Using Gtd to stay on a diet

[Guest]

What do you think about using gtd for staying on a diet? E.g. You want to avoid some foods...

so instead of giving in to urges to eat them you add it to your inbox and then re-evaluate your diet at the weekly review and also take into account all your urges.

The point is that you make a decision about the diet and change it but only when you're in a good mental state at the weekly review instead of at an impulse. You are not even restricting yourself this way, you're just delaying the decision.

Your thoughts?

 

[Spalding]

Sounds good to me if it works for you. I use a peer group, i.e. in a non-food-related Internet forum we have a daily thread sharing diet successes and failures and experiences. That is working fairly well for me.

I think that The Weekly Review from GTD is a big help in just about anything. Feedback is always useful if you can use it to implement change.

 

[TesTeq]

Avoiding vs. choosing.

What do you think about using gtd for staying on a diet? E.g. You want to avoid some foods...

I use a different approach. A diet is not about avoiding bad food - it's about choosing healthy food.

 

[supergtdman]

I use a different approach. A diet is not about avoiding bad food - it's about choosing healthy food.

It's about both to be really honest. I choose healthy food as well, it's just not a bullet proof solution when Lizard Brain enters the scene and it's not going to work all the time. You can't be choosing consciously all the time, in fact you use emotions to make most decisions.

So my approach is more about what to do when all else fails but you still want to stay in control. It's not meant to be used often. It's a systematic approach which utilizes GTD instead of relying on internal process which you can't control indefinitely regardless of how good you are at making great choices for most of the time. Nobody can make 100% perfect choice all the time, you know. So I delay the choice when all else fails. Obviously it's not at the core of my diet.

For example you could say that you want to avoid car accidents. Your main approach would be to drive safely but you can't be perfect 100% all the time anyway so you also use seat belts.
My approach is more like seat bealts and your advice is similar to saying - I'm just driving safely. Well good luck but I'm using both!

Drive safely as much as you want but if you crash - you just crash. It might happen or it might never happen. My approach is actually kind of like teleporting out of the crash before it hurts me so it doesn't really matter whether it happens or not. It's much more advanced.

As David Allen said somewhere something along the lines of

The really smart people know that they can't be smart all the time so they just make decisions at those times when they are smart.
People who think that they are smart all the time aren't really smart.

 

[TesTeq]

I think I am smart so I am not really smart!

You can't be choosing consciously all the time, in fact you use emotions to make most decisions.

Really? Ask my family. Ask my wife's mother. She has learned many years ago what my eating habits are.

For example you could say that you want to avoid car accidents. Your main approach would be to drive safely but you can't be perfect 100% all the time anyway so you also use seat belts.
My approach is more like seat bealts and your advice is similar to saying - I'm just driving safely. Well good luck but I'm using both!

I am sure that there was nothing about seat belts in my advice. And avoiding car accidents in my case involves:

1. Making sure that my car is in good shape.
2. Asking a question: Is it really necessary to drive there?
3. Asking a question: Which route is safer, which is less crowded?
4. Asking a question: What time of day is the safest?
5. Using seat belts.
6. Driving carefully.
7. Predicting other driver's behaviour.

As David Allen said somewhere something along the lines of

The really smart people know that they can't be smart all the time so they just make decisions at those times when they are smart.
People who think that they are smart all the time aren't really smart.

I think I am smart so I am not really smart!

 

[supergtdman]

Really? Ask my family. Ask my wife's mother. She has learned many years ago what my eating habits are.

I think I am smart so I am not really smart!

You missed "all the time" part which is the key.

I think you're not really on any particular diet exactly.

 

[TesTeq]

No bones!

You missed "all the time" part which is the key.

Yes. That proves the point that I'm not really smart!

I think you're not really on any particular diet exactly.

A diet is a set of food-related rules. I hate meat with bones. So the first rule of my diet is "NO BONES!".

 

[supergtdman]

@TesTeq
I was hoping to get more serious and well thought out replies to this topic

 

[Oogiem]

What do you think about using gtd for staying on a diet? E.g. You want to avoid some foods...

so instead of giving in to urges to eat them you add it to your inbox and then re-evaluate your diet at the weekly review and also take into account all your urges.

