Outing report
The campus offices were all closed, but I did wander around a bit and found the library, student center, bookstore, and so on. I’ll go back on Tuesday, when they’ll be open. It’s a bit smaller than I had pictured.
I’m about to put in the oven a repeat of the chicken, mushroom, and spinach dish, though I’ll do everything I did yesterday and also add some chopped asparagus on top. This time I’m using rice for the starch.
Molly is simply enormous.
When I was at the grocery store, I got to talking to a guy who was curious about the duck eggs and I told him what I knew. He ended up buying a couple. I told him that I would definitely be eating more, but only after reaching goal. Today I’m 201.0 lbs, so I’ve now lost 49 lbs, which I told him—I could see he was dying to know—and he made a comment about how it takes willpower.
I’ve been thinking about that ever since. I think that’s a mistake. I came home, fired up Scrivener, and wrote a draft of an introduction to the book I’m planning about this project, emphasizing that, with the right approach, willpower is not such an issue.
There’s no such thing as willpower…it is in fact not a psychological concept at all, but rather, a religious one, emanating from the Christian concept of Free Will. That’s why obesity is so often vilified as a special form of religious disobedience and one of the Seven Deadly Sins (Gluttony). As I’ve mentioned so often in the past, if it were about willpower, how come there are so many obese people who are doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc.? Surely it took one Hell of a willpower to complete the requirements for those professions and become successful in them.
One might say that it’s about Motivation, but as is also becoming clear, Motivation is a rather spurious concept in the psychological world because it isn’t something you can “give” to someone, rather it is something one has or doesn’t have for a particular task or objective, all we can do is create the conditions that will allow it to surface or the conditions that will suppress it. We might well say that you already have/had a strong motivation to lose weight and get healthy, but had to find the right conditions to make it possible for the motivation to become actualized (education, coach, etc.).
That’s also why app. 98% of people who lose weight regain it within 18 months. Once the goal is achieved, the motivation to get there diminishes and shifts to other objectives. It requires tremendous vigilance to keep your eye on something which no longer “moves” within your perceptual field. Think about Nature…..all animals are sensitized to motion…that’s why squirrels and the rest always “freeze” when they perceive a potential threat…they know that motion attracts attention. It’s not far off with Motivation. Once the goal is reached, how does one sustain the motion that keeps the motivation activated?
We know from very extensive research that the 2% of people who succeed long-term in weight-loss and fitness, are the ones for whom the whole issue of health becomes a day-to-day obsession. They often risk becoming social pariahs because they are very high-maintenance. Finding the balance point between motivation and obsession is the great challenge and mystery. I do think that based on your success and how you’re going about it, plus the fact that you have a great deal of control over your social context (retirement helps!), you will be successful in the long-run. It’s been a very interesting ride watching your journey.
Steve
16 January 2011 at 8:09 am
Very intriguing comment. You’ll be amused that I already have a note in my calendar for 5 years from now to send you an email on how I’m maintaining.
I have a slightly different take on this. It’s not so much a question of willpower (whatever that might be), but of one’s worldview in that particular area. How one views something determines how one will respond, without willpower being involved. So part of the solution is to alter how one views a meal.
LeisureGuy
16 January 2011 at 8:41 am
Certainly, that’s part of the whole contextual issue in Motivation, i.e. the internal context, as well as the external one. At all times, the motivation to be healthy competes with the motivation to rest, relax, sleep, enjoy the goodies, etc. Freud largely had it right: The eternal battle between Eros and Thanatos (Life and Death). I hope I won’t have to wait 5 years to see how you’re doing!! It would be great if you continued the health log, perhaps weekly, but with an eye to the maintenance issue.
Steve
16 January 2011 at 9:14 am
I will certainly continue to report on the fitness project. If nothing else, that will ensure that it stays in my attention.
LeisureGuy
16 January 2011 at 10:09 am