From Fat to Thin Thinking

by Rita Black

  The problem is not really solved, because even if the diet does fix the weight issue temporarily, the beliefs and habits that existed in the brain before the dieting started now rear their heads with a vengeance. The weight went away but the unconscious wiring didn’t, and so you begin to fall back into old habits and eventually regain the lost weight.

  Soon, the weight problem is an ongoing struggle, and negative assumptions like these take hold:

  When I am sticking to a diet, I am good; when I am not sticking to the diet, I am bad.

  If I diet and get thin, I will be happy.

  I am lazy because I don’t like to exercise.

  This is how the Weight Struggler belief system evolves. Over time these beliefs take root in the unconscious mind and grow strong, feeding on the evidence that you are a failure at this thing called “weight loss.”

  Struggling in Seattle

  I remember the moment when my first fat thinking belief was created. I was sitting in my second-grade class on a rainy January in 1972. My family had recently moved from Portland to Seattle, and I was the new kid in town. As the teacher was presenting the lesson, my eyes were wandering around the Fairview Elementary classroom. I caught a glimpse of a few of the other girls and boys sitting in their chairs, and I noticed something. Their thighs fit nicely within the seats of their chairs.

  I looked down at myself, and to my horror, my thighs hung over the sides of my chair! I immediately felt bad. “There is something wrong with me, I’m different. My thighs shouldn’t be so big. Look at Karla’s thighs, they fit in her seat just fine, but look at mine! I wish I weren’t so fat.”

  At that moment, a little fat thinking belief light bulb went off in the back of my mind. “Hey, I’m different, there is something wrong with me, I am not like the others.”

  As my mother’s weight struggle grew, my own fat thinking began to blossom as well. I was also learning, just as she did, that being in the kitchen, away from the chaos of daily life, was a comfort. Food for me quickly became a fast friend as I learned to bake and cook and eat and eat and eat. I would come home from school where my weight was frequently the source of ridicule by the other kids (“Hey, Thunder Thighs!”), make a batch of cookie dough, and eat half of it before the cookies hit the oven. I would go lay down upstairs in a sugar stupor, waking up just in time to join the family for dinner, eating seconds and thirds and dessert, of course.

  I can’t control myself, I thought, as I lay in bed at night feeling full and fat.

  That fat thinking belief wasn’t alone for long. It was soon accompanied by others. Fat thinking beliefs breed like rabbits, and soon I had a whole head full of them.

  “Skinny people have it easy. If I were thin, my life would be easy like theirs.”

  “I don’t fit in and have to try to be thin so people will like me.”

  When I was twelve, I was in enough pain about not fitting in to finally take action. I put myself on the Scarsdale Diet, which was very popular at the time. I ate a weird breakfast of a half piece of dry toast and a half a grapefruit. For lunch and dinner I was allowed all the meat I wanted, so I piled my plate high with roast beef but nothing else.

  For a month I stuck to the Scarsdale Diet to the letter. It felt good to be so in control, even if I was sick of all the meat. I got on the scale and had lost fifteen pounds. You think I would be happy, right? You think that the diet success would be a fairytale ending for me. But even though I was at my weight goal and even had earned a few compliments from friends and family, I still had the same negative belief system around myself and my weight. I was in a slimmer body that didn’t feel like mine because I had lost the weight so quickly. I got off the scale and instead of going and living happily ever after, I began to eat.

  To my horror it was as if the switch in my head had been flipped, and I proceeded, zombie-like, to fill my mouth with any food I could get my hands on. Any food, that was, except food that was allowed on the Scarsdale diet. I tried to stop myself and “get back on the plan,” but this drive to eat was bigger than me. I ate until I was eighteen pounds higher on the scale within a few weeks. I was back to my weight-struggling self, believing I was always going to have a weight problem and feeling so ashamed that I never wanted to show my face in public again.

  WEIGHT STRUGGLE SUM UP: Beliefs

  Your fat thinking beliefs create your Weight Struggler reality.

