System 1 Weight Management
How consumer psychology and marketing strategy helped me lose – and keep off – 20 pounds
While not based on nutritional research or any new doctrine of physiology, these strategies leverage insights on how the brain works.
Find your Core Motivation
When my mother passed a few years ago, it was a wake-up call – not (just) from the loss, but from the realization that I didn’t want to go through the 30+ surgeries she’d had on her arthritic joints, many of which were exacerbated by weight. Losing weight became an imperative, with avoiding her future as my core motivation. Our goals and motivations underlie our conscious and non-conscious thinking and behavior.
Find your most motivating aspiration to be your North Star. Don’t make it generic, like to look or feel better, or to improve your health. Elevate the emotion – to the extreme. I don’t want to just be healthier than she was, I want to avoid being stuck with needles and cut into pieces over and over. Tell yourself you don’t want to die before your grand-kids are born. Raise the stakes!
Declare War on Your “System 1” Impulses
As Nobel Prize Winner Daniel Kahneman explains in Thinking, Fast and Slow, we have two modes of thinking: conscious, logical thought (“System 2”) and our impulsive, emotional, often non-conscious thinking (“System 1”). Some say 95% of decision-making is made by System 1. There is no data to support this assertion – it’s actually impossible to measure.
If System 2 were always in control, no one would ever struggle sticking to a diet. And if System 1 emotions had total control, many of us would never stop eating. But our impulsive auto-pilot eating behaviors are the Achilles’ heel of weight control, especially when our rational minds are fatigued at the end of the day, when we’re lonely, bored, worried, have social anxiety or other distractions. So if System 1 is the true enemy of self-control, we need to go to war against our automatic System 1 tendencies. We need to accept that the central battle of controlling our eating is in out-foxing, out-strategizing, and outlasting System 1. Here are some ways…
Reframe Micro-Portions
Dan Ariely’s book Predictably Irrational, a great foray into behavioral economics, explains that burn victims remember the level of pain associated with removing their bandages based on the peak/worst pain point in time, and their last moment of pain – not the length of time or total amount of pain experienced. You can reapply that insight to food. When you eat your favorite dessert, how do you feel? Do you feel any different after the 2nd scoop of ice cream than the first? The pleasure is the same; you don’t remember spoon #3 any differently than #2 or #1. In fact, your memory of the experience may even be most positive during the first bite, or the “peak” bite like when eating a gourmet topping.
Diet gurus often say use smaller plates, and that’s a good idea. But take that to the next level to outfox System 1 – when you have an impulse to indulge, dole out a fabulous treat in a tiny ramekin or dipping bowl. Close your eyes, eliminate the distractions, savor every bite. You can get just as much memorable pleasure out of 1 oz. and 50 calories as you would from 16 oz. and 800 calories.
Restructure the Context
Context influences our choices in our kitchens, just like with consumers in stores or in surveys. The founder of the first modern grocery store (Piggy Wiggly) put candy at the checkout aisle, instead of the entrance, knowing that peoples’ System 2 willpower would wear down by the end of their trip. If you watch TV in the kitchen, it’ll distract System 2, allowing System 1 to take over and causing you to eat more. Watch TV somewhere away from the food, and you’ll eat less. Are the cookies stacked in the first line of sight when you open the pantry? You’ll eat more. Put the healthier snacks in front, and make it as hard as possible to get to the unhealthy ones, and you’ll do better. Give your System 2 maximum opportunity to tame impulses, by restructuring the context and making it easier to avoid eating, or to substitute something else.
Satisfy Yourself with Healthy Substitutes
Speaking of something else, do your System 2 a favor – give it more ammunition. Find something you like that’s healthy and filling, that System 2 can swap in when System 1 starts browsing. For me, it’s Fuji apples (often 2 a day), baby carrots, and Thinster cookies (I can just eat 1 mini-cookie and savor even this small treat – see #3).
Hunt Down Your System 1 Weaknesses
Marketing success requires smart strategies targeted directly at areas of competitive weakness. My dieting challenge was to tame nighttime grazing, after a long day when System 2 is drained. I did okay with reframing my portions, but lots of small bites add up over time. So I came up with new strategies focused directly on my grazing weaknesses: work out at night, stay out of the kitchen, put a blue post-it on the pantry just to remind System 2 to “think,” or even brush my teeth earlier to keep myself from eating at night.
Re-Train Your Brain
A final step – if there are certain foods you just can’t shake, there’s always the “Hail Mary.” Re-train your brain by altering your mental associations with those foods. We all have implicit mental associations with specific things based on our past experiences. But if you want to give up chocolate, every time you think about, see, or taste it, force yourself to visualize something terrible or disgusting. Blood and guts. Disease. A foul portalet. Whatever it takes! While it may not erase your deepest non-conscious associations, it will conflict with them and may take the edge off that food's appeal.