Dan's Plan

Every day we make hundreds of lifestyle decisions. Researcher Brian Wansink has shown that we make over 200 decisions a day just on food alone.¹ These decisions are influenced by a variety of factors, such as things that have happened in the past (developed habits), things that occur in the present (how food and food options are presented to us), and things that will happen in the future (how we plan to eat, look, or feel at a future time). Because the modern environment makes an unhealthy lifestyle cheap and easy, we must take counter measures to protect our own health. We must also adopt a useful belief system to drive the right decisions and we must actively cultivate our personal environments so healthy behaviors flow naturally. 
 

 

Behavioral Economics is a branch of science that studies how costs and benefits affect the consumption of goods. Benefits promote actions. Costs reduce actions. In the context of this theory, ‘cost’ is not simply price, but a range of factors like convenience and effort. Time can also affect the value of something, where the longer you have to wait for it, the less it's worth to you. Would you rather have $10 now or $20 in 5 years. Most people would take the $10 now, even though it’s less money, because they discount the value of the $20 based on the length of time they have to wait to receive it. Now consider how a lengthy preparation for a meal and a long drive to your gym can be considered costs.

Many benefits of healthy behaviors are not only in the future (e.g. reduced risk of cardiac arrhythmia) but they are also intangible (e.g. lowered C-reactive protein). Tangibility is another factor that influences decision making, and the idea of “future health” is vague and intangible. What does it mean? How much would you get? How likely is it that it would occur? Is this one cookie really going to matter? Intangibility makes it easy to discount important aspects of health when making decisions. 

We can take steps to make the benefits more tangible and immediate. Defining long term goals makes them more tangible. Good health for you may mean more time with grandkids or being able to travel the world during retirement. As future health becomes more visible in your mind, you may be more motivated to listen carefully to your body and pay closer attention to the immediate effects and connections between how you eat, move, and sleep and how you feel from day to day.

You Must Arrange a Healthy Environment

The importance of environment was highlighted earlier when Professor O'Dea transplanted her subjects into a natural environment where health behaviors were predicated on survival. These diseased subjects had no choice but to live in a healthful manner, and as a result, they became healthy quickly. Knowing that we are susceptible to "cheap and easy" can help us to not be victims of poorly prepared environments.

If you do not take action and simply live according to what the default environment facilitates, you'll be at high risk for acquiring chronic diseases. You need to fight back! You must actively work to ensure your surroundings promote a healthy, sustainable lifestyle practice.  With the right guidance and tools, this is well within your grasp.

The remaining chapters (EAT, MOVE, SLEEP, IDEAL WEIGHT) provide additional insight into these topics highlighting the direction we should aim for and also describe tactics on how to structure your environment for success.

Man is equipped with the psychical and physical make-up of his first human ancestors; he is the sort of being who functions best in the exhilarations and the fatigues of the hunt, of primitive warfare, and in the precarious life of nomadism. He rose superbly to the crises of these existences. Strangely and suddenly he now finds himself transported into a different milieu, keeping, however, as he must, the equipment for the old life. Fortunately his power of reflecting (there seems to be an innate tendency to reflect and learn which is a distinguishing characteristic of our species) has enabled him to persist under the new conditions by modifying his responses to stimuli.

 

1. B Wansink. Annu Rev Nutr. 2004;24:455-479.