  Fat thinking beliefs are acquired over time, over failed weight-loss attempts, reinforcing the weight-struggling belief system circuitry.

  The wires of fat thinking belief layer one on top of the other to become a Weight Struggle Prison. Your beliefs keep you struggling, and the struggling keeps the beliefs alive.

  Now that you understand how fat thinking beliefs create a Weight Struggler’s reality, it’s time to explore another unconscious player at the heart of fat thinking—FAT THINKING HABITS.

  CHAPTER 5

  SEE A COOKIE, EAT A COOKIE, REPEAT

  Fat Thinking Habits

  You’re trying not to do it, but it’s hard…real hard.

  Think of the agitation you might feel when you are sitting in front of the TV at night, trying to fight the urge to go into the kitchen and microwave that bag of popcorn you eat around the same time every night. “Must have popcorn! Must have popcorn!” your subconscious screams like a hysterical child.

  The feeling is urgent, it’s unbearable, so you give in and get up, go to the kitchen, grab the bag, and throw it in the microwave. As you watch the bag expanding and hear the familiar “pop, pop, pop” of the exploding kernels, you begin to calm down a bit, knowing what you want is coming soon.

  The microwave dings. You rip open the bag, and the steam poofs out as you reach in to grab the fluffy bits of white starch and put them into your mouth. The sharp taste of salt and the heady flavor of chemical butter explodes in your mouth. Immediately, there’s a feeling of relief as the agitation falls away and your brain’s reward center gets a hit.

  Now what happens? You head back to the TV and eat the rest of the popcorn mindlessly, not even really experiencing the mouthfuls until you reach the bottom of the bag. The popcorn is all gone, and a sinking feeling and some guilt creep in. You blew your diet again, and you didn’t even really enjoy that popcorn! Why did you do it? You said you weren’t going to tonight and the night before and the night before, and yet you keep doing it again and again and again. What the heck is going on?

  The Ringing Phone of Habit

  Your brain is wired to pick up a ringing phone.

  Phone rings.

  Respond by going to pick up the phone.

  Pick up phone and feel relief when ring goes away.

  This familiar sequence of events in the unconscious mind is called HABIT.

  Have you ever noticed that for some reason if you don’t pick up a ringing phone, that trill drives you crazy? Your body feels agitated, and your mind can’t focus because of that stupid ringing phone? What happens when you pick up the phone or the phone stops ringing, especially if it has been ringing for a long time? YOU FEEL RELIEF! You relax and can think again. That’s because the initial cue—the ringing phone—stimulated the brain to begin the routine of picking up the phone, and when it is picked up, you get the reward: The phone is answered, the habit cycle is complete, and your mind can relax again.

  In one study, monkeys were habituated to press a lever to receive a reward of sweet juice in response to seeing shapes on a computer simulator. The researchers noted that once the monkeys saw the cue on the monitor, they began craving the reward. The monkeys became agitated, even depressed, when the juice was not delivered. That was because the “expectation” of the perceived reward was not happening.

  When you are sitting in front of the TV, the habit cue rings: “There is popcorn in the cupboard waiting to be popped and eaten.” The ring is very hard to resist. Your d
eeper mind thinks you must fulfill that habit, and it becomes agitated until you give in and go pop the corn. The irony is, as soon as you complete the routine and eat the first bite of popcorn, there’s a sense of relief from the agitation. Your mind has moved on to other things, but you are still mindlessly eating popcorn and watching TV, not even enjoying the calories being stuffed into your mouth.

  How Habits Become Established

  The mind, in its infinite wisdom to support your survival by being efficient, puts the behaviors it perceives as important to survival on autopilot and then drives you to fulfill those behaviors. After a new behavior is repeated a few times, it moves from a conscious-mind, deliberate action to an unconscious-mind, automated habit driven by a series of neurological responses that become very hard to change.

  It doesn’t take too many repetitions to establish a habit either. Researchers including Bernard Balleine from the University of Sydney and Simon Killcross of New South Wales in Australia recorded rats’ brain activity as they learned a new habit. The behavior sequence went like this:

  The sound cue of a “click” signaled a rat to begin traveling a maze.

