Today marks 3 weeks since Mike and
I “went off the deep end” – out of the blue, we decided to try “the keto diet.”
In some ways, it’s just one among many fad diets, like paleo or 5:2. But, it
also provides enough science (well, probably pseudo-science) to make sense to
the skeptics like us. Neither of us has ever been on a strict diet before, as we truly are food-obsessed bon vivants. Yet somehow, for some crazy reason, keto got
us to stick to the plan. Maybe it’s the meticulous
record-keeping or the competition with oneself to stay within the allotted 20
grams of net carbs a day? These are certainly both features that appeal to our Type A personalities and therefore got us through the
first oh-so-miserable few days. But I think that in the longer run it was something else. For me, it has to do
with loss aversion – the very human trait that describes an individual’s
desire to avoid losing. Loss aversion is
associated with a related behavioral phenomenon known as the sunk cost bias. In my case, every time I decide what I will
eat next, I think about the 3 weeks of accumulated “good behavior” of sticking
to the diet. It makes me feel like that time would be wasted, were I to succumb
to temptation. (Oh, how I miss you, strawberries!)
This experience reminds me of a very
well-written blog post by my two excellent students from Fall 2016: Monica Reno
and Silpa Karipineni. It gives a really
interesting perspective on how to use incentives to stick to the plan.
Last
semester, I downloaded an application called Pact on my phone. The app was
designed to help people set and meet health goals in fitness and nutrition.
Each week you set a goal for a certain number of days to complete a given
action, and at the end you are paid if you reach your goal. You also set a
penalty of at least $5 per day for each day that you did not successfully
complete a task. For example, one of the pacts you can make is going to the gym
say 5 times a week. The days are not set, but if you reach Sunday and only went
to the gym 4 times you would lose 5 real dollars as the app is connected to
your bank account or PayPal. If you do successfully complete your Pacts, the
company actually pays you money, albeit less. On average, I made $3.00 each
week for working out, eating fruits and vegetables, and logging food journals.
To
verify fitness completion, the app would track GPS location for checking into
gyms (although it also completes the task if you walk more 10,000 steps a day
as indicated by your phone or 3rd party application). For fruits and
vegetables, you have to take pictures of them on your plate or on a fork, and
then other Pact community members voted on whether they believed the picture
showed a real fruit or vegetable as an appropriate serving. This provides
another level of accounting because you are now also being held verified by
other people across the world.
Furthermore,
the money you get each week is variable and depends on the success of others.
If I defaulted on my Pact by missing a day, I lost $5, but more than that I
knew those $5 were going towards paying people who had completed their Pacts. I
wanted to be the person getting money from the community and not losing my
money to help other people I did not know. I successfully completed my pact
every week that I used the app (which was about 6 months) until I started to
procrastinate my workouts. If I had 5 workouts to log throughout the week I
would wait until Wednesday where I then had to do each successive workout
otherwise I would definitely lose money. However, once that happened and I lost
$5, I decided I did not have time and discontinued using the app.
Overall, I was highly incentivized
to complete my goals, and at the start of the week when I had to lock in my
goal, I always had high expectations. The fear of losing real money, especially
as a college student, was more powerful than the urge to sleep in a little
longer and not workout in the morning, so I would make sure to meet the goal. Ultimately,
the app is pretty successful at using monetary incentives and public posting to
help incentivize healthy behaviors.
Just as an aside: Ultimately, I don’t recommend the keto diet. It is exceptionally strict (I mean, NO STRAWBERRIES???). It doesn’t work for everyone, because the
calorie deficiency one requires to lose weight is, in my opinion, too extreme. And it certainly should not be pursued for
more than a month due to health risks that I believe can be real (consult your
physician!!!). But, it was an interesting exercise in self-control that taught
me, more than anything, that I can stick to the plan.
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