Hi All!
Thank you to everyone still with us this month. Please give yourselves a big pat on the back for your dedication to yourself.
So, I’ve been reading again and love love love to talk about it. If you would all humour me with this post, I will go back to regular McDougall programming for the busy September to December season.
(Edited to add: This is a book summary and it became vastly longer than I anticipated so please just skip to the tally if behavioural science is not your thing. After a number of hours of writing I’ve just become too vested in this post to throw it away and start afresh...hahaha)
Widespread reexamination of
the need for communities of support has been the focus of many pop-science books in recent years, based on much research and clinical observation of better outcomes for individuals dealing with issues such as depression, anxiety, grief, obesity, etc. Most of us do better when we know we aren’t experiencing a difficult or intractable situation all by ourselves. (That’s why we are here!!)
However, I haven’t seen as much health pop-science written about how being a part of a group can potentially negatively affect or constrain individual behavioural change. Economics literature, research into ethics, morality and altruism and even animal studies have tonnes of stuff written on individual decision making in a group setting. This research is hopefully beginning to be applied to public health and addiction support-group modelling to increase efficacy and reduce or forestall attrition levels for those seeking aid with issues that cause great suffering and negative health consequences, like weight loss and its maintenance.
I’m currently reading (and extrapolating) a bit about this in the book
Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst, written by neuroendocrinologist Robert Sapolsky. It’s long. Really really long; coming in at about 680 pages. It’s also uses somewhat technical language and thus provides comprehensive appendices on the basics of neuroscience, endocrinology and protein formation and function in order to more easily follow the reasoning within the book.
So, what is it about?
Most generally, it’s Robert Sapolsky’s attempt to explain human behaviour (with a focus on aggression and violence). He organizes his sections via time periods relative to the expression of a behavior which each necessitate different overlapping lens to understand it (it had me thinking of the refractor that my optometrist - who is also my sister-in-law -uses): What is going on seconds before involves mostly our neurochemistry; minutes before a behaviour may be best explained at the level of sensory stimulus and the immediate environment; days before and months before a behaviour through broader biological processes like hormone levels , and centuries before a behavior occurs leading to a specific interaction is under the ultimate direction of genetics through the sculpatory hand of evolution.
To try and bring this back to our purposes here on the MWL thread; how can group expectations affect our motivation to continue working towards our goals when we are struggling to consistently follow the MWL guidelines?
When we have a non-adherent week, and have evidence of it through weight gain, we tend to feel bad. No surprises there. We talk about this here all the time, it’s Dr. Lisle’s internal audience giving you some individual feedback on your dietary performance, alerting you to potential negative changes in status within a group if you do not adjust your behaviour. This is an internal thing not based on esteem signals from the real world, just the imaginary real-world proxies sitting in your brain, in really comfy red velvet chairs (ok, that last chair part isn’t a part of his theory, just a cushy little look into my brain LOL).
You possibly experience it this way: I feel disgusted with myself because I am not following the plan well. This is embarrassing to me so I don’t want to weigh-in anymoreBut we don’t live in a little bubble with just ourselves and our imaginary friends. We are social animals due to living in small groups because that was a more successful way to get more genes into the next generation. It is estimated that prehistoric tribes were often related to 30% or more of the individuals within the group (this value was obtained through research on contemporary traditional cultures). Individual fitness, inclusive fitness and reciprocal altruism are the names of the concepts behind how each of our particular gene lineages optimized this passage to the next generation. You will have to read the book to get a better explanation...this post is already quite unwieldy which lessens the chance of anyone actually reading the whole thing...LOL. Genetic success is optimized through adaptations that promoted contextually relevant survival and reproductive advantages, some of which were cognitive/psychological in nature, for example behaviours that improved individual level cooperation, obedience and conformity.
But we were often quite cooperative with non-relatives as well. How did this develop?
Look up William Hamilton’s
geometry of the selfish herd for more information - you may have heard Dr. Lisle explain an aspect of this behaviour as his conservation of energy principle, where he describes why certain birds fly in a V formation. Sapolsky refers to it as
many hands lighten the load. Our kin-based social success facilitated frequent social interactions which facilitated extending/adapting prosocialty to non-kin because we were always running into them too (the interactions of biologists and computer scientists researching the game Prisoner’s Dilemma facilitated this new evolutionary understanding of cooperation and competition - see, being prosocial to non-kin works...LOL).
(Though Sapolsky doesn’t refer to personality based psychological research here that I recall, I wonder if that could be an alternative way to describe the individual traits he describes that facilitated success at group-living).
Thus far Dawkins’ genes as the level of selection in evolution has been assumed in my post, but according to Sapolsky there is still some debate on this topic with the reintroduction and reinterpretation of the older concept of group-selection, renamed neo-group selection. Sapolsky says to appreciate the contrast we need to first understand that “genotype = someone’s genetic makeup and phenotype = the traits observable to the outside world produced by the genotype” (pg 360) and that gene/environment interactions have led to debate on which level of selection produces a better understanding of evolutionary processes. He writes that “different circumstances bring different levels of selection to the forefront. Sometimes the most informative level is the single gene, sometimes the genome, sometimes the single phenotypic trait, sometimes the collection of all the organisms phenotypic traits (based on research by S. Okasha 2006). He feels this points us in the direction of the viability of the idea of multi-level selection. Some heritable traits could be maladaptive for the individual but adaptive for the group especially as concerns cooperation and prosocial behaviour. He uses examples from game theory and tit-for-tat: individual Trait X is more competitive than Trait Y, but a group of Trait Ys outcompetes a group of Trait Xs. This is not your momma’s understanding of group selection as something done for the good of the species. Sapolsky explains that individually adaptive genetic traits (ie successful
within the group) can sometimes, in certain circumstances, be maladaptive when occurring too often in a group due to
competition between groups for something, like a certain terrain or niche - he gives example, I have no room for that so I know I’m not explaining this very clearly, please check out pg 364 of the book if you are interested, there is so so much more to it. The work of David Sloan Wilson, of NYU, even convinced E.O Wilson to change his stance and see that multilevel selection, using both individual and group levels of explanation for selection, variability and inheritance may provide more representative (my word and possibly not his intent) evolutionary models than the gene’s eye view alone.