  The rat scurried through the maze to the end.

  The rat found the reward of sugar water or some other reward.

  The first few times, a rat’s brain activity was high during the entire sequence as it learned the ropes. After a few times, the brain activity was still high in response to the cue at the beginning and the reward at the end, but during the routine maze running, each rat’s brain activity significantly decreased. What happened during the middle routine part of the experiment? Very little brain activity, only a few expert cells were handling this part of the habit!

  Think of how many habits men and women perform rather mindlessly each day. Many are helpful to health and survival. It’s just that other fat thinking habits are wired into the brain, too, like mindlessly munching popcorn in front of the TV. Those fat thinking habits keep the weight struggle going.

  Why Breaking A Habit Is Difficult

  Often habits are hardwired into the mind with a perceived additional reward known as secondary gain. The mind associates the habit with something else it values. This happens with all different sorts of habits, both positive and negative. Here’s how it works around a fat thinking habit:

  OBSERVATION: Your mind sees the popcorn and you relaxing and zoning out in front of the TV.

  ASSOCIATION: It marries the popcorn and relaxing in front of the TV together.

  SECONDARY GAIN: Eating popcorn symbolizes relaxation and zoning out.

  Of course, popcorn has no sedative powers, but try telling that to your unconscious mind that keeps agitating you to go make the popcorn because it needs to relax from all this agitation of wanting the popcorn!

  So, dieting and trying to avoid negative habits don’t work because the wiring for that habit still exists. Plus, there is the deeper secondary gain that the habit gives us. Taking away the habit and trying to cope without it causes raw, out of sorts, and vulnerable feelings. You miss the fat thinking habit even though consciously you know it isn’t good for you.

  Freezer Burn

  I gained over 25 pounds my junior year in high school when I developed a very specific fattening habit while trying to lose weight.

  I was working at Kidd Valley, one of the best hamburger stands in Seattle. Here is where I got in trouble. I went to work after school at four o’clock. I would be starving because I was trying to diet and be good all day. My dinner break was not until seven. Although I tried to not eat anything, I usually didn’t succeed because I fell prey to a sneaky ritual.

  After I fried up an order of breaded mushrooms for a customer, I set one fried mushroom aside for myself. I would slip into the walk-in freezer when no one was looking and scarf it down. The first bite was an explosion of juicy and flavorful mushroom juxtaposed with the crunch of the fried battered crust that made my mouth sing. I also got a moment in the cool of the freezer, away from the hot oil and the maddening crowds of customers clamoring for food.

  As soon as the first thrill of the bite was over, I didn’t even experience the rest of the mushroom as I crammed it into my mouth and headed back out to the fry station. This little ritual started out innocently but became a hardwired habit that went like this:

  CUE: Someone orders the mushrooms.

  ROUTINE: Fry up the mushrooms and take one for me, sneak into the walk-in fridge, and pop the mushroom into my mouth.

  REWARD: The first heady bite of mushroom.

  SECONDARY GAIN: The quiet and cool relief of being in the freezer.

  After the first mushroom of each shift, I felt bad for breaking my diet. Oh well, I thought, pushing that negative feeling down. I may as well eat more mushrooms now since I blew it. I’ll try again tomorrow.

  And guess what? Thinking “I blew it so I may as well eat more…” became its own fattening habit as well! Soon I was habitually going off my diet with whatever I could get my hands on, mistake milkshakes, fries, and double bacon cheeseburgers. Yes, the fried mushroom was the gateway habit for all the bad “I am off my diet now” habits that fell into place after that first mushroom trigger. So even though I began each day on a diet, I ended each day being pulled into a string of habits that got me to my highest weight yet.

  WEIGHT STRUGGLE SUM UP: Habits

  Our fat thinking habits get triggered and play out automatically under conscious thinking and drive our behavior.

  When you try to take the habit away, your mind gets agitated, ringing like a phone that wants you to answer by engaging in the habit.

