My client Jess has been having trouble sticking to her weekend food plans. She’s doing great staying on track when she’s at home, but special events and eating out have been sabotaging her. In session this week, we talked through one such recent experience. Jess told me that she had been out to dinner with friends the night before. She decided in advance not to have dessert (because her plan was to have one piece of bread and wine instead). When dessert time came, she gave in and had some anyway. I asked Jess what her sabotaging thoughts were in that moment. They were something along the lines of, “Just one this one won’t matter. I’ll only have a small amount, anyway.”
Jess and I decided that the next time she had thoughts like that, she would remind herself, “Every time does matter because every time has consequences for the next time. It’s not about how big the unplanned dessert is, it’s about what habit I’m reinforcing. It’s important to me to strengthen the ‘I stick to my plan’ habit, not the ‘I give in to unplanned food’ habit.”
I reminded Jess that it was her “hot brain” that got her into trouble that night. When she makes in-the-moment decisions, she’s using her hot brain. The hot brain is a very id-driven brain. It only cares about instant gratification and is not wired to take the whole picture and future goals into consideration. When she’s making a future-oriented decision, that’s using her “cool brain.” The cool brain cares about the items on her Advantages List. The cool brain cares about delayed gratification and is able to make decisions that are in line with all her goals, not just what she wants in one moment.
With this in mind, Jess and I talked about a dinner she had coming up the following evening. Jess decided that for this dinner, she would forgo having wine because it was a weeknight. She’s working on only having alcohol on weekends because alcohol has a lot of calories, and it lowers her inhibitions and often leads her to eat more than she wanted to. Jess and I predicted that she would have sabotaging thoughts about having wine, even though she planned not to. Jess made the following Response Card to read before dinner:
My cool brain has already decided not to have wine tonight because it makes sense in terms of all my goals. If my hot brain starts pushing me to have wine, remember that there is no decision to be made in this moment. My cool brain has already decided. Trust my cool brain.
Armed with this plan and this Response Card, Jess felt much more confident about being able to stay on track during her evening out.