Why Do I Care?

(This entry is somewhat of a response/continuation of yesterday's post)

    When it comes to your nutrition and diet (as in what you eat not diet as in restriction necessarily) what motivates you to eat the way you do? Is it friends/family-- Do you just eat whatever is around you or what they are eating? Does doing this help your health or hurt it? Or do you have a different approach and eat healthy because you want to live longer or be healthy in general? Or... do societal standards motivate you? Do you strive for that perfect beach body? What I would really like to know is why we care so much! The weird thing is that many people say they want this body, yet just complain about it and don't put in the effort with nutrition and exercise to execute. Extrinsic motivation seems apparent in this case. Extrinsic motivation alone is rarely enough to drive people to reach a goal. They have to also want something intrinsically bad enough to push themselves  for a long term time period.

MANY OF US DON'T EVEN KNOW WHY WE ARE EATING SOMETIMES! For these instances it is best to stop and think about the food we are eating and how we are being satisfied by it. Checking in with how your body is feeling, and asking yourself if you are really hungry, and do you really need that is helpful.

     Another difficulty of mental nutrition is when you are so consumed with food and your intakes that you focus on food and keep eating it because you are thinking about it even if you are trying to cut back. From personal experience I would say that it is easier to not be consumed in you diet because when you eat naturally and listen to what your body wants, it is much left of a mental struggle. The issue with this is, you can't just stop thinking about food because someone tells you to. Just like the Ironic process theory posed by Wegner explains... when someone tells you not to think of a white bear, it is the first thing you actually think of. So a question  I can't tell you the answer to is how to not let thoughts of food, diet, body image etc. take over.

     The book Feed Your Eagles, by Derek Newton describes the motivation chips theory. There are two types of chips. First is gold which are chips that make you feel loved and give you self-worth like being hugged, having someone tell you I love you, you are valuable to me etc. The other type of chip is silver; these chips promote feelings of capability and describe self-confidence through things such as rewards and recognition. Different types of people have and respond to different types of chips in multiple ways. Having good amounts of both types of chips usually leads to individuals having lots of self-confidence. Without any support from any types of chips from others, people may feel worthless and unloved. Does this drive them to work harder towards their nutritional goals so they will be accepted or does it push them away because they don't care? Another group of people is those who have many silver chips and few gold ones. These people may be strong at work or school, but have sacrificed their personal lives. Last there is also a small group of people who has a lot of gold chips, but few silver ones. I feel like these people would be the most susceptible to laziness given that they felt extrinsically motivated when it comes to their health because they feel like they are well loved why work towards something they feel no pressure to do?