Save yourself from slip-ups by becoming your own lifeguard.

Your brain is absolutely amazing, but that doesn’t mean it is optimal or perfect in design. It can have flaws, like feeling unwanted urges to eat. Thoughts of eating just show up in your mind and the chances are you will eat because your brain is telling you “I’m hungry.”

See a luscious ad for a fine dessert and all of a sudden your brain throws up thoughts of hunger when a second ago you weren’t hungry at all. Smell your favorite dinner cooking and your thoughts immediately turn to eating, when a moment before you may have been thinking about the twilight of a lovely sunset. Or perhaps your internal hunger control mechanisms are broken and you become hungry long before your time.

Whatever the reason, unwanted urges to eat can haunt you. You don’t want them, yet they show up in your mind anyway. Because these are your thoughts, you think they are real and you should act on them. And that’s the problem: you eat unnecessarily because of the unwanted thoughts. If you understand that these thoughts are often just brain noise, like static on TV, you can avoid eating just because you have thoughts of eating.

Not only thoughts about eating can be unwanted. In the middle of exercising, you have you ever thought something like: you’ve done enough now, you are tired, and it’s time to stop now. Where does that thought come from? In most cases it’s not true, there’s no reason to stop, but if you think your “stop exercising” thoughts are real, you’ll probably stop. Yet in most cases your urge to stop exercising is no more real than your urge to eat.

In general, overcoming unwanted thoughts will help you do two things:

·        Stop doing something you don’t think you should be doing—like overeating.

·        Keep doing something you think you should be doing—like exercising.

A lot of unwanted thoughts may flow through your mind. To control your weight, we’ll be concerned mainly with the urges compelling you to eat and the ones demanding you stop exercising—in other words, thoughts that lead to slip-ups.

Not All Your Thoughts Deserve Your Attention

At any time, a variety of thoughts fly through your mind, possibly like:

Eat the cookies...it doesn’t matter anymore...I can have all the ice cream I want...nobody cares...if I have another candy bar I’ll feel better...I am a big fat pig anyway...I am such a loser.

You may have had thoughts like these all your life.

There is a big secret about your thoughts you may not know: just because you have a thought doesn’t mean you have to pay attention to it. A lot of thoughts are just unwanted messages from your brain that you can safely ignore. I call these pop-thoughts because they are thoughts that pop into your mind and will just as quickly disappear if you let them.

Cognitive scientists estimate that over 95% of your thinking is below the conscious level. That means less than 5% of your thoughts are made consciously and that most of your thoughts happen automatically.

A common example is what happens when driving a car on a long trip. When it’s over, drivers often don’t remember driving at all, yet they somehow completed a long complicated journey. Clearly driving requires a lot of thinking, but you are not always aware of it. If you can drive without thinking you can certainly eat without thinking!

You are Not Your Thoughts

What this all means is your thoughts are not you. Thoughts just pop into your head for lots of reasons and not all of those reasons make sense.

Typically we think all of our thoughts are important and should be paid attention to because, well, we think our thoughts are us. Please consider that the voice in your head may sometimes be speaking rubbish that you can simply ignore. This is a pretty radical idea. We are not used to thinking that some our thoughts may be unimportant or even more radical, that many of our thoughts may be harmful.

Let’s say you have a thought that you are hungry. Why did you get this thought? Where did it come from? Why did it show up just now? Why didn’t you have this thought a little earlier or a little later?

Even after finishing a big meal, you can still think about eating more. You know you can’t really be hungry. You just ate a giant meal! So where did this thought come from? Consider that it might just be an unwanted message from your brain. The key is to be able to recognize this thought as unwanted, so you know not to react to it. Imagine what would happen if you ate every time you thought you were hungry? Unfortunately, most of us don’t have to imagine.

Here’s a quote from the actor Willem Defoe about what his brain tells him:

Ever since puberty, whenever I cross a bridge I’ve felt a compulsion to jump off. I feel the same impulse with balconies.
               – Willem Dafoe

Do you think he should pay attention to this message from his brain?

You don’t need a death wish to get the same thought as Mr. Defoe. These kinds of thoughts may just pop into your head. Where do they come from? Why do you get them? Nobody really knows.

It’s easy to say to just ignore these thoughts, but a lot of times they grab your attention with such strength and persistence they are hard to let go.

