How to stop snacking out of the Fridge!

Have you ever wonder how they train seals at the zoo, dogs to do tricks in movies or elephants to kick footballs? The trainers wait until the animals do something they want to encourage and then give the animal some food. So if an elephants happens to touch a football with it’s foot, it is given a food reward. After a short time the elephant is only given a reward if the elephant moves the ball with it’s foot. Pretty soon the elephants are playing football, kicking balls through goals etc. This is called Operant Conditioning.

Operant conditioning is part of the behavioural perspective of psychology. This perspective posits that behaviour is learned. At the time of birth we are all blank pieces of paper and all subsequent behaviour is learned. This perspective was popularised by a chap called B.F. Skinner in America in the 1950’s Skinner used birds to show how behaviour is learned when reinforced with food rewards.  Behaviouralists believe that there is no role for logic, thoughts or feelings in the understanding of behaviour. The only thing that needs to be considered is the environment, stimulus, reward and punishment. Whereas B.F. Skinner used direct rewards, in the form of bird food, other behaviouralists developed theories of social learning. Later researchers, such as Albert Bandura, completed experiments to show that behaviour could be learned simply by observing behaviour and physical rewards were not required. If an individual was to observe someone else being rewarded for performing a particular action then the individual is more likely to perform that behaviour.

So how does this relate to health and fitness? Because social learning is the basis for most advertising. In the standard add someone uses a product and is rewarded. Often this revolves around being in a friendly group when you purchase fast food or being admired because you have brought the right car. Does this work? Well advertising companies spend literally billions of dollars each year on advertising. In the case of fast food there is good research to suggest advertising suppresses our natural suspicions of fast food. We learn to eat to fast food without really thinking about it. We tend to switch from logical thought to automatic behaviour. Of course there are other things that cause us to eat, however, how we learn about food is vitally important.

There are other perspectives on behaviour. However, the behavioural perspective is very well supported by years of experimental evidence and is known to be very powerful in changing behaviour. Although learning theories might appear simple, good behaviour is rewarded and bad behaviour is punished, if we understand this principle we can all change aspects of our behaviour. Particularly, we can change habits that impact on our health and fitness.

Guess what? Every time you go to the fridge you get a food reward. You are training yourself to go into the kitchen, open the fridge door and look for food. A classic example of operant conditioning. To break this habit simply put some very light hand weights in the fridge. If you happen to find yourself learning into the fridge, aimlessly, about to snack, pick up the hand weights and maybe do a little exercise. Just half a minute will do. You will quickly un-train yourself.