The Super Bowl and the Subconscience

I must be a subconscious Green Bay Packers fan.  Not because they won last night's Super Bowl, but because I really packed in the foods last night while watching the game!  Or maybe I'm a subconscious Steelers fan, because I didn't sleep very well last night after they lost.  Actually, I didn't sleep well because of what my body couldn't turn over even though the Steelers turned the ball over three times.

For an appetizer, I enjoyed a very tasty artichoke dip with jalapenos on crackers.  It's cream-cheese based, and very good, but also quite loaded with sodium.  For second course, I had a small amount of my wife's "world's best guacamole" and multi-grain Tostitos.  Then for the main course (after halftime), I had a plate full of refried bean nachos with more of the "world's best guacamole."

I won't go into the details of my misery following that feast that kept me up during the night, but I do want to share the lesson that last night's experience taught me: Our bodies prefer to eat healthy!  Our cravings for the salty, fatty, sugary, and spicy are learned, not innate.  And when we start trying to unlearn those cravings by focusing on healthy eating, the body reacts badly when they are periodically reintroduced! 

I think God may have designed that reaction as a warning against unhealthy food choices.  It's like a sub-category of the conscience's effort to keep us doing the right thing.  The conscience has four primary activities that help us determine the difference between good and bad decisions:

• prompting - "You know what is right.  Do it!" 
• confirming - "Yes!  That was right.  Way to go!"
• warning - "Uh-oh, that's wrong.  Watch out!"
• accusing - "No!  That was stupid/wrong/selfish.  Don't do it again!"

The prompting and warning activities precede our decision/action; confirming and accusing activities follow our decision/action.  Prompting and confirming are both positive activities that generate feelings of pleasure, joy, happiness and satisfaction.  Warning and accusing are both negative activities that generate feelings of shame, guilt, remorse and regret.

However, we can work to circumvent and ignore all four of the conscience's activities.  We can even get the conscience so twisted up that we gain pleasure when we should feel shame, or satisfaction when we ought to feel regret.  Ever hear the phrase "guilty pleasures"?  Now you know where that comes from.

My conscience was aware of what I was eating, and all four activities were present.  I was prompted not to eat very much guacamole after already consuming perhaps a whole cup of artichoke dip (when the single serving size is a tablespoon!). So when I only ate a teaspoon of guacamole with about three chips, my conscience confirmed that choice.  ("Atta boy!")

Unfortunately, I chose to ignore my conscience's warning on the nachos.  It told me to eat only half of what was on my plate, but I ate the everything!  Therefore, I was up and down all night long dealing with the accusing activity in the bathroom.  Sure those nachos tasted really good going down, but not so good as they passed through my system.  So believe me when I say that I will focus my attention on what my conscience prompts and warns, so that I can get more confirming and less accusing results - no matter who's playing in next year's Super Bowl!