This introduces between-group processes into the mix as influential on our best and worst behaviours and moves the book into synthesizing the information introduced.
Later chapters further explore how sociobiology and culture influence behaviour: Us versus Them; Hierarchy, Obedience and Resistance; Morality and Doing the Right Thing.
I found the above listed chapters (11, 12 and 13) sufficiently interesting to want to think about the subjective experience of social interactions in relation to weight loss and management. By understanding how social norms (aka group behavioural expectations) are enforced using/producing feelings of guilt and shame we can increase our sensitivity to how our actions effect the decision making processes of others; and visa versa.
So, I guess this means we are also quite attuned to how our behaviour is perceived by those around us - Dr. Lisle broadly categorizes our main competitive hierarchies as friends, mates, trading partners and family. These main competitive hierarchies can be reshuffled into many more arbitrary groups in our lives. I belong to many many groups. Some of them I elected to be in and some I did not and some , but all will influence me in some way or another : I am a woman, a McDougaller, a mom, a daughter, a wife, a leftie, a prep-per, a Canadian and a cat-lover (though very allergic) among many other things.
Conformity and obedience come into play here, where within-group dynamics can be influenced by the selective pressures of between-group dynamics. Being a part of a group historically, was due to geography. Nowadays it can just as easily be due to shared values, ideology, beliefs without geographic proximity. Individual tweaks of these shared values etc., are what create culture. In the WFBP world Dr. McDougall, for example, has created a culture of strong, proud individuals who value an accurate understanding of the epidemiological and research literature combined with strict adherence to guidelines based on that understanding. How has this culture affected adherence levels? Does it even do so? I think these are interesting questions. We all want everyone to know that McDougalling is the best of the best in the plant based world compared to all of the other dietary styles. How does this form of in-group parochialism influence how we interact with other McDougallers and with non-McDougallers?
Here is a scenario of how a desire to conform to the values of your group, signalled through feelings of vague guilt and shame, may play out with regards to negative feedback from the scale:
I feel shame when others in my group point out my errors in front of an audience. (ie/ You are making Us all look bad to Them: my choices appear to be to do better or not show up). This is an example of a group sanctioning an individual based on their performance and it can provide motivation (especially to ambitious or competitive individuals), but if it is too heavy-handed it can lead to the target individual choosing to opt out for awhile (especially if they have tried and failed to lose weight many times before).
I feel guilty because I am being unfair to the others in my group through my noncompliance/nonconformity. It feels best that I stop showing up at group functions until I get my act together. (I am causing Us to look bad to Them through association). This is individual self-sanctioning based on between-group dynamics. It can be important to reassure anyone feeling this way that the support group is not a competition, but a way to improve individual self-development. Try to compare yourself only to your own past behaviour and not that of others within the group.
That’s basically what I wanted to say about the book for now. I had to skip so much, too much really, to do justice to the information provided.
If we can gain a better awareness of group dynamics, how they work, and use this information to create more effective support environments for behavioural change everyone wins; and I’m all about finding those win-win situations.
Helping ourselves makes us feel good. Helping others makes us feel good. It’s all good!
Let’s all continue to explore and refine the best ways to identify win-win situations in our lives in order to produce virtuous cycles of improvement in wellbeing for all.
Have a wonderful end-of-summmer weekend! Please join us in the September Weigh-In thread for fun fall shenanigans, continued weight-loss and improved health.Amy XO.
Here are the results for the fifth week in August:Next Weigh-In is on Friday, September 6th, 2019Total group loss reported in 2019: 372.82 pounds
August 2019 Weight Loss Group :: Monthly Weigh-In Results
Total group loss in January 2019: 140.53 pounds
Total group loss in February 2019: 78.64 pounds
Total group loss in March 2019: 7.4 pounds
Total group loss in April 2019: 33.55 pounds
Total group loss in May 2019: 38.2 pounds
Total group loss in June 2019: 13.4 pounds
Total group loss in July 2019: 37.3 pounds
Total group loss in August 2019: 23.8 poundsWeek ending 08/30/2019: 7 participants reported a total loss of 5.2 pounds
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Total gains: 0.0
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Deweyswakms - 0.8
AnnetteW - 0.5
ShortnSweet - 0.6
Sirdle - 1.5
Vegman - 1.8
Laurag - 0.0
Moonlight - 0.0
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Total losses: 5.2
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Total group loss in August 2019: 23.8 pounds
Week ending 08/30/2019: 7 participants reported a total loss of 5.2 pounds
Week ending 08/23/2019: 11 participants reported a total loss of 0.3 pounds
Week ending 08/16/2019: 11 participants reported a total loss of 3.5 pounds
Week ending 08/09/2019: 14 participants reported a total loss of 3.4 pounds
Week ending 08/02/2019: 9 participants reported a total loss of 11.4 pounds
by deweyswakms » Thu Aug 29, 2019 5:22 am 
this morning I am working on my Commitment to that. May everyone feel the happiness inside ourselves!
