Dessert

So what does a girl who doesn't eat wheat or processed sweeteners, and is lazy, do for dessert?   This is a good one:

That's frozen fruit and soy yogurt.  The fruit is what I use for housemate's smoothie.  So it's in the freezer, ready to go.  It's a mixture of berries and some sweeter fruit like bananas and pineapple.

The Pleasure Trap

I've mentioned in a few past posts, I am a huge fan of Dr. Douglas Lisle, an evolutionary psychologist who helps us "nutritarians" understand why it's so hard to go against the grain.  He follows Dr. McDougall's plan, and works Dr. Alan Goldhammer at the True North Health Center.  These are all very similar to Dr. Fuhrman's plan:  a whole foods, plant based diet with no oils, very limited refined sugars, and very limited salt.   This makes us very different from everyone else!

I had read Dr. Lisle's "The Pleasure Trap" once or twice before, but I finally sat down to watch the DVD over the last few weeks.  It consists of 3 lectures.  They were probably given at one of Dr. McDougall's Advanced Study Weekends, which are awesome (I've never attended but I purchased the online lectures from the last one and they are really interesting).   Anyway, back to the Pleasure Trap, I think the DVD is much better than the book!   Normally I prefer reading books, but I didn't get nearly as much out of the book in this case.  There are three concepts he gets across in the DVD (and book probably) and I only got one of them out of the book (duh).  These concepts are part of his, I think he calls it, the motivational triad, where all animals, including humans:

1. seek pleasure

2.  conserving energy

3. pain avoidance

You can see how each one of these can get us into trouble in today's artificial food world.  

1.  We seek pleasure.  We evolved to get pleasure from sweet and high-caloric foods because it helps us 2, conserve energy.   Of course, now we have an overabundance of highly addictive sweet, high fat, and high salt food.   The Pleasure Trap is a consequence of this.  This is:  if we don't eat these sweet and processed foods, we get plenty of pleasure from fruits and whole foods, and we have our ups and downs and obstacles and just go along and are sometimes happy and sometimes not.   If we start eating highly processed foods and drugs (caffeine, chocolate, sweets, even white bread), we get great stimulation and surges, great pleasure hits.  But here is the kicker:  we get used to it and after a while, the pleasure from eating these things comes more from the cessation of pain when we are withdrawing from them (e.g., before we have our morning coffee).  So after a while, we just have our same ups and downs and aren't getting anymore pleasure than the guy eating fruit and squash and rice and beans.  While it might not be easy, we can break this pleasure trap, and eat the healthy diet and get just as much pleasure.  To help people break the cycle, you can go to these health immersions that Dr. McDougall and Dr. Fuhrman offer, or go fast for a week at True North, then eat their food for a week, and totally reset your taste buds.  

2.  Conserving energy.  It's good to recognize that this is an intuitive motivational drive.  Now we see the problem with fast food drive up windows.  Talk about an easy way to get 1000 calories quickly!  Our ancestors never had it so easy.  This is also why we crave high-calorie foods.  We intuitively seek them out.   The way to address this is to consciously fill up on low-calorie foods.  Fortunately these are usually nutrient-dense, even while being low-calories--things like vegetables of all kinds.  After a period of abstinence you can lose your taste for fat.  I even find sugar is too sweet for me now.  even dates.  I love the sweetness in carrots (but then our local carrots are really good!).  

3.  Pain avoidance.  Oddly enough, you would think this is the least related to food issues, but for me, at the stage I'm at where I like eating this way and knowing how to do it in my sleep, this is the issue I am working on, and it's nice to understand better that it's because I'm a normal human that I struggle with this.  and that is, social pain!  We have a very strong evolutionary motivation to be accepted by our peers and fit in with them.  Our egos are designed to tell us where we stand in the hierarchy and who are friends are (I'm paraphrasing and might not have got this right, but it sounded fascinating!).  For me, going off plan is never about the taste of the food.  I don't like the taste anymore!   But I still do it occasionally, and for the dumbest of reasons--because the person in line in front of me is doing it!   It's about being one of them.  I thought about this at my meditation class last week.  Sometimes I look at unhealthy people and I think, I don't want to be like them, and yet, I do.  So I embraced them in my mind and I said, I am you and you are me and we are all the same (you tend to have these new agey thoughts when you meditate, ha!).  And when I think that way, then I can avoid the food.  I realize, I'm not rejecting them when I reject the food.  And hopefully they aren't rejecting me, which is what really counts from an instinctive perspective.  I think men and women are different on this in some ways in that men are more prone to the hierarchy and have to learn how to do their healthy-eating thing in a non-threatening way to the alpha brother-in-law they are spending the weekend with; and women are more prone to wanting to be accepted and to not offend and we have to learn how to interact in a way that we still feel we are accepted and fitting in.  Dr. Lisle describes different ways to respond to other people depending on their attitude.  I need to stop writing now, so I'll leave that for you to find out when you watch the DVD.  

