You’re Not Making Bad Decisions, You’re Making the Wrong Decisions

You just made a decision to read this post. If the next few words aren’t compelling enough, you will stop reading (the pressure!) and decide to scroll Medium for other articles, jump to Instagram, take a nap, call a friend, or put the phone down and fucking move. (If you stop reading, please do that.)

Our daily lives are a series of decisions on what to wear, where to go, what to eat, how to move, etc. As humans, we pride ourselves on our rational decision-making. Our large prefrontal cortex, where rational thought lives, is what makes us so special, giving us an evolutionary advantage not only to survive and multiply but remake the world to our liking.

The problem is that we are horrible decision-makers when it comes to eating well and moving well. Your horrible decision-making isn’t because you’re weak-willed. As Robin Williams’ character says to Matt Damon’s in Good Will Hunting, “It’s not your fault.” Williams repeats it over and over because a lifetime of trauma, self-blame, and shame prevents Damon from accepting it until he collapses in sobs into Williams’ arms. Well, it’s not your fault, either. The overeating and sedentariness is the result of decades of living in a culture that has designed highly processed, calorie-dense food and sedentariness into your life, making these counter-productive eating and moving behaviors habitual.

Eating well and moving well is not the norm but the exception. Worse, eating highly processed, calorie-dense food and not moving (as we drive cars, scroll social media, stream videos, and play video games) are highly addictive, habit-forming activities that are deeply engrained in our subconscious. So when we sense a cultural trigger, we eat like shit and veg out without even thinking about it (or knowing it is harmful).

But that’s crazy, right? Our large prefrontal cortex is what gave humans the ability to reason, and was our evolutionary advantage to survive and thrive. But, it turns out that making decisions is very energy-expensive for the brain, and rational decisions require more glucose than subconscious decisions. So to conserve energy, the brain automates a lot of decision-making. Like a computer program that creates an algorithm for repetitive tasks, the brain does the same with our repetitive behaviors, writing scripts for nearly half of our daily decisions. We call these scripts “habits” and when your brain senses a trigger, your subconscious brain just follows the script.

For as long as you’ve been alive, your habits have been coded by a calorie-dense, sedentary culture that is triggered by highly addictive products and advertising, leading to poor health outcomes.

We choose a few slices of pizza over a salad with grilled chicken because the pizza is designed and advertised to trigger subconscious pathways in our brain originally meant to motivate our ancestors to seek out food in an environment ruled by scarcity. The first time you had pizza, your body sent a whole host of signals to the brain that said, “Tastes amazing! Lots of calories! If you ever see this again, eat it!” That was helpful when our ancestors encountered honey for the first time in the wild, but not when there is calorie-dense food all around you. The next time you see a pizza ad, smell it, or talk about it, your brain sends a signal (dopamine) that motivates you to seek out and destroy pizza! Papa John’s, Domino’s, Pizza Hut, and all food companies know this, so they design their product to maximize this dopamine response (they call it the “Bliss Point”), ensuring that when you think about their food (via ads, marketing, word of mouth), you get a massive hit of dopamine and are highly motivated to seek it out and eat it, not just the next time, but every time. (Social media, streaming, and gaming companies do the same thing with their products. That’s why Netflix auto-starts the next show in a series, Facebook has infinite scroll, and casinos let you win just enough.)

Movement is the opposite. While we are designed to move, we are also designed to conserve energy, so unless we need food (which was often for nearly all of human history) or having sex, we are motivated to chill. Your body is so good at conserving energy that while exercising, your body reduces the energy used by non-critical processes (digestion, immune system, etc.) so the energy you expend doesn’t overly deplete your energy stores and increase your need for calories. Now, with little required movement in our lives, we chill a lot and store a lot of energy (fat) that is never needed.

None of this is your fault. If you were born 20,000 years ago, you would have a much different body type and die from an accident or infectious disease. But while it is not your fault that you live in a culture mismatched with how your body was designed to thrive, it is your problem. You need to recode the habits to drive your behaviors towards better health outcomes or suffer the consequences.

Success is not mastering the ability to make better decisions in the moment. If you are deciding what to eat when you are hungry or if and how to workout when you wake up, you’ve already lost. You may have the willpower to make some good decisions in the moment, but not the ability to override the subconscious habits you’ve formed over a lifetime.

Habits are not formed rationally. They are formed by creating environments that provide the triggers for good habits and remove the ones for bad ones, and strengthen them through consistent repetition, and reward.

So what do you do?

Make decisions in advance, when your rational brain is in full control. You need to design good behaviors into your life.

For eating well, the first decision you need to make is, “What foods do I eat and what foods do I not eat?” Then buy the food you eat and that is the only food in your home. Do not bring the food you don’t eat into your home. This erects an enormous barrier (having to leave your house to get it) so when your subconscious is triggered and runs the “eat pizza!” script, you have the space and time to stop it and or run a new script. I don’t eat sugar (I’m a sugar addict) and don’t have sugar in the house. For snacks, I have nuts (new script). I was buying sweet chili pistachios. But I was eating the entire bag of nuts because they were highly palatable and drove rapid, repetitive eating. Now I buy plain pistachios (newer script) and can do just a handful (…or two). It would be even better if I bought pistachios in the shell so it slowed me down even more. Eating out is harder, but set rules. Mine are to have a healthy snack before to reduce cravings, no bread before the meal, high protein entree, replace fries with salad, no dessert, and no alcohol during the week. Another great practice is food prep because you are making a rational decision on what to eat for the whole week and removing the need for a decision at mealtime when you are most susceptible to the tempting powers of your subconscious mind. You will make mistakes, good! Just make them on the fringe and not multiple times in a row.

Movement is no different. The first decision you need to make is to exercise. Unfortunately, unless you are one of the rare people who regularly and routinely move as part of their job, you have to re-incorporate movement and exercise into your life. Choose exercise you enjoy and will do (as you become more fit, the list expands). Then determine when you will work out, lock it into your schedule, and just show up. Once you’re there just start and do 10 mins. You will be shocked that once you get to 10 minutes, you are highly likely to do more.

Einstein likely never said, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it,” but whoever did was on to something. We cannot expect to create positive health outcomes from the culture that is driving our current poor health epidemic. That doesn’t mean you cannot make decisions that create a positive health culture for yourself, your family, and your community. There are millions of people seeking and doing it and as Margret Mead did say, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

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Thank you for reading!

Disclaimer: I am not a doctor and this post is not medical advice. Please consult your doctor and engage with them on the topics of eating well and moving well and the impact it has on your health.