  Changing a habit is difficult because the subconscious mind perceives the habit as something valuable that fulfills a need.

  So, you can see how willpower is no match against the hardwiring of beliefs and habits. Now let’s look at another big piece of the puzzle of our fat thinking circuitry—STRESS AND EMOTIONS.

  CHAPTER 6

  FEEL HAPPY, EAT. FEEL SAD, EAT.

  Stress And Emotions

  My guess is that one of the challenges you have faced is stress and emotional eating? You are not alone. According to the American Psychological Association (APA), 43 percent of women surveyed said they ate in response to stress in the previous month. Many women said that eating in response to stress didn’t make them feel better, only more guilty and bad about themselves and their bodies. So, even though the rational mind knows a bagel isn’t going to solve the fact that a boyfriend didn’t send a Valentine card or that the chocolate cookie isn’t a cure for having to sit down and do taxes, the Weight Struggler eats when she’s upset anyway.

  Emotion, Stress, and The Brain

  Our mind and body evolved to move from 0 to 100 milliseconds to get us out of danger as fast as possible. This fight-or-flight response enhanced survival back in the day. When fear or danger happens today, the same amazing survival mechanism occurs. The hormone cortisol floods the system, and the reptilian brain literally shuts down the conscious, rational-thinking brain. It says “Hey, there’s no time to think—JUST MOVE THOSE FEET!” Almost instantly, every bit of energy goes to preparing us to flee as fast as possible.

  The problem is that the reptilian brain does not know how to differentiate between a lion and bumper-to-bumper traffic, the yelling boss, or a bad hair day. The mind interprets any change in “normal” as a threat, triggering release of cortisol to prep the body for a lightning-fast getaway. Stress also shifts the brain into a reward-seeking state, because it associates the reward state to “feeling better.”

  Eating may be a calming reward, but eventually it also makes the Weight Struggler feel bad. Only 16 percent of women in the APA survey reported that the food they turned to for comfort actually helped.

  Cinder-struggler

  In the summer before my senior year, I quit my part-time mushroom job and joined Weight Watche
rs. I had never been so heavy in all my life. I felt ashamed as I got on the scale in front of the nice lady who reminded me of my grandmother and she called out my weight. “192 pounds!” It was a humiliating moment. Had it really come to this?

  I was only 16, but I felt like I was 100 years old. My body ached and I didn’t move well. I didn’t fit into any cute clothes like those my friends wore, and I had never been out on a real date. I hung out with guys, but no one looked at me as girlfriend material. I was just the funny fat friend.

  I needed to do something. I thought I couldn’t go into my senior year looking and feeling like this. My struggle was consuming every waking minute of my day. So, I embraced the Weight Watchers plan and stuck to it. I had to make it work, and I found I had enough willpower to “be good” on the plan week after week.

  I was losing weight and feeling excited about my progress. I cherished my weight loss card that showed each week’s weight victory. I was in control, and as long as I was “good,” I would keep getting my weight loss payoff. There were other payoffs too. I could wear normal-sized clothes. People seemed to treat me with more respect, too.

  The dark side of this rather magical time of being a star Weight Watcher was that I still felt like a Weight Struggler on the inside. Would I be able to keep this charade up forever? I pushed the dark thoughts aside and just kept going with the program.

  Cinder-Struggler Goes To The Ball

  I hit my weight goal of 134 pounds in Weight Watchers in the spring of 1982. I remember being called up in front my weekly meeting for my goal weight award and feeling so proud, emotional, and like I had arrived. This amazing feeling lasted less than 24 hours.

  The very next day I was sitting in the lunchroom, selling tickets for the senior breakfast with the other girls on the committee when I was asked to the prom, in front of the entire lunch room, by the captain of the swim team. We were in the spring musical together, but I didn’t know him well. I sat there dumbfounded, mouth gaping, as the lunchroom fell silent and waited for my response. “Yes,” I said rather meekly but loud enough to cause a roar among those listening. I felt dizzy. Was this really happening?