Does Food Lead to Happiness?

In his book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi notes that Aristotle observed 2300 years ago that more than anything men and women seek happiness. In this book, Csikszentmihalyi (psychology, Univ. of Chicago) examines flow and describes it in terms of the connections between satisfaction and daily activities. He defines a flow state as one that ensues when one is engaged in self-controlled, goal-related, meaningful actions and it is often described by the person experiencing it as the sense of complete, purposeful, satisfaction that is generally recognized as happiness. 

What I thought was really cool was how much he talks about food and happiness. Our need for food is pretty basic. If you want to survive, you have to eat, but to simply surviving does not make us happy. In fact, for those of us that battle weight, food ultimately makes us unhappy. So, the question is, how can food make us happy? Can food produce flow? I think it can.

To begin, I think it is important that we come to some basic understanding of meaning of pleasure and enjoyment. I'm going to ask you to set aside your personal definitions of these words so that we can all speak the same language. 

For our purposes, pleasure can be described as a situation in which we do something that fills a basic physiological or psychological need. When this happens, a little pulse of electricity goes to one of a few "pleasure centers" of the brain. When that happens, you feel pleasure. When the electrical impulse stops, however, it's over. While pleasure is powerful, it's temporary. 

Enjoyment, on the other hand, is not directly tied to an external stimulus. Enjoyment is more closely tied to accomplishment and true satisfaction. Enjoyment hangs around to serve us breakfast in bed while pleasure leaves as soon as . . . well, you get the idea. 

To quote the book, 

"Enjoyment is characterized by this forward movement: by a sense of novelty, of accomplishment. Playing a close game of tennis that stretches one's ability is enjoyable, as is reading a book that reveals things in a new light, as is having a conversation that leads us to express ideas we didn't know we had. Closing a contested business deal, or any piece of work well done, is enjoyable. None of these experiences may be particularly pleasurable at the time they are taking place, but afterward we think back on them and say, "That was fun" and wish they would happen again. After an enjoyable event we know that we have changed, that our self has grown: in some respect, we have become more complex as a result of it.

Experiences that give pleasure can also give enjoyment, but the two sensations are quite different. For instance, everybody takes pleasure in eating. To enjoy food, however, is more difficult. A gourmet enjoys eating, as does anyone who pays enough attention to a meal so as to discriminate the various sensations provided by it. As this example suggests, we can experience pleasure without any investment of psychic energy, whereas enjoyment happens only as a result of unusual investments of attention. A person can feel pleasure without any effort, if the appropriate centers in his brain are electrically stimulated, or as a result of the chemical stimulation of drugs. But it is impossible to enjoy a tennis game, a book, or a conversation unless attention is fully concentrated on the activity."

In short, enjoyment takes effort. You need to work a bit to achieve enjoyment. When it comes to food, may enjoy that gourmet meal you painstakingly cooked, presented, served and ate slowly and with intention, but you generally won't find enjoyment when you inhale a bag of potato chips. 

The key here is that enjoyment is the key to happiness and that all forms of pleasure may not necessarily lead to happiness. 

Are You READY to breakout of your shell?

The concept that we are killing ourselves with our behavior is not new. Since the beginning of recorded history, medicine has wrestled with the problem of saving people from themselves.  It can be argued that the foundation of modern medicine was laid in Greece at around 400BC by Hippocrates. Hippocrates was a passionate humanitarian, physician and philosopher. His words echo at the graduation ceremonies at every medical school in the country as doctors recite the Hippocratic Oath. His words: “Everything in excess is opposed to nature." And "It is hard to contend against one's heart's desire; for whatever it wishes to have it buys at the cost of soul." also echo the recognition that we, as a race, are in a race to kill ourselves. It is not surprising then, that good ‘ol Hippocrates, an avid exerciser himself, offered up one of the very first lifestyle prescriptions: "If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health." (Really, he said that – the internet told me)

Knowing is NOT the same as doing  

        If we have known of the miracle cure of a healthy lifestyle for 2400 years or more, why are so many of us still getting sick as a direct result of the lives we choose to lead. How could we have had this answer for all this time and still we have the problem? Maybe it is because many people, secretly (or not so secretly), do not want to change. This issue of people not wanting to change has been the subject of intense study. In the early 1980s, Drs Prochaska & DiClemente at the University of Rhode Island examined the phenomenon of this apparent resistance to change as part of their work to help lower cancer rates. What they observed was that behavior change was not, as previously thought, a singular event but a process that occurred over time. In other words, they found that people did not just quit smoking all at once although it may appear as if they had. To arrive at the moment of quitting, they actually had to go through a series of thought processes or stages leading up to the moment where they no longer smoked. Like drops in a bucket, these thoughts and actions accumulated until the bucket was full. Once the bucket was filled, the very next drop made it over flow.

