Think Thin! Behavior Control of Dieting part 3

    The use of thoughts as reward or punishment is enormously convenient if you can make it work, because thoughts are always available. however, each person must find the tech nique that fits his own life and convenience. and he must use it in a formal and systematic way that is, set it up as if it were an operating manual for driving a car.

  let’s analyze how it worked with me.

 it depended on the fact that eating is automatic, my eating behavior and yours being governed by signals to start eating. hunger may also be triggered by a glance at the clock, a TV commercial, a feeling of anxiety. on the day back in 1956:

Think Thin! Behavior Control of Dieting part 2

Hink Thin! Behavior Control of Dieting

  I recount that sad, terrifying moment because of a curious phenomenon that occurred when I began to try to lose weight eight years later: lunchtime. a cafeteria. like an addict, I am drawn to hot table with its corned beef and French fried potatoes. at the sight of corned beef, I actually feel my jaw working. and then, an image of my father’s face as i last saw it flashes before me. i am appalled .I try to turn off the picture by moving away from the hot table. i take a salad. the picture something pleasant: my forthcoming trip to Europe anything to get that hospital scene off the screen of my mind. but note: i ended up with the salad rather than the corned beef. and it happened day after day.

Think Thin! Behavior Control of Dieting part 1

Think Thin! Behavior Control of Dieting

By earl ubell

Don’t look in this article for menus, calorie counters or weight tables. here instead, is a scientific technique that can change your eating habits for the rest of your life and become the key to making that life last longer.

   the technique is called behavior control, and is based on the reward and punishment ideas of B.F. skinner and the many psychologists who followed him. I came upon it quite by accident. the year was 1956 . I weighed 190 pounds. for a five foot, ten inch man at the age of 30 i was 35 pounds when he died of a coronary heart attack in 1948, at the age of 44. his diet had been rich in high calorie, high fat foods, as mine was. as a science reporter, I understood well the real township between overweight and his misfortune.

   on the day my father died, I arrived a few minutes after his last heartbeat . the picture of his final agony was burned into my mind: jaw drawn back, mouth slightly open, skin gray . I shall never forget it.