You’re sitting in the drive thru at McDonalds and you are intrigued by all of their new “Healthy” low calorie items, The salads, oatmeal, and grilled chicken items are prominently displayed with large pictures on the menu board. Yet as the person on the speaker asks “Can I take your order?,” you find the words, “I’ll have a Big Mac and Fries,” coming out of your mouth.
How can this be?
Certainly your goal was to order the healthy items…
But in reality certain forces took over..
Kelley McGonigal reports in her new book, The Willpower Instinct certain facts…
Researchers were intrigued by reports that when McDonald’s added healthier items to its menu, sales of Big Macs skyrocketed.
This is because we let ourselves off the hook…
While most of us believe that making progress on our goals spurs us on to greater success, psychologists know we are all too quick to use progress as an excuse for taking it easy.
Kelley explains it this way…
When you make progress toward your long-term goal, your brain— with its mental checklist of many goals— turns off the mental processes that were driving you to pursue your long-term goal. It will then turn its attention to the goal that has not yet been satisfied— the voice of self-indulgence. Psychologists call this goal liberation. The goal you’ve been suppressing with your self-control is going to become stronger, and any temptation will become more tempting.
So this simply means when you were looking at the menu, the picture of the salads remind you of how much progress you have made on your diet up to this point, and your mind plays a trick on you…
In practical terms, this means that one step forward gives you permission to take two steps back.
Your mind says, you’ve made great progress on your diet this far, why not treat your self to a Big Mac and fries? You’ve done such a good job, you deserve it!
Diet Commitment
So are we doomed to make bad decisions like this? Kelly points out that there is a subtle difference in the questions we ask ourselves…
If we think to ourselves… “How much progress have I made on my diet?” we may doom ourselves to cheat.
However, if we ask “How committed have I been on my diet?” we won’t run into the same temptation.
So the next time we are sitting in a drive thru or ordering at a restaurant, we need to focus on the “WHY” of the diet. We need to think about our commitment, otherwise if we think about how good we were on our last meal and the progress we have made, we may doom ourselves to cheat.
The difference is focus… if we focus on our diet commitment instead of our progress we may find ourselves overcoming temptation.
Commitment or Progress… the decision is up to you.
Question: Have you ever found yourself ordering something on the menu that wasn’t on your diet?
Kelly’s book is incredibly helpful. From dieting to overcoming procrastination, this is one book you should add to your library.
Be sure to check out our previous post… The Halo Effect