Interesting way to approach it. Personally I'm using GTD to do some fitness and life and diet changes by having specific projects. For example I have a recurring project right now to do a specific Nerd Fitness body weight workout 2 times a week. It comes up as a next action for me so I am reminded of it. SOmetimes I skip it but at least the idea is in my face on a regular basis and I am slowly improving how often I do that workout. For diet stuff I haven't found GTD nearly as helpful. Instead I just reduced the amount of junk food in the house over time so that now about the only junk thing we have available now is crackers and bread. I found for me just not having the stuff in the house is better.

 

[Suelin23]

I need to lose weight so I've set up two projects, one is exercise the other meals. My meals project involves researching healthy recipes, calculating their calorie value to make sure they are suitable, planning my meals each week using a spreadsheet, tracking my daily calories in an iPhone app.

 

[mthar1]

Someone posted about a procrastination book recently on another thread here which made me look up the book on Amazon and read the reviews to determine whether to buy and read the book or not.

Finding one review that summarized the key points of the book I decided to save myself time and decide to satisfice with the review summary.

Getting to my point, one of the three reasons for procrastination according to the book is impulsiveness, something that I can really identify with very well.

What you seem to talk about here is some kind of cure for impulsiveness - or at least quarantining the results of the impulsiveness by incubating them in an inbox for more enlightened processing. I have decided to be more strict on myself in doing this for all sorts of matters, but I figured it very much be valid also for diet.

 

[TesTeq]

Searching for good food and planning meals accordingly.

I need to lose weight so I've set up two projects, one is exercise the other meals. My meals project involves researching healthy recipes, calculating their calorie value to make sure they are suitable, planning my meals each week using a spreadsheet, tracking my daily calories in an iPhone app.

That's the approach I prefer. Not avoiding bad food but searching for good food and planning meals accordingly.

 

[supergtdman]

@TesTeq
that's because you have your diet on cruise control

Again I'm using both approaches, i.e. choosing good AND avoiding bad. It's not about one approach or the the other, it's one AND the other in case if you need it.

If you don't have cravings for something which isn't a part of your diet then you don't need this. It really depends on how restrective your diet is.

E.g. Let's say you have your perfect diet planned out and have all kinds of projects and actions related to it. That's great.

But then you have a bad day, feel tired, lose control and start craving something which is restricted in your diet.
At this point it doesn't matter anymore how much time you've spent searching for "good food" or how much you planned your meals. Logic doesn't work because you're not smart at this point. But you still want to stay in control.
So this is what my approach is about. Staying in control when all else fails. The best thing to do is to not be on a diet at all and just simply prefer only healthy food all the time but that's not the point. That's just obvious common sense in my view.

Maybe your diet is not sustainable and the problem is not in willpower but that's a totally different topic, so let's just assume that the diet itself is perfect but you still get cravings for restricted food.

 

[SiobhanBR]

I think this is a great idea

Using your inbox to buy you some time to make the decision is a great idea. I do this when shopping - I really want to buy that $200 pair of shoes but I was shopping for $60 jeans. So I add them to my inbox and go home. If in one or two days I'm still thinking about those shoes, I may decide to go back and buy them. The reality of how often I'll wear them and where I'll store them and are they worth $200 to me can then be mulled over when I'm in a better state to make the decision.

I can see this working perfectly with food. I really want to buy that bag of potato chips (my weakness) so I put it on the inbox and go home without them. After a healthy dinner, I ask myself again - "Do I really want to go out in the snowstorm to go back to the store to get those chips?" Sometimes the answer is yes, but more often than not it's no.

Of course, sometimes you just need to splurge on yourself! Moderation in all things including moderation.

 

[supergtdman]

@SiobhanBR
Yep. The key is that you're not even restricting yourself, you're just delaying the decision.

Also I think even just the process of writting stuff down already helps in itself.

It forces you to explicitly formulate your impulses and look at them from a different perspective.
And then you can notice that they go against your previous commitments and wonder why would you want to change your previous commitments when nothing in the world has changed. It's the state of your mind that has changed.
It's all very obvious as long as you externalize your thoughts instead of processing them internally.

