‘Once you POP you can’t STOP’
The Pringles Effect
Do you like Potato Crisps? I love them! Usually, when I open a bag of chips, I just start munching away like there is no tomorrow. Its like some kind of pre-programmed reaction. And if you are like me, you just reach into the pack, pull out a chip put it into your mouth…and keep repeating this until there is nothing left in the pack. And I am not sure about you, but after I finish, I just feel so guilty and horrible and most often…pukish. It was like the MSG in the chips were compelling me to just put it all in my mouth. And most of the time, we don’t even look at the pack right, and we don’t see the chips because their are in colourful and attractive packaging, we just unconsciously dig in.
If you have read my previous posts on What My Eating Habits Taught Me About Love And Intimacy and Weight Loss Experiment: Diminishing Marginal Utility + Some Discipline At Lunch, you know that there has been emotional trauma that had been projected to my eating habits. And after having had many breakthroughs during the lockdown in 2020 with regards to my childhood emotional trauma, I have been thinking about this as well.
So once again, I tried to hack my brain. What I did was, as soon as I got a pack of chips, I opened it and put it into a clear, see through jar, just emptied it. And this strange thing happened, I was able to just close the bottle and set chips aside. And I did not have the craving to eat all the chips. When I EXPOSED the Chips to my brain, and let it know that HERE IT IS, you can have it at any time that you want to…I did not want to anymore. I still like chips, I still like eating them, but now I know that I KNOW where they are and how I can have them, I am not obsessed with it anymore.
When things are hidden from us, specially things that makes us feel good (like comfort food) and /or things that we like, and we Don’t know WHERE they are coming from, we tend to just keep consuming them like there is no tomorrow (specially if these are things that we are not usually exposed to). And most of the time, these things are not even good for us. But we keep munching away anyways, because we are blinded to its origins. And because we don’t now where they are coming from, we don’t know if we will be able to get them again.
It is important for us to know Where things are, and How those things get to us, so that we can pace ourselves, either we stock them up for a later day and/or consume them consciously. Maybe this is what we need to teach our children as well. Not just WHAT things are but WHERE they come from and HOW we come to possess them. We generally do an OK job of educating kids on the physical aspects of life and the world like this. But what about the Emotional and Mental aspects. Things like Love, Security, Compassion, Kindness…WHERE do these emotional and mental states come from and HOW do we experience them. What happens when people who are supposed to give us those emotions withhold them, hide them and act as if we are privileged to even get them in the first place?
We are so busy sating yes to and indulging in ‘feel-good’ commodities, the origins which of are hidden from us, that we are most often blind to healthier options which are right in from of us. And then we wonder why we are always sick!
DENIAL OF THE GOOD THINGS IN LIFE. Saying NO to the Good things. That is why we always have the lousy things.