In Mr. Dafoe’s case, he has ignored these thoughts because he doesn’t want to die a painful death. In the same way, a lot of other messages from your brain should be ignored because they aren’t any more real. They are just pop-thoughts.

Have you ever had thoughts like you are stupid, you are ugly, you’ll never amount to anything? Where do these horrible little thoughts come from? In your better moments you know they aren’t true, but they can still hurt. A lot.

They really are just unwanted messages from your brain and you don’t have to pay attention to them. Let these thoughts pass through you. They are just mental events. They don’t reflect reality. They come and they go. They only have a life if you give them attention. It’s your mental attention that strengthens unwanted thoughts. Don't pay attention to them and they will go away.

The idea that you can consciously choose which thoughts to pay attention to is a radical and powerful idea, one of the most powerful ideas you may ever hear. We’ll see how to apply the power of conscious choice in a few more sections.

Just What are You Thinking? Keep a Thought Log

Do this exercise. As you go about your day, write down all your thoughts for a half hour. Be sure to write down all your thoughts. Don’t only write down your big thoughts like I have to go grocery shopping. Write down all the quick automatic thoughts you may have, but do not always realize you are having because they seem so natural. When you see someone walking toward you for example, you may immediately think What an ugly shirt. Write down all of those kinds of thoughts too.

Afterward, take a look at all the thoughts you have written down. What do you think of your thoughts? Some are probably untrue, trivial, mean, or bizarre. Some may be wise, kind, and insightful. And other thoughts may not seem like you at all. You may be surprised to find your thoughts are all over the map.

After looking at your thoughts: Do you think all your thoughts are equally true or equally important? Do you think all your thoughts should be given equal weight?

Some Thoughts are Unwanted

It’s likely you don’t want some of your thoughts. You probably don’t want, for example, that thought to eat an extra piece of cake when you’ve already had a piece.

When is a thought unwanted?

·        When it doesn’t make sense to you. It’s a thought telling you to eat when you aren’t hungry, a thought to stop exercising when you should keep on going, or a thought telling yourself to jump of a cliff when the jump would kill you.

·        When it doesn’t conform to who you want to be. You have an image of the person you want to be. You know how you want to act. You know how you want people to think about you. Any thought that doesn’t agree with the person you want to be can be considered an unwanted message from your brain.

How can you deal with unwanted thoughts and urges? Through a process I call Lifeguarding. A lifeguard saves lives by the same process you can use to manage unwanted thoughts. Once you can manage your unwanted thoughts, you can stop slip-ups and save your diet. Think about how lifeguards perform their job:

1.      Go on guard. When lifeguards go on duty they immediately become sensitive to everything around them. Anyone could need their help at any time. In the same way, you can go on guard when you enter a potential slip-up situation. When you are near food or exercising, you need to go on guard. At any time, you could need your own help to stop eating or to keep exercising. Once you are on guard it’s time to be on the lookout for trouble.

2.      Scan for signs. Lifeguards continually scan the environment looking for potential problems to enable a reaction before a situation becomes an emergency. In the same way you can scan your thoughts, visual images, feelings, and surroundings for signs of trouble. When you find something wrong, it’s time to fix the problem.

3.      Respond skillfully. When lifeguards detected a problem the job is not done. Lifeguards must skillfully respond to any situation or lives will be lost. In the same way, when you detect a slip-up situation, you must respond skillfully to save yourself from the slip-up.

You don’t have to be a victim to your own random thoughts. Realize that thoughts happen to you despite your intentions, not because of them. You can learn to retrain your brain to stop the unwanted thoughts and we’ll use Lifeguarding as part of the retraining.

Retraining Your Brain to Stop Unwanted Thoughts

You can retrain your brain to stop sending you unwanted messages because of something called neuroplasticity.

Neuroplasticity is the ability of the brain to change itself. Once thought impossible, we now know as Michael Merzenich tells us in the Scientific American, “The brain was constructed to change.” And from Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz in his ground breaking book The Mind and The Brain, we learn, “The willful directing of attention can act on the brain to alter its subsequent patterns of activity.”

What this means is that your brain is not hard-wired into its current behavior. Your brain can be retrained to reverse the years of bad weight-gaining habits.

