Trying to kick your smoking habit? Have an older teen/young adult who needs to quit? Let smokers eat cake! Well, that’s what the studies show. Our self control (our Powerful Word of the Month) can only go so far.
This may be the reason so many struggle with restrictive New Year’s Resolutions. It turns out, if you tried to take on too many restrictive things at once, you are probably struggling right now with those New Year’s Resolutions. So researchers say…if you’re going to quit smoking, you may want to indulge in a little chocolate cake– or something else that is tempting to you.
UC San Francisco researchers Dikla Shmueli and Judith Prochaska have found that self control certainly has its limits. It turns out, it’s not a good idea to try to change too many things at once when dealing with temptations.
The Study, part 1: 101 smokers participated in a study on food temptation. They were told that the researchers were interested in whether or not participants could resist certain foods– from raw radishes to fresh baked goods. Each participant was put in a room alone and told not to eat the food in front of them. They were also told, to test the full power of self control and temptation, to really think about that food, to stare at it, and to smell it every 15 seconds. Then, the participant was given a 10 minute break.
The Study, part 2: The participants were given a Smokerlyzer test to verify if the participant smoked during the break.
The results: Participants who had to endure the self control challenge of resisting yummy desserts were more likely to smoke during the break (53%) than those smokers who had to resist the less appetizing radishes (34%).
The Possible Explanations:
(1) Craving is a craving: Not giving into one might make you more attracted to another.
(2) Stress triggers craving: Resisting temptation may be stressful and therefore make a smoker more likely to need to to smoke.
(3) Self control has limits: When your self control is challenged, it can exhaust your willpower. Willpower in a weakened state can make you more likely to succumb to temptation (Roy Baumeister’s theory on the limits of self-control)
Conclusions: Try to quit one bad habit at a time. If you are trying to curb one of your temptations or make a challenging change in your life, save your self control for what really matters most. (And remember, self control is contagious– so be aware of the behaviors of the people you’re hanging around with too.) When working with kids on healthy eating and quitting sugar, transfat and salt overload, it may not be the time to curb their texting habit. If you’re trying to quit smoking, it’s not the time to quit all indulgences. And really, there are times when we should treat ourselves anyway to a brownie or piece of cake!
Bottom Line: You can’t quit smoking and not eat your cake too.