Another great DVD by Douglas Lisle

I think Douglas Lisle is my new hero.  There are several heroes in the healthy eating community:  Drs. Fuhrman, McDougall, Esselstyn, Campbell, Ornish, and Barnard.  I have to add Dr. Douglas Lisle to this list.  He's a psychotherapist who works at the True North Health Center.   You can read some of his articles here.  He has lectured at a few McDougall conferences and I think the DVDs are taped from these events.  This one I just watched is called "Losing Weight Without Losing Your Mind."   He talks about 3 major obstacles to losing weight:  1) the pleasure trap, 2) the ego trap, and 3)  the pull of other's demands.

1)  He's talked about the pleasure trap in a few other lectures, DVDs and a book.  I highly recommend the book or DVD.  Very briefly (and hopefully somewhat correct), the pleasure trap is about how it is perfectly normal to prefer chocolate candy to an apple. We evolved in an environment of scarcity of high-caloric food and we are hard-wired to prefer it.  If you can abstain from the artificial food for a while, for example, with a fast, your taste buds re-adapt and you can enjoy the healthy food just as much.  But it aint always easy to say not to that high calorie-dense food.

2) The ego trap.  I loved this because he described me.  The ego trap is where you or others have high expectations of you, perhaps because of a previous success, and you know deep down you can't live up to those expectations so you quit before you fail.  In your mind, quitting is preferable to failing.   This is what sometimes happens to me with healthy eating.  I achieved success sort of accidentally, just experimenting with this.  Then I joined the Fuhrman forums and started a blog and became something of a role model.   I didn't feel comfortable being a role model and started doubting myself and suddenly eating healthy became harder than it was before, and the temptations, which were almost non-existent before, became greater.  Dr. Lisle says the solution to this is to lower your expectations.  Pick a goal that is better than where you are, and achievable, something you are pretty confident you can do.  You can even pick a goal that is insulting to you so you say, of course I can do that, in fact I can do better than that, I'll show you.  He described working with kids and saying, do you think you can get B/C grades?  and the kid says, yes, I can do even better than that!

3)  other people's demands.  He described how we evolved in an environment of 30 people where everyone knew what everyone else was doing so they couldn't demand too much because they already saw everything you are doing.  Nowadays, our spheres are so separated, your boss doesn't know what you home/community demands are; your spouse and kids don't know your work/community/friend responsibilities, etc.  So everyone wants the most out of you and this situation benefits naturally pushy people and hurts naturally nice people.  You have to learn to say no and you don't have to say why.  You say, "I've got something else I have to do."  "I made a promise and have to take care of something else."  And you don't say what and it becomes clear that it's none of their business and they don't have a right to know.  You have to be able to say no so you can make priorities for yourself.  If you are going to change your diet and develop and exercise program you need time to commit to this.  It IS high priority.

I'd be curious to know what other people think of this lecture.

One more thing

One thing Dr. Lisle talked about that I really liked was this idea that you shouldn't compare yourself to others, but just try to live up to your own potential. This is in any area of your life. Now this I understand and really like. I'm going to try this out at work.

more on the Douglas Lisle DVD

I was thinking more about the first talk on the Douglas Lisle DVD called "The Continuum of Evil." (see yesterday's post for a recap). So the first talk was about not trying to be perfect, but aiming for eating A+ foods most of the time and letting yourself have some A, B, and C foods here and there, and averaging an A overall. This is a lot like Dr. Fuhrman's 10% plan. Dr. Lisle emphasized that the most important thing is getting right back on track when you eat the C (sugar,oil), D (dairy), and F (meat) foods. He follows the McDougall program which is a little more relaxed about salt and sugar than Dr. Fuhrman's program. Having followed Dr. Fuhrman's program for a while, I do prefer going without salt and sugar because the salt makes my fingers swell up, and it's even worse after breaking my elbow; and your taste buds get much more sensitive without salt and sugar, and then fruit and vegetables taste really good.

But the problem is that makes me an extremist or darn close to a perfectionist. It means any food prepared by a restaurant or grocery store is off limits, unless it's just plain raw or steamed veggies special ordered. There's a good side to this: it's easy in some ways, because the boundaries are really simple--no to salt, sugar, oil, or processed food, yes to everything in the produce section and whole grains and nuts and seeds. It's easy to remember, and it really is possible to eat on the go even with these restrictions.