One way to look at some of your current thinking processes is that they are like an old two lane highway that needs to be replaced by a new high-speed freeway. For years, when you’ve needed to go from A to B you’ve only been able to go on the old highway. There’s only been one road and you’ve never had a choice to go any other way. You just got on the road and went. You knew the road so well that you didn’t have to think during the entire trip.

By following the steps to avoid automatic eating you will be tearing down the old road and creating a whole new freeway, taking you exactly where you want to go.

Rethink Yourself a New Brain

You can rethink yourself a new brain. The key is changing your behavior. Changing your behavior changes your brain. Why? Because it quiets activity in one part of your brain and shifts it to a new part. If you can consistently shift your attention away from the thoughts and behaviors you don’t want, you can change the physical structure of your brain. You are building a new highway and tearing down the old.

Focusing your attention on a replacement behavior causes new synapses to fire, which strengthens those connections in your brain. After a while the old connections in your brain associated with the old thoughts and behaviors will weaken. More and more you’ll turn to the new way of thinking and behaving because those pathways in your brain are stronger.

You might think this all just mumbo jumbo. But it isn’t. Dr. Schwartz has convincingly documented this amazing capability of your brain. Your brain can change and how you direct your attention is the force that makes the change. The choices you make now matter because they will influence the choices you’ll make in the future. If you are willing to put in the work, you can literally retrain your brain away from old habits you no longer want into new habits that better represent who you want to become.

The Three Steps to Retraining Your Brain

You can retrain you brain away from old behaviors using a series of steps I adapted from Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz’s book, Brain Lock.

The Designer Diet steps to retraining your brain are:

1.      Become aware of your own thoughts. When you notice an unwanted thought, go to step 2.

2.      Tell Yourself: It’s Not Me; It’s Just an Unwanted Message from My Brain! Saying this statement to yourself identifies the thought as an unwanted thought, a thought you shouldn’t take seriously or pay attention to.

3.      Immediately switch behaviors. Changing your behavior changes how your brain is wired.

The idea of these steps is to focus your mind on solutions rather than problems. If you can shift your attention from problems to solutions frequently enough, your brain will reconnect itself to support your new solution-solving behaviors.

Step 1: Become Aware of Your own Thoughts

The first step in the retraining process is to become aware of your own thoughts. This combines the go on guard and scan for signs Lifeguarding steps. Once you are aware of your thoughts, you can make a conscious decision about which thoughts are unwanted and which thoughts you should pay attention to.

You can become aware of your thoughts through a process called mental note taking. Mental note taking is similar to what you did when you wrote down your thought log. When a thought happens, you name or label it. Your goal is to observe your thoughts as they arise.

For mental note taking to really work, you need to stand outside yourself as an observer. You need to be able to observe your thoughts as they happen. This skill, also called “mindful awareness” or “bare attention,” is described as calmly viewing your experience as an outsider.

Mental note taking is so different and strange from normal everyday thinking that you may find it difficult to do.  That’s OK. It’s a skill you get better at with practice. Normally you just think and act without a lot of thinking about what you are thinking. You are being asked to do something totally different. Be patient. The payoff is worth it.

Mental Note Taking Example: Walking

We’ll use walking as our first example of mental note taking. Walking is a fun example, because it’s so simple and automatic we don’t realize how complicated it actually is.  Also, it’s slightly easier to take mental notes of a physical activity like walking than it is of pure thinking. We’ll move on to mental note taking for thoughts in our next example.

Let’s say you are sitting down and you need to stand up to walk. What might your mental notes look like? In our examples, mental notes are marked with the phrase “note as.”

Getting up from sitting requires a decision, which can be noted. On the decision to walk, note it as wanting to walk. The note is a thought about your thought. You generate the note by watching your thoughts as they happen.

When rising from your sitting position, note as rising. When standing, note as standing. When looking from here to your intended destination, note as looking, seeing.

At first, when you are walking, note as right step, left step. After you practice right step, left step for a while, you can break down each step into smaller components. For each step trying noting it as raising, dropping. After you practice that for a while, you can become even more detailed. For reach step, note it as raising, pushing forward, dropping.

After you have walked enough and you decide to sit down again, note as wanting to sit down.

