Why We Blow It When We're Tired
Imagine yourself at the end of a really long, hard day. Let's say it's the most exhausting of days: moving day. You're completely exhausted. Even your hair feels tired. Cooking is certainly out of the question. You don't even have the energy to locate a pan, plate, and fork, much less put them to use. Clearly it's going to be a take-out night.
Within a block of your new place are three restaurants. One is a little bistro with fresh salads and paninis. Another is a Chinese place; the greasy, salty smells emanating from within make the back of your mouth tingle. There's also a cute mom-and-pop pizzeria where the locals enjoy cheesy slices twice the size of their faces. To which restaurant do you drag your tired, aching body? Which kind of cuisine would you prefer to enjoy on your new floor? By contrast, consider what your choice might be if the meal were after an afternoon spent relaxing in the backyard with a good book.
In case you haven't noticed, on stressful days many of us give in to temptation and choose one of the less healthy alternatives. Chinese takeout and pizza are practically synonymous with moving day, conjuring up an image of a young, attractive, tired, but happy couple surrounded by cardboard boxes and cating chow mein out of the box with chopsticks. And we all remember the times college friends offered us pizza and beer in exchange for helping them move.
This mysterious connection between exhaustion and the consumption of junk food is not just a figment of your imagination. And it is the reason why so many diets die on the chopping block of stress and why people start smoking again after a crisis.
The key to this mystery has to do with the struggle between the impulsive (or emotional) and the rational (or deliberative) parts of ourselves. This is not a new idea; many seminal books (and academic papers) throughout history have had something to say about the conflicts between desire andvreason. We have Adam and Eve, tempted by the prospect of forbidden knowledge and that succulent fruit. There was Odysseus, who knew he'd be lured by the Sirens' song and cleverly ordered his crew to tie him to the mast and fill their ears with wax to muffle the tantalizing call (that way, Odysseus could have it both ways - he could hear the song without worrying that the men would wreck the ship). And in one of the most tragic struggles between emotion and reason, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet fell hard for each other, despite Friar Laurence's warning that untamed passion only brings disaster.
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On a more serious note, these experiments with depletion suggest that, in general, we would be well served to realize that we are continually tempted throughout the day and that our ability to fight this temptation weakens with time and accumulated resistance. If we're really serious about losing weight, we should get rid of temptation by clearing our shelves and refrigerator of all the sugary, salty, fatty, and processed foods and acclimating to the taste of fresh produce. We should do this not only because we know that fried chicken and cake are bad for us but also because we know that exposing ourselves to such temptations throughout the day (and every time we open a cupboard or the refrigerator) makes it more difficult for us to fight off this and other temptations throughout the day.
Understanding depletion also means that (to the extent that we can) we should face the situations that require self-control - a particularly tedious assignment at work, for example - early in the day, before we are too depleted. This, of course, is not easy advice to follow because the commercial forces around us (bars, online shopping, Facebook, YouTube, online computer games, and so on) thrive on both temptation and depletion, which is why they are so successful.
Granted, we cannot avoid being exposed to all threats to our self-control. So is there any hope for us? Here's one suggestion: once we realize that it is very hard to turn away when we face temptation, we can recognize that a better strategy is to walk away from the draw of desire before we are close enough to be snagged by it. Accepting this advice might not be easy, but the reality is that it is much easier to avoid temptation altogether rather than to overcome it when it sits lingering on the kitchen counter. And if we can't quite do that, we can always try to work on our ability to fight temptation - perhaps by counting to a hundred, singing a song, or making an action plan and sticking to it. Doing any of these can help us build our arsenal of tricks for overcoming temptation so that we are better equipped to fight those urges in the future.
- Dan Ariely, 'The (Honest) Truth about Dishonesty'