Dr. Lisle says we want to average an A. Well, then you have to keep track. Today the co-op had some samples of this treat that is peanut butter, sesame seeds, cashews, honey and salt. Well, I thought, I don't have to be perfect, and this has no added oils! (somehow my brain ignored the salt and honey). So I had two pieces. Is that okay? Well, it had more salt than I would like. My hand was already swollen and now it will get worse. I think it's easier for me to have boundaries, like no salt. Then I just say no to the samples.

I do understand how these boundaries can lead to the perfection problem. When you go off-plan, you can end up in a binge and a promise to come back to perfection some day. I guess you have to remind yourself it's always a choice: "Yes, I can eat those samples. But I don't want them right now because I prefer not to eat salt and sugar. I think I'll try to make something like this at home without the salt and with dates instead of honey." And when you go offplan, you just dust yourself off and jump right back on. because you want to.

Darn it all, I don't understand this any better than when I started. I think I'll just get back to living my life.

Douglas Lisle DVD

I just watched a very good DVD by Douglas Lisle. He wrote the Pleasure Trap. He applies psychology to eating healthy. The first lecture was about the continuum of evil. He's referring to good foods and bad foods here. Grading food, he gives meat an F, dairy a D, processed grains and sugar C, tofu, whole-wheat bread, veggie burgers a B, and whole unprocessed produce an A+. He then says, we're not perfect, but it's good to eat as many of the A foods as you can and only occasionally eating the B and C foods. He spent much of his career counseling on addiction. He says failure is fine, it's part of the process. Don't aim for perfection 100% of the time. If you aim for perfection and then you fail, that sets up weird behaviors, like going on a binge and promising you'll be perfect tomorrow or next week. You want to average a very good score (A on the grading scale) but know that it is a process getting there and that you will dip and know to get back on track when you do--that is the most important part, not aiming for perfection. I'm paraphrasing and surely not distilling this as accurately as he presented.

The second talk is on how personality characteristics determine how easy it is for someone to adopt this healthy eating plan. There are 5 personality characteristics: 1) openness to experience, 2) conscientiousness, 3) extraversion & introversion, 4) agreeableness, and 5) stability. The personality best suited to adopting this healthy eating is 1) not very open , 2) conscientious, 3) introverted, 4) not agreeable, and 5) stable. So for example, those of us who are open to trying new things, well, we might not be satisfied with brown rice and broccoli every day. Conscientiousness is of course helpful in sticking to the plan. Extraverts like to socialize and go out to eat, and it's hard to find healthy food in restaurants. Agreeable people I guess are more easily influenced by our friends and family members prodding us to eat their food and be like them. And stable people are less likely to want to celebrate by eating and drinking, or drown their sorrows by eating and drinking. We can't change these personality characteristics so we just have to be aware of what the vulnerabilities and strengths are when applied to the case of eating healthy.

In my case, I'm 1) open to new experiences, so that is a vulnerability. I am feeling this right now. It was a good thing when I started this because I was open to changing my eating habits and learning a whole new way of cooking. But now I'm ready for something new. So I have to figure out some other area of my life to try out new things in. 2) I'm pretty conscientious so that's an advantage. 3) I'm probably in the middle. I need to socialize and have friends, and I used to struggle with this, but I've modified my social life and don't center it around bars and restaurants. 4) I'm pretty agreeable and I guess that's a disadvantage. But I've learned to deal with that one too, it just took a little longer to stand up to people, in a polite way of course. 5) I think I'm pretty stable, though I do sometimes want to celebrate with food and drown my sorrows with food. I think my biggest vulnerability right now is #1: After embracing this whole-heartedly and learning everything I could, now I've gotten bored with it. I want to try something new.

The Pleasure Trap

I’ve been reading “The Pleasure Trap” by Douglas Lisle and Alan Goldhamer, as part of my study material for the Nutritional Excellence Trainer exam. This is an excellent book. Dr. Fuhrman describes the concept in this post. I highly recommend this book if you want to understand why we eat the way we do, why we shouldn’t, and how you can be happier and still find pleasure by eating healthy food. They distinguish between happiness and pleasure: “Pleasure responses are the endpoints. The moods of happiness are the subtle reinforcing experiences along the way…Animals, like people, experience the moods of happiness when making progress toward worthwhile goals…”

The pleasure trap is essentially an adaptation to the pleasure inducer, usually an addictive substance that your body adapts to and then you feel normal when you get it, and sick when you don’t. The sensation of pleasure in getting your first cup of coffee is just the cessation of feeling awful right before you have it. It’s no longer an elation, but is more a cessation of pain. To recover from the pleasure trap requires the pain of withdrawal, but then you return to the feeling of normalness that you originally had before ingesting the drugs (including processed food) in the first place. Then you discover that healthy foods can give you pleasure (like pomegranates!), and a healthy lifestyle can make you happy.