That’s it. You’re done with the example. Keep trying this exercise until it feels natural. When you try it for the first time, you will probably feel completely awkward and a bit silly. You may not even be able to note simple actions like right step. There won’t be enough time. The step will happen, you won’t have noted it, and you won’t believe how you couldn’t note such a simple thing.

After you try it for a while, you’ll notice that you can make mental comments about many of your actions without tripping. Then you’ll notice you can make mental comments about most of your actions. And eventually you’ll be able to notice more and more of your actions with ever finer levels of detail.

That’s the point of this exercise: learning how to mentally comment on what you are doing and thinking. Once you can do that, it gives you a little bit of time to see if a thought is unwanted. And once you know a thought is unwanted you can deal with it by moving immediately to the next step.

Step 2: Tell Yourself: It’s Not Me; It’s Just an Unwanted Message from My Brain!

Using mental note taking, as you have a thought think about it and see if it is unwanted. If the thought doesn’t make sense, or doesn’t conform to who you want to be, then say to yourself:

It’s Not Me; It’s Just an Unwanted Message from My Brain!

When you notice an unwanted message from your brain, saying this statement to yourself identifies the thought for what it really is and interrupts your thought process so you can move to the Immediately Switch Behaviors step. In the beginning, it can help to say the phrase out loud. This is part of the respond skillfully Lifeguarding step.

Each phrase in It’s Not Me; It’s Just an Unwanted Message from My Brain! has a purpose.

The It’s Not Me part is to remind yourself that you can’t help which thoughts pop into your mind. You are not your thoughts. You don’t consciously control your thoughts. Blaming yourself for your thoughts would be like blaming yourself for an itch you feel on your arm. You wouldn’t think of blaming yourself for an itch. Don’t blame yourself for your thoughts either.

The It’s Just an Unwanted Message from My Brain! part is to remind yourself that this is a pop-thought. It’s simply a thought that popped into your mind. Thoughts are not under your direct control, so don’t worry about the thoughts.

Expect that you will have these thoughts. You will have these thoughts every day of your life. Understanding that will help you recognize and respond to them sooner.

And that’s what is important to keep in mind. You are learning to be aware of your thoughts and then consciously deciding how to respond to them. If you decide that a thought is unwanted, then apply the next step: Immediately Switch Behaviors.

Step 3: Immediately Switch Behaviors

After becoming aware of an unwanted thought and having said to yourself It’s Not Me; It’s Just an Unwanted Message from My Brain!, immediately replace your current behavior with a better activity.

The replacement activity can be anything you enjoy doing. Your goal is to focus your attention on your new activity. Ideally, your replacement behavior should be active, useful, constructive, and require concentration and strategy. Involving other people is a good idea. Biking alone, for example, is not as effective as biking with another person because it is less likely to refocus your attention on the new replacement activity. And passive activities don’t work very well. You need to be active or your attention may drift back to your unwanted thoughts.

There are two different types of replacement activities: Active Replacement and Drop the Thought.

Active Replacement

Your goal is to immediately do something to interrupt the unwanted thought and replace it with an alternate, more desirable activity.

Some possible replacement activities are:

·        Go for a walk or a bike ride.

·        Work in your garden.

·        Yoga.

·        Play with your kids or your dog.

·        Meditate.

·        Talk to a friend.

·        Play team basketball.

·        Breathe deeply if you are in an awkward situation where you can’t free yourself.

Can you think of other replacement activities based on your life and interests?

Switch for 15 Minutes

Have a goal of engaging in your replacement behavior for a minimum of 15 minutes. Dr. Schwartz found this to be about the length of time needed for urges to be noticeably reduced.

Drop the Thought

Ignoring an unwanted thought may be your only option when you are in a situation where you can’t make an active response. Thought dropping is not as effective as an active response, but sometimes it’s the best you can do and it’s a lot better than obsessing on an unwanted thought.

To drop a thought just breathe, relax into your body, and let the unwanted thought drift through and out of your mind. A thought stays alive when you keep thinking about it. Do not think about it at all. Just let the thought pass through you like a gentle breeze. You may be tempted to analyze the thought, dissect it, figure out where it came from and what you should do about it. Don’t. It’s an unwanted message. You don’t owe it anything. Don’t let it own you. Ignore it.

