. (e.g., at the holidays.)
We all know some person (a lot of us seem to be married to one) who decides he needs to take off a few pounds, gives up ice cream for a couple weeks and bam, problem solved,the lucky bastard. That is the idea we are going for. A useful compensatory deprivation is something that’s at least a little painful, but is temporary and effective. If it works but hurts, the working should be enough motivation to keep going just until it isn’t needed anymore. If it works and doesn’t hurt (or you find you get used to it eventually), maybe it should be nurtured as a long-term habit after all. If it hurts and doesn’t help, then there’s no point, now, is there?
One way to begin turning your life around is to temporarily foster new habits, patiently nurturing them and giving them a chance to take root and thrive. Not all will be good matches, it is true, but you must be careful not to let the trying and discarding become the habit itself; the end is adoption, the testing only the means. Compensatory deprivations don’t even need to enter the picture until a number of good habits are thriving comfortably.
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After I realized the crucial distinction between potential habits and potential compensatory deprivations, it was fairly easy to sort the items into two lists: one list of behaviors that either are already habits, or that I thought I might enjoy if I adopted them permanently; and a second list of behaviors that I thought would be helpful interventions from time to time but that I didn’t want to become my constant companions… something to store in my basement, so to speak.
Which behaviors are your potential puppies, and which are your potential turkey roasters? Tune in next time and I will share my lists. Just in time for the new year.
Editing note. Years and years later, I wish I’d done a better job distinguishing gluttony from other problems with food, like clinical eating disorders and other kinds of compulsiveness.
I want to emphasize that, whereas I identified some behaviors in myself that probably qualified as self-centered gluttony in the technical sense, I am not and never have been qualified to make that distinction for anyone else. I touch on what I’m talking about a little more clearly partway through this post.
I hope to add some commentary to all the posts that have this problem as I find the time to review them. Here’s a more recent post where I acknowledge some of the problematic material I wrote and set new ground rules for myself going forward.]
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