Whenever I talk about pleasure as the fundamental compass for decisionmaking, someone tells me that it doesn’t work.

“…because if I just ate whatever I wanted I would eat a whole bag of cookies and that isn’t good for me.”

True.

It isn’t.

But I don’t think your body ACTUALLY wants the whole bag of cookies.  Or chips.

When you eat the first bite of the first cookie, you get a pleasure hit.

When you eat the first bite of the second cookie, you might still get  a pleasure hit.

But somewhere around the third cookie, you’re not getting the same body sensation that you were getting at the beginning.  The “pleasure” such as it is has moved from your body to your brain, which is telling you that you SHOULD be feeling pleasure because, hello, COOKIE!

Your body, however, is probably feeling a little maladjusted, a little off-kilter, a little done with the whole cookie thing.

If you practice paying attention to your body, you will notice when that happens, and you can stop.  Or, you know, you can ignore it.  You can choose.  And once you know what you’re choosing, you can’t un-know it.  That avoidance doesn’t work anymore.  Eventually, mostly, you will make a different choice, and if you don’t, you’ll know to ask why.

It can change everything.