Gain the body of your dreams in three months! Quit smoking the easy way. Such claims are worse than misleading, they feed into the desire for a quick fix, and the fitness industry is one of the worst offenders. Changing anything at all, from losing weight, to giving up an unhelpful habit, to taking up an exercise regime to curing chronic pain is not easy or quick; it requires time and dedication. And here’s why.
- We really are creatures of habit. It’s in our blueprint.
- And this is because our brains work on prediction: the brain predicts having a cup of tea and some biscuits will make me feel good.
- To change the predictive map you need a compelling reason to do this: associating eating biscuits with developing an illness, like diabetes or a heart attack is going to stay the biscuit reaching hand. Associating placing a bet with losing your family, your home and your job is a compelling reason to change the predicted outcome of placing yet another bet.
- Everything we do, we do for a subconscious reason making change effortful.
The analogy is the elephant and the mahout (the elephant’s rider and trainer). If the elephant is happy, it will work as directed by its mahout. If the elephant is unhappy, a relatively tiny mahout will have no control over the elephant at all.- The unconscious – or old brain – is like the elephant whilst the conscious brain, particularly the frontal lobes, are the mahout.
- So, to successfully lose weight, give up an unhelpful habit like drinking, gambling or smoking, or improve your posture/get rid of chronic pain, you must address your elephant and make it happy.
- The old brain is the automatic stuff: eye movements, body movements, breathing, posture, eating, digestion, mood, desire and so on. So any neural drill aimed at improving vision, improving movement control or improving the function of the brain stem will help the change process. The better the information coming into the cortex or new brain from the old brain, the better choices we can make and, literally true, the happier we are.
- When you are in the process of changing a habit, this is controlled by the frontal lobes and takes a lot of effort from them, so you do have to feed your brain to give it energy. As anybody who has tried to lose weight knows: it all goes well until we are hungry, tired – and stressed. And then the elephant is out of control: the wine glass develops a hole and that tube of Pringles was a swizzle since it can’t have had the right quantity in when bought.
- To feed the brain it needs three things: fuel, breathing and activation. Fuel is good food = food you’ve cooked yourself. Breathing is good breathing = breathe without your shoulders rising at all. Activation is actually movement, which is problematic if you’re trying to get into the exercise habit! Any movement helps, and if that really isn’t possible, try a decent breathing drill instead.
- All of which leads to: there is no such thing as will power. Relying on will power alone is doomed to failure and beating yourself up after a failure is unhelpful. Much better to get curious: how do I make my elephant happy and my mahout strong?
