Monday 18 June 2012

It Starts TODAY! [Supposedly]

So, I was supposed to start on my 365 Days Diet Agenda today, but it turned out that I forgot to tell our helper to not buy pork when she goes to the wet market. And I watched a movie today so I ate a Wendy's Bacon Mushroom Burger and greasy fries. I didn't drink soda though, so that's sort of the good part.

The happenings of today made me realize that you can't just get on with a diet. You gradually start on it. You can't expect to eat healthy all of a sudden; as the saying goes, "Old habits die hard." Yes, eating unhealthy is a habit; it is something that we learn to do overtime. As a BS Psychology graduate, I have learned that people can learn through acquiring knowledge from experiences.

One reason that we may be eating unhealthy is because we get satisfaction by the taste of a big fat juicy, cheesy, greasy, savory, salty, cheeseburger or whatever food that is we crave that isn't doing any good to our bodies. Well, these foods aren't totally evil; I mean, they fill us up when we're hungry so isn't that something good? People learn from a what Skinner dubbed as Positive Reinforcement.

Positive reinforcement is a stimuli (e.g. an object which in our case would be food) wherein it reinforces or strengthens a behavior over a period of time. Using a case of hunger as a concrete example, hunger would be the 'situation' wherein it would need to be satisfied. What we all usually do when we are hungry is to eat, and most of us eat the unhealthy things because it's easier to get. After eating the unhealthy food, we feel satisfaction because our hunger has gone away. So over a period of time the unhealthy food becomes the stimuli which reinforces the behavior of satisfaction which could result to us being obese and very unhealthy.
[I hope I explained that one correctly haha I'll be a shame to the Psychology Community if I didn't get to explain that well. Pardon me, if in case, I didn't explain it well enough. I'll publish another entry soon to get things straightened out.]

Anyway, as a conclusion to this entry... You don't have to force yourself to eat healthy. Start gradually as to not shock your body.

Share your thoughts with me, just leave a comment in the comment box. :) Let's go through this journey together.

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