Daring to monitor results

It’s my second day of being back on a food monitoring app, and already it’s interesting.  Apparently I lie to myself all the time – or rather, I ignore the need for any factual truth, and just assume that my snacking doesn’t really exist or have any effect.

This tendency to brush harsh truths under the carpet is very common.  It exists with addicts, drinkers, eaters, people with all sorts of maladaptive behaviours.  In other words, all of us.  It’s why we hate exams, reviews, inspections.  We would rather have the cushioning of looking away, of not really noticing.

Politically, you will notice that the whole world has a habit of adapting its attention to the news, depending on how able it feels to face harsh truths.  Politics as an art partly depends on drawing people’s attention to what we want them to see, and away from what we don’t want them to see.  In the same way, as individuals, we choose not to notice some things.

Think of your house on an unexpectedly sunny morning.  Suddenly, you see all the dust accumulating on the window sills, the fingerprints on the windows and photo frames, the food fragments on the floor.  They were always there, but today the sun is shining strongly and helping you to look.  Now you have to decide what to do about it.

Back to the food app.  I noticed not only my excessive snacking habits, but also my tendency to not want to record the full truth of what I have eaten.  I notice a selective memory, which it takes a lot of work to correct.  This is universal to human nature, and is in part a defensive strategy.  If we were fully conscious, all the time, of how much we fail to live consistently with our goals, then we might be racked with destructive self-challenge.

One of the benefits of more honest appraisal and monitoring, though, is growth and learning.  If we become more disciplined in our recording of the truth, then we can become more robust and resilient.  Of course, like politicians, we will always have a ready excuse as to why things have not gone according to plan.  But, to the extent that we can hold ourselves to the fire, we can change.