There is a reason why people don’t typically jump off of a second story balcony. It is self-evident that doing so would, at minimum, incur a sprained or broken ankle. As a child I liked to experiment with gravity like this on occasion. I would jump off of one step, then jump off of two steps, and so on until I reached my personal record of a great leap of about eight steps. When a six-year-old jumps off of eight steps, there are bodily consequences that one cannot help but notice. Sore feet and ankles. That feeling of having the wind knocked out of you. Pain. And that pain is important because it is protective feedback that tells you that you’re getting close to a dangerous line. It’s a line that says jumping off of nine stair steps in a single bound might cause you to break.
In addition to pain as a natural boundary-establishing mechanism, we also have the capacity to create a vivid mental concept of our own sudden demise. While most of us have never felt the pain that results from stepping into traffic and being struck by a swiftly-moving taxi cab, our imaginations, paired with an instinct for self-preservation, will keep our feet firmly planted on the sidewalk. There is no need for previous experience in this case. The idea of being struck by a car or falling off a cliff or drinking poison is so potent in our imaginations that we easily keep ourselves from it. For example, we would never eat a delicious looking cupcake if we were told it was laced with arsenic. We can visualize the imminent consequences and it is effortless to restrain. Even if the cupcake looked extremely tasty, the knowledge that its consumption would lead to our immediate and certain death would deter us every single time.
The problem is that chronic consumption of extremely tasty cupcakes will in fact likely lead to your death. The trouble though is that this death is not immediate or certain and therefore will probably not deter the short term behaviour. The other problem is that a single cupcake won’t kill you either. It would take many cupcakes, consumed over decades of life, to cause such a nasty fate.
In the absence of immediate and dire consequences, when faced with the average cupcake, we indulge. If you are a compulsive eater like me, even daily and extreme eating behaviours along with the consequences of obesity and ill health do not seem to add up to something as vivid as the consequence of consuming an arsenic-laced cupcake.
I find it fascinating that statistically, millions of people will eat themselves into a diabetic state so severe that they will lose limbs. At the same time, one study revealed that most obese patients would prefer to be perfectly thin and missing a limb rather than morbidly obese while retaining said limbs. It’s an enigma.
So what is the solution to the problem of “future discounting”?
The trick, I think, is to find a way to “recombine” the behaviour of overeating or compulsive eating with the painful consequences that inevitably emerge over time. For me, that has involved viewing food overindulgence from an appropriately dire perspective. To me, that cupcake IS poison. When I find myself wanting a second helping when I already feel full, I imagine my stomach being injured inside me.
By imagining that the consequences are happening NOW and happening EXTREMELY I find that I am better able to abstain from the foods (and food amounts) that I know will lead to my untimely death.