Find Companions for Healthy Habits

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote “There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.” Which leads to me wondering, what’s the relationship between love and healthy eating habits?
     Actually, what started me thinking about this while reading the Nietzsche quote are the results of a Northern Kentucky University study exploring that relationship among U.S. college students. The answer to the question is hinted at by another Nietzsche quote—“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”
     The Kentucky researchers distinguished between friendship love and sexual love. The first type did increase the likelihood of a couple making healthy eating choices. The sexual love did not. In fact, a full plate of other research indicates sexual appetites arouse all sorts of appetites which can lead to all sorts of unhealthy behaviors.
     Friendship love instead arouses mutual obligation and motivates discipline when temptations appear. 
     Reporting in may not be enough, though. Resisting temptation can take clenching your fists and saying, “No, I don’t.”
     Researchers at University of Houston and Boston College assigned study participants to one of three groups based on what they were instructed to say to companions and to themselves to resist temptations:

• “No, I won’t” 
• “No, I can’t” 
• “No, I don’t” 

     The “No, I don’t” group reported substantially more success than did those in the other two groups.
     University of Chicago and National University of Singapore research findings suggest that clenching your fists at the moment of temptation can help strengthen your willpower. If you bunch up your fists, extend your fingers, contract your calf muscles, or stiffen your biceps too far in advance of facing the temptation, you’ll fatigue yourself, with the result that you’re actually more likely to succumb to the unwise alternative. However, when the muscle-clenching was done at the time of temptation, the study participants were better able to accept shorter-term discomfort in the service of longer-term gain.
     It really works only when you want to resist the temptation. If you prefer to dive in and sin, your companion who is watching might notice how your clenched fists are paired with an excited smile on your face.
     Those retailers who succeed when they empower a client not to do something—such as weight loss and substance abuse clinics—do well to encourage going through programs with a supportive companion.

Click below for more: 
Clench Your Fists to Fight Temptation 
Teach “I Don’t” In Place of “I Can’t”