 

[Suelin23]

Ok, so you put chocolate in your inbox - how does that stop you eating the chocolate? And how do you process that thought? Doesn't it remind you of the desire to eat chocolate? And how would you avoid eating it when you now have another reminder of it?

 

[supergtdman]

Ok, so you put chocolate in your inbox - how does that stop you eating the chocolate? And how do you process that thought? Doesn't it remind you of the desire to eat chocolate? And how would you avoid eating it when you now have another reminder of it?

Good questions, I think how exactly to implement is going to be personal for everyone.

However here is what I do.

If you tell yourself - I must avoid chocolate so I'm just going to put it in inbox to avoid it then it's not going to work because you can't fool yourself. You're just restricting yourself instead of delaying.

However the key is that you don't restrict anything, e.g. chocolate. You are always open to anything and you fully trust yourself and the system, i.e. whenever you put chocalate in your inbox you know that you'd really seriously consider eating it but later and in a different state of mind. I don't process into a next action - "buy chocolate". I personally process it to a list of things to review at the weekly review, it's called "diet-my plan-updates". However it could also go to someday-maybe list, I guess it doesn't really matter as long as you trust yourself to review it.

Yes, you do have another reminder about something which isn't a part of your diet but it's not in your head anymore as long as you trust the system and know that you will seriously consider it later instead of just fooling yourself.

Another key thing is that you make a decision about the diet upfront and write it down, in other words externalize your commitment.
This allows you to keep eating on auto-pilot without re-thinking what you'll eat until the weekly review. Otherwise it's not going to work because it'd be impossible to delay decisions about what to eat.

At the weekly review you are going to seriously re-evaluate your diet and take into account all your previous urges or how I call it "diet-my plan-updates". You will be using you're conscious thinking mode at this point instead of emotional thinking.
So regardless of whatever you decide to do you'll feel good about it. And that's what really matters in the end.
The goal is not to restrict anything but to feel good about your decisions.
It's a subtle but key difference because restrictions don't work while delaying does work.

I think this is very advanced approach and I don't know if it's going to work for other people at all. It certainly won't work for non GTDers, I guess.

Ps

Doesn't it remind you of the desire to eat chocolate?

Do you ever process your inbox and wonder "Who wrote this?" and just trash the item? This is because you write stuff down in one state of mind and then process it in a different state of mind. You are reminded about it but it doesn't matter.

 

[TesTeq]

I strongly believe in positive reinforcements - not the negative ones.

Again I'm using both approaches, i.e. choosing good AND avoiding bad. It's not about one approach or the the other, it's one AND the other in case if you need it.

If you don't have cravings for something which isn't a part of your diet then you don't need this. It really depends on how restrective your diet is.

E.g. Let's say you have your perfect diet planned out and have all kinds of projects and actions related to it. That's great.

But then you have a bad day, feel tired, lose control and start craving something which is restricted in your diet.

I really don't want to hijack your thread so let's agree to disagree since I totally don't buy this "avoiding/restricting" part of your approach. In case of my diet I've managed to redirect my urges to healthy food so I have no problem with bad eating on bad days. A good habit has pushed out a bad habit. I strongly believe in positive reinforcements - not the negative ones.

 

[supergtdman]

I really don't want to hijack your thread so let's agree to disagree since I totally don't buy this "avoiding/restricting" part of your approach.

Ok, but you totally don't get the essence of this approach either...

The goal is not to restrict anything but to feel good about your decisions.
It's a subtle but key difference because restrictions don't work while delaying does work.

Ps
it's also all about your standards. I'm sure if you make standards about your diet much higher than they are now then you won't be able to just naturally happen to follow the diet for the rest of your life, regardless of all the positive reinforcements.

 

[Suelin23]

I think it would be useful to record the reason for the craving as well as the food desired. Right now I am craving chocolate. I'm not hungry, as I've just finished my pumpkin soup. But it's the end of my lunch break, I feel like some fun or pleasure before returning to work, and I often use chocolate to satisfy that need. There's probably a lot of reasons why I crave food other than hunger, and by collecting those reasons/thoughts I can brainstorm ways to satisfy the need without food. I think this is particularly suited to comfort eaters like myself.