Will Self Punishment develop Self Discipline?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ve been trying to lose weight for about a year and a half now. I’ve been successful for the most part, but the last couple of months have been very shaky. I sure as hell don’t want to gain back all the weight I’ve lost so I’ve gotten to the point that I’ll punish myself whenever I overeat by destroying something I enjoy.

Lately I’ve been destroying video games (either breaking the disc or deleting the online account). I’ll continue to do this until I run out of games. Then I’ll break the game system itself (Xbox 360, PS3), then I’ll have to move on to computer parts, which will start to tally up into the thousands of dollars…

So here is my question. Will self punishment (destroying things I enjoy) help develop self discipline? Or am I headed down an extremely stupid (and possibly insane) path?

For those of you who feel you have high self discipline, have you used or still use self punishment? What did you do and was it helpful?

2

Stop this. You’re training yourself to be your own bully and your own victim.

Of course, if you feel that bully-victim relationships are really what makes the world go round, I can’t help you.

3

Self punishment has never worked for me. I don’t know if I’m just not masochistic enough to really punish myself or if I’m so masochistic I decide the punishment is worth it. :rolleyes:

What has worked is positive reinforcement. If I stick to a plan, I treat myself. Whatever works best for you. I enjoy a manicure or something frivolous. Don’t go crazy and go into debt or anything, but do choose something you wouldn’t otherwise do to treat yourself.

4

That’s not how it works, in my experience. Self-discipline has to be its own reward; conversely, failure to discipline yourself is its own punishment. In your case, eating sensibly leads to losing weight; overeat, and you remain heavier than you’d like to be.

Think about it. You’re taking one thing that makes you unhappy (overeating) and compounding it with *another *thing that makes you unhappy (destroying a game you enjoy). Even if you manage to stop overeating, you still have an unpleasant task (buying replacement games) awaiting you. That sounds like really crappy payback, and I think you’re likely to end up resenting this strategy even if you lose weight.

Here’s an idea. Lock up all the games, even if you just put them away in a cupboard. On any day that you don’t overeat (set a realistic deadline for “end of day,” e.g. 8 p.m.), you get to take out a game and play the hell out of it. However, if you overeat before the end of the day, the games stay locked up and you get to balance your checkbook (or something equally boring) for the rest of the evening.

5

Jeez, that sounds really expensive. Couldn’t you just Force-choke yourself or something?

6

Let me be the first to volunteer and help you with your self discipline problem. Feel free to mail me the games and game system as your penalty. Naturally, I’ll let you also pay the shipping cost as a additional penalty since you feel bad about that extra candy bar you had too. :slight_smile:

Seriously though. No, your plan is a terrible idea. In my experience anyway, if you lack the discipline to stick to the diet, I’m guessing you lack the discipline to truly punish yourself too. That is, I’m guessing you’ll be getting rid of the games you no longer play first.

My recommendation is to remove the temptation by portioning out the meals in advance so the tendency to overeat isn’t there. My own personal problem is snacking on chips. The solution? Don’t buy chips, and if someone brings them over when watching the game, the uneaten chips either go home with that person or go straight into the outside garbage can after the game is over. No exceptions.

7

No, this is not good. Consistent positive reinforcement is the most effective means of behavior modification. Self-punishment is especially problematic for weight-loss because of the mitigating factor of shame.

Instead of punishing yourself for mistakes, reward yourself for successes, and reward yourself in a way that perpetuates your goals. So if you exercise every day for a month, buy yourself some new workout clothes or something. That stuff snowballs into lots of behavioral-modification goodness.

See if you can’t enter into some kind of social contract. My favorite weight-loss website for its amazing social support network is www.sparkpeople.com. It’s free and thanks to the support of my peers there, I have maintained a 50 pound weight loss.

8

There’s some good ideas here (I like cwthree’s). Here’s another: If you must “punish yourself” for overeating, do so in a way that directly counteracts the effects of the overeating, like exercising (work off those extra calories! then you’ll have nothing left to feel bad about), or denying yourself some treat (e.g. no dessert today because I overate yesterday).

9

No you’ve corrupted the idea of negative association. This is actually a highly successful technique for getting rid of bad habbits and phobias

Negative association can help. For instance a technique in stopping panic attacks invovles the use of the word, “no.” When you get panicky and have racing thoughts, you stop to pattern by saying “No.” Some people will stamp their foot to reinforce this. (It’s not as dumb as it sounds, if anyone asks you just say your foot fell asleep)

If that doesn’t work many people will use a rubber band around the wrist. They say “no” and to reinforce it they snap the band.

The OP’s trying to apply this technique to destroying things.

This isn’t going to work. The idea is to STOP the progression of bad thoughts, not to harm yourself. The bad thought in this case is “I want food”

What you want to do is train your mind to refocus.

Can you build a website? Why not, if you can post in this forum you can learn. So why don’t you go to the library and get a book on XHTML. The point is instead of destroying something when you get the bad thought, you create something.

So what if you try and don’t like it? So what? You failed, big deal people fail every day. How about getting a second job? It’s hard in this economy but let’s say you pick up 8 or ten hours a week and GIVE that money to a charity.

You see involving yourself in life will keep your mind away from food. How about a healthclub? Oh it costs too much. Well how much did the things you destroyed cost you?

Realize what you’re doing isn’t wrong but it’s incorrect. The idea is to STOP the thought with reinforcement. But let’s look at it this way, you can say “stop,” destory something and it may work. Or you can say “stop,” and snap yourself with a rubber band.

Tomorrow you might have a mark on your wrist but you’ll be otherwise OK with the rubber band. With your technique you get a pile of junk. Which by the way you could’ve donated to some poor person who is out of work and would’ve gotten some joy out of it.

Finally losing weight is hard, keeping it off is hard, that is why we’re all not thin. It’s hard. The world’s hard enough without going out of your way to make it more difficult.

Good luck

10

Thanks everyone for all the advice. I’ll stop with the crazy behavior. And if I feel the need to destroy something in the future I’ll give it to a charity instead. Not only will it be a good deed, it will make me get off my lazy ass and go to the post office :slight_smile:

11

My last psychologist told me that the main reason self-punishment doens’t work is because it is really hard to punish yourself effectively. And, as olives indicates, positive reinforcement works a lot better than punishment, anyways. So don’t bother.

Though I am intrigued about Markxxx’s use of negative reinforcement to stop panic attacks. I don’t think I’ve ever thought of a panic attack as merely an unwanted response before.

12

You’re not thinking about the punishment when you do the crime. You already know you shouldn’t overeat and will regret it later, and you have already decided it isn’t worth the price you have to pay, but you do it anyway. There’s no reason why knowing you will regret it even more should make any significant difference.