SPARK_COACH_JEN
5/4/06 9:29 A
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R,
Here's a recent response from Coach Dean about this topic:
"Developing a healthy relationship with food (or anything else)really starts with recognizing that even though you do come "hardwired" with many basic needs, desire, impulses, reactions, etc., there are always many choices available when it comes to meeting those needs and desires.
For example, you may have a strong, inherited physiological "sweet-tooth," which periodically gives you very powerful urges to experience the sensation of sweetness on your tongue. But that sweet-tooth doesn't know the difference between a candy bar and a piece of fruit. All it wants, and all you really "need," is to eat something that your body can turn into glucose and use for fuel. The preference for something sweet is just Mother Nature's way of making sure our pre-candy bar ancestors would have been more likely to pick something ripe and non-poisonous over the alternatives. I imagine that if Mother Nature had been able to foresee out invention of the candy bar and soda pop, She would have come up with something besides a sweet=tooth to accomplish the goal of getting us to eat glucose.
Anyway, if you find yourself craving candy instead of fruit, that's a learned response, and it is one you can change yourself by "unlearning" the connection between sweet-tooth and candy, and replacing it with a new learned response--craving the fruit. This takes time and effort, but it can be done.
So, what the Stimulus/Choice/Response idea is all about is remembering that in between the stimulus (sweet-tooth) and the response (eating something sweet) is this highly complex, resourceful and creative learning system called a human being, which has the ability to choose what it will use to meet its needs, learn from its own experience, and adjust actions and thoughts accordingly.
This perspective is crucial when it comes to maintaining motivation during the hard owrk of changing old habits and conditioned responses.
The main enemy of motivation is the tendency to see yourself as the hapless victim of forces, urges, feelings, or conditions over which you have no control.
The S/O/R model tells us there is no such thing as having no control over what you eat or do with your time. There is nothing that makes you do what you don't want to do, nothing that keeps you from doing what you want. There is only you, making your choices and doing what you do."
Hope that helps!
Coach Jen
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