        To a casual observer, it looks as if the bucket began to overflow at the moment that last drop rolled over the edge of the bucket. In a very real sense though, it began to overflow from the moment the first drop hit the bottom of the empty bucket.  As scientists, Dr.’s Prochaska & DiClemente were no casual observers. Through extensive study, they identified 5 distinct stages of change. They consolidated their work into a method of understanding how human beings can change and how we professionals can help them to do it. This method, called the Transtheoretical Model of Change, is based on the concept that people will only be able to make the changes that they are truly ready to make. By understanding how each particular behavior scores on a readiness to change scale, you can begin to attack those behaviors that are ripe for change while cultivating others for later harvest.

How R*E*A*D*Y are you?

        Based on the Transtheoretical model, I have developed the R*E*A*D*Y test. This is a helpful way to determine how ripe your behavioral fruit is for the harvest of change. When my clients and I consider a behavior for change, I ask them to take an honest look at the behavior; the more honest the look, the more useful the test. Knowing how the behavior scores will determine how aggressively we can shake the tree to release the fruit of change. Unlike real fruit, however, behaviors can be ripe for change and then jump right back onto the tree. We need the test to keep focused on only harvesting those behaviors that we can really change. By properly grading the behaviors, we can guarantee success and use that success as seeds to plant more fruit trees. 

Each letter of R*E*A*D*Y represents a specific stage of readiness and is described below.

        R – REFUSE - This is actually not a stage of readiness at all, it’s a stage of unreadiness.  In this stage we refuse to believe we have a problem.  We absolutely fail to recognize that there is anything wrong.  It is the ultimate expression of blissful ignorance.  It is this stage where the lying machine  is working overtime.  I’ll never forget the time my wife, concerned about my weight, served me a no fat, no salt soup.  I ate it and said “I would rather die than eat this stuff the rest of my life”.  The sad part was I meant it at the time; I was not ready to change. I did not even want to talk about it.  Maybe I was ready to change something but I was not ready to change that behavior.  It is important to understand that when you look at your bank of bad habits, some of the bank you will be ready to withdraw and some you will not.  You will find yourself at different stages of readiness for every single behavior that you need to change.  Many of the behaviors that you need to change, may not even make your list of bad habits!  They are in a hidden Swiss bank account of bad habits and your mind refuses to let you see them. What’s the best way to start telling yourself the truth? The best way to begin is with some basic accounting.  Explore your stories, your behaviors, your bank of bad habits and look for things you know you should change. Simply by exploring these behaviors you will be moving into the “E” stage.

E- EXPLORE:  This is where we begin to think about the  behaviors we want to change.  It’s where we start to recognize that there’s a problem.  It is here that we begin to at least consider that our stories are lies and that they are not doing us any good. In this stage we are just waking up to the fact that these behaviors are worth changing.  It is through this exploration that we can begin to make change possible. This exploration, however, takes place entirely in the mind. It is a time of contemplation. To make things happen you need to acquire all the knowledge and tools necessary to begin work.

A- AQUIRE    During this stage we begin to acquire what we need to make our changes work.  The acquisitions that we make include knowledge, equipment, motivation and mind set. In fact if you are reading this book you are in the acquire stage.  You are acquiring knowledge.  You have passed through the exploration stage. You considered your problem and you decided to set the wheels of change in motion. Your acquisition of knowledge is going to form the basis of your future actions. In addition to acquiring knowledge, you may also buy a piece of exercise equipment, join a health club or take a cooking course. This is where you begin to get things started.  Sometimes it is just acquiring the basics of a habit. When I wanted to start walking every night, I started by just walking out onto my front porch. I opened the door and stood there like an idiot. After a while, I felt so stupid that I just started walking. On the days I did not want to walk, I still opened the door and stood there. It took almost no effort to open the door and it was hard to find an excuse not to do it. I wonder if my neighbors still think I’m crazy? I was working to acquire the habit of walking. Even on the nights I did not walk, I worked on building the habit. At this stage, building the habit insures future action. Your commitment to this stage will determine your ability to follow through.  Once I crossed the threshold of that door and started down the street I was officially DOING.

D- DOING:

 Like in the scene from “Forrest Gump” where he just gets up and runs.  This is the point where we just start doing it.  This is the point of action; it is where the work gets done.  This is where behaviors begin to change. It is where “the rubber meets the road.”   Experts say it takes about 30 days to change a behavior.  If you can stay in action phase for at least 30 days then you will probably successfully change that behavior.  Of course I always thought good behaviors took a little longer and it seems bad behaviors can develop in an instant. Once you doing the behavior regularly it seems automatic, it becomes part of your personal story. It becomes part of your definition of YOU. Welcome to the YOU phase.

Y – YOU –This is the phase where you can’t imagine a world without the behavior. It is so much a part of you, you can barley even remember life before this change. The behavior becomes almost effortless. It is automatic because it has become organic to your mind. It is now part of your story. When this behavior is part of you it is hard to deny and hard to defy.  If it is part of your definition of yourself, it is an easy behavior for you to maintain.  It belongs to you;  it is you. It is the last stage of the behavior change process-- sort of.