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January 31, 2011
In Today's Issue
- 1 Quick Technique To Burn More Fat
- How Your Brain Is Sabotaging Those New Year's Resolutions...
- Weight Loss Expert Loses 70lbs of Ugly Fat...
1 Quick Technique To Burn More Fat
Here's Your Free Presentation To Discover: The 1 sneaky technique to trick our bodies to burn more fat... How a unique, simple and quick NEW way of moving eliminates fat - Hint: it's the exact opposite of boring cardio, but with no cardio at all... How a tasty little dish eaten late at night actually boosted the most powerful fat loss hormone in our bodies while you sleep... Click through here now to discover how to burn more fat quicker today...*Disclosure: compensated affiliate*
How Your Brain Is Sabotaging Those New Year's Resolutions...
Dear Reader,
With 2011 well underway, it's time to ask how you're doing with those New Year's
resolutions? Cutting out junk food... being more active... stopping nail biting...
quitting (or cutting down) on smoking... or any resolution is a smart first step
toward real change.
What you need to understand when you're trying to stick with these pledges is that you're up against a biological mechanism that makes it hard to break bad habits. Bad habits it seems are wired into our brains.
But that's no reason to give up. In fact, understanding how this works might just present some ways to get good habits to take the place of the bad.
According to the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, Dr. Nora Volkow, an authority on the brain's pleasure pathway, when addressing bad habits we're fighting against the power of immediate reward. Being rewarded now is always more powerful than achieving a goal (any goal) sometime in the distant future. And when action and reward are involved, so is the brain chemical dopamine.
This pleasure-sensing chemical conditions the brain to want a reward over and over, reinforcing the connection each time. A dopamine-rich part of the brain, known as the striatum, memorizes rituals or routines that are linked to getting a particular reward. In time, environmental cues are able to trigger the striatum, making some behaviors automatic, not needing any real thought. Just think about how easy it is demolish a whole bar of chocolate in front of TV.
Much of what science knows about dopamine's role in habit formation comes from studies of alcohol and drug addition, but this chemical is a player in more common bad habits like overeating and smoking.
The thing is, all of us tend to overestimate our ability to resist temptation, and this undermines any attempt to get rid of bad habits according to experimental psychologist Loran Nordgren, an assistant professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, who studies the struggle between willpower and temptation.
In one experiment, Nordgren measured whether heavy smokers could watch a movie that romanticized their habit without taking a puff. They'd be paid according to their level of temptation - holding an unlit cigarette while watching? Keeping the pack on the table? Or did the pack need to be out of sight, in another room?
Continues below...
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How Your Brain Is Sabotaging Those New Year's Resolutions... Continued...
Subjects who thought they could resist temptation tended to hold the unlit cigarette,
and were more likely to light up than those who were smart enough not to have
the pack in hand. Studies like this might eventually lead to techniques that
help recovering drug addicts face down real world temptations.
What about being paid to change a bad behavior? While this might work to exploit
the action/reward connection, it's not clear just how well a financial incentive
substitutes for the reward the brain has come to know and love. In a study of
smokers, paying smokers at General Electric up to $750 to kick the habit tripled
the number who did. A similar study that involved dollars for weight lost found
no difference, and temptations in our environment might explain why.
After all, where can you smoke in public anymore? Yet walk down the street and
you'll see plenty of sources of high calorie, tasty treats that you can buy right
now... and eat anywhere you like.
Now that you understand a bit more about how the habits work, here are some tips
from the experts that can help you break the hold bad habits have on you...
- Repeat the new behavior, follow your new routine at the same
time of day every day, as this makes the striatum recognize the habit. Eventually
if you don't perform the new activity, you feel bad.
- Cut out the rituals linked to your bad habit... no eating
while watching TV, no first thing coffee. Sounds simple, but so many make things
harder for themselves by not looking for cues in the environment that trigger
bad behavior and guarding against them, removing them if you can.
- Exercise as this raises dopamine levels, so your brain feels
good, even if your muscles don't.
- Reward yourself with something you really want once you reach
a goal or a milestone.
- Watch your stress as this can reactivate the bad habit circuits.
Do all you can to manage yours.
To your good health,
Kirsten Whittaker
Daily Health Bulletin Editor
P.S: Nike...Ebay...Amazon and Walmart pay for your opinion
Fortune 500 companies make their money by people like you and I buying their products.
But how do they know what we want to buy? Easy they pay to find out the products we like, where we shop and what we buy.
In a nutshell big businesses need people to tell them what products to make.
People like Michelle McAllister - a 34 year old full-time mother of two. Michelle and many others help "big business" make millions, although they haven't got any marketing or sales experience.
In fact Michelle knows absolutely nothing about business, but she does know what she likes...
And that's exactly the information these companies are after and will pay you for.
Click through to discover how Michelle quickly profits by telling big companies her opinion and how you can do it too...
*Disclosure: compensated affiliate*
Sources:
http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/health/articles/2011/01/03
/new_years_resolutions_brain_can_sabotage_success/
National Institute of Health info on the brain and nervous system:
http://health.nih.gov/category/BrainandNervousSystem
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, info on brain:
http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/brain_basics/know_your_brain.htm
Dr. Nora Volkow, National Institute on Drug Abuse:
http://www.nida.nih.gov/about/welcome/volkowpage.html
Loran Nordgren, Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management:
http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/directory
/nordgren_loran.aspx
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