Making Time for Health
Learn why it is so important to plan in advance for
your health success!
By Douglas Lisle, Ph.D.
When it comes to healthful living, knowing what to do isn’t
always enough! Translating good intentions into good behavior can be hard to
do. One of the biggest obstacles to healthful living is the problem
psychologists refer to as “channel factors.”
To understand what is meant by “channel factors,” think about how water
runs down the side of a mountain. It “channels” itself into the path of least
resistance, doesn’t it? Even minor obstacles, such as a small rock in the path,
can “channel” the water into a different direction. Psychologists have noticed
something similar in human behavior: Behavior has a strong tendency to be
channeled into paths of least resistance. In fact, studies have shown that
often seemingly minor situational factors or obstacles are actually major
determinants of what people do in real life.
This is a very important lesson for those of us who are pursuing better
health. We must pay attention to these “channel” factors because they can
dramatically influence whether or not we actually engage in health-promoting
behavior that we know is so important.
A surprising study
Psychologists John Darley
and C. Bateson decided to investigate this “little
factors are important” aspect of channel factors in a study on helping
behavior. They based their study on the parable of the “Good Samaritan,” using
young seminary students at the Princeton Theological Seminary as subjects. The
students were perfect subjects because in class they had been studying the
parable of the Good Samaritan, a man who stops to help a stranger in distress.
Here is how the study worked. Students were called in
- one by one - by the experimenter. Each student, in turn, was told that he was
to give a brief talk in a nearby building on the Good Samaritan parable. What
the students didn’t know was that they were secretly being divided into two
experimental groups.
Seminarians on the run
When a student from the first group was called in to
the experimenter, he was told, “It will be a few minutes before they’re ready
for you, but you might as well head on over.” When a student from the second
group was called in to the experimenter, he was told, “You’re late; they were
expecting you a few minutes ago, so you’d better hurry.” Except for these two
different comments about how much time they had, the instructions were exactly
the same for all of the students.
On the way to the other building, each of the students
came upon a man slumped in a doorway, head down, coughing and groaning
Of the students who were told that they had “plenty of
time,” 63% stopped to offer assistance. Only 10% of the students who were told
they “were late” stopped to help, and some of them even stepped over the body
of the person who was “in their way”!
This study demonstrates that “niceness” was not the primary determining
factor in whether or not assistance was offered. The main determining factor
was a channel factor, a subtle situational factor – “you have plenty of time”
vs. “you are late” - that largely influenced whether or not the needed helpful behavior
actually took place. The seminarians who “were late” would have been six times
more likely to stop if they only “had more time.”
Making the time for health
When assisting people in making the transition to
healthful living, the most frequent problem I hear is frustration with what I
call “convenience factors.” At the Center for Conservative Therapy and at our
Health Promotion Clinic, I conduct group therapy workshops to assist people in
planning successful lifestyles.
Among the issues on which we focus our attention and
take very seriously are these subtle situational channel factors. We have found
that if people don’t get themselves organized, they simply “won’t have time” to
live healthfully, and we all know where that leads. Some of the strategies we
utilize are discussed below.
Some helpful strategies
One key strategy to eating more whole natural foods is
to make sure that an abundance is available! People
have a natural tendency to not want to waste food, and whole natural foods will
eventually “go bad” if not eaten. That is why so many people in the world are
eating mostly processed foods - because these foods are convenient and are
rarely “wasted.” If you look on some cereal boxes, the manufacturers suggest
that the food is so well preserved (with chemicals) that it will be good for a
couple of years!
One “channel factor” issue to work in your favor is to
have an abundance of whole natural foods in the house. If you have to run to
the store every time you want to make a healthful meal, the “channel factors”
will very often defeat you. That is why it is so important to keep plenty of
healthful food in the house, even if it means you buy too much at first and you
have to throw some away. You may feel uncomfortable throwing food away, but
until you get adept at buying the right amount, it is just part of the price of
healthful living.
Some of our patients get hungry in the car, and the
ease of pulling into a fast-food driveway to satisfy their hunger is just too
easy, relative to the hassle of ferreting out a healthy meal or snack. Once
again, planning ahead for these moments can really improve your health habits.
Keep a small cooler or other container in the car, with some healthy snacks
tucked away. Some of those snacks might be apples, oranges, cashews, or cold
baked potatoes or yams. One of our patients packs a small bottle of low-sodium
ketchup to go along with her baked potatoes, and she raves about it.
A weekly menu plan also can be helpful. If you have a
standard weekly menu, with a corresponding shopping list ready, it can make
your week sail along, meal after healthful meal, according to a preset
schedule. Of course, if you want to deviate from the schedule, feel free! But
the idea is that the more habitual we make good habits, the easier they are to
follow, and the more often healthy behaviors will result. If you are planning
and shopping every few days, with everything different, the decisions and
hassles can become channel factors, and then it can get easier to “slip.”
Finding your own way
The above suggestions aren’t meant to be prescriptions
for how you should do things. Everyone needs to find his or her own way. But if
you are having trouble staying on track, these kinds of ideas might well be
worth a try. If you are “slipping” a lot, it may be partly because of some
subtle situational factors. And getting more control of these “channel factors” can sometimes make
the difference between success and failure.
Douglas
Lisle, Ph.D., is the director of clinical research at the TrueNorth Health Center
in Penngrove, California. For more information visit www.healthpromoting.com