Slowly Changing Your Brain

Over time the three step brain retraining process retrains your brain away from your unwanted thoughts and activities. Your brain actually changes to a new a set of behaviors.

It’s not enough to tell yourself not to eat. That’s why self-talk isn’t as effective a strategy. You already know you shouldn’t do something, yet you will still feel compelled to do it anyway. Unless you switch to another behavior, you won’t be making the physical changes in your brain that will help prevent the unwanted thoughts in the future.

Making Up for Poor Executive Brain Function

There is a part of your brain called the frontal cortex that is thought to guide complex behavior over time. It is involved in planning, abstract thinking, learning rules, responding to events, and inhibiting inappropriate actions. Collectively these capabilities are called your executive functions.

Looking at the list you might be able to imagine what would happen if your executive functions were damaged. You would lose control of a lot of what we consider adult behaviors. And in fact, this is the last part of your brain to mature. Teenagers don’t have a fully developed executive function, which explains why they behave like, well, teenagers.

A Kent State University study, and a few others, found evidence showing overweight and obese people have impaired executive function when compared to those of normal weight. Older adults also show a decline in their executive functions.

It’s easy to see how maintaining a normal weight could rely on a strong executive function. What stops you from giving into your impulses? Your executive function. What keeps your goals on track? Your executive function. What helps you respond to new situations? Your executive function.

With impaired executive function, it’s going to be harder for you to control your weight. I think Lifeguarding may help make up for at least some of these problems because with Lifeguarding you aren’t responding automatically to situations. You are consciously directing your behaviors. That should help make up for at least some of what your executive functions would have done for you automatically.

Lifeguarding Example: Strolling the Food Court

Let’s run through an example of Lifeguarding while walking into a food court at your local mall.

As you walk in you know you are entering a danger zone where slip-ups are as likely as browsing a 2 for 1 sale at your favorite store. Entering a danger zone means it’s time go on guard by starting to observe your thoughts using mental note taking. A true master is always on guard, but that’s a skill developed over time. For now, it’s a great start to notice when you are in a danger zone and then to go on guard.

What thoughts might go through your mind as you walk the food court?

That cinnamon roll looks incredible. Note as seeing food.

Oh, the smell is heavenly. Fresh baked dough...sweet icing...thick with cinnamon. Note as smelling food.

Maybe I should get one? Note as wanting to eat.

Oh, I am wanting to eat because I smelled the cinnamon roll. Let’s see if this is an unwanted thought. Yes, it is. I can’t have a cinnamon roll right now. It would blow my calorie budget and I would rather have a nice dinner tonight.

So: It’s Not Me; It’s Just an Unwanted Message from My Brain!

Now, what behavior will I switch to? I don’t have a lot of options in the mall. I’ll breathe deeply and drop the thought. I’ll turn my thoughts to what I am looking for here and walk away from the tempting sights and smells.

And that’s it. Once you’re out of the danger zone you can go off guard again. It’s not a complex process. What makes it possible is your ability to pay attention to your thoughts, think about what they mean, and then decide what to do based on your evaluation of the thought. For those prone to obesity, this is the highest possible form of weight control.

Previously you might have just smelled the cinnamon roll, bought it, ate it, and then afterward wondered how you could have possibly let yourself eat 1,000 calories on a single dessert. Oh the torment of hindsight!

Lifeguarding gives you a tool you can use to interrupt that automatic cycle of behavior and return control back to where it belongs—you.

Lifeguarding expands far beyond helping with automatic eating. If you have any negative thoughts about yourself, Lifeguarding can help with those too. Lifeguarding really can apply to every part of your life. Go on guard can apply to any potential slip-up situation. Scan for signs can be any way you notice that you are entering a danger zone. And respond skillfully can make use of any strategy in this book or any strategy you create.

Lifeguarding is potentially one of the most powerful and life-transforming strategies in this entire book. It’s not for everyone as it takes discipline. But if you can master Lifeguarding, you’ll have a skill nobody can take away and you’ll have it for the rest of your life.

To Learn More

·        Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression by Zindel Segal, J. Mark G. Williams, and John Teasdale is wonderful book for learning meditation and other useful Lifeguarding skills.

·        Brain Lock by Jeffrey M. Schwartz, M.D. Goes into fascinating and loving detail on how to retrain your brain.