We all identify our bodies as “my body” and not me directly. The whole idea of this blog post revolves around this idea. The purpose of this blog post is to establish an idea on how to build healthier lifestyle based on this concept.

It’s not like we intentionally don’t want to build healthier habits. We try to pick up exercise habits, but we are too lazy to work on it. We eat haphazardly, and without any consideration to our health. It’s a very universal problem. So, I had the same problem. On top of that, I have always been a person low in Conscientiousness, which means I used to have a hard time pushing my goals to myself if I was the only one responsible for it. Finally, I found a way that worked for me that might work for you too.

So, the main idea is this: Instead of thinking of my body as me (same identity), I changed the scenario by treating “my body” as being separate from “me”. Now, There are two players in the game. Player 1 : Me[ My emotions, cravings, feelings ] Player 2 : My body [ Physical body ] Both of whom are playing an optimization game to favor themselves.

My body communicates via muscle signals, dis-ease, etc. My thoughts are self-evident.

For me, the game started looking like a zero-sum optimization game at the beginning. e.g. Either I was taking care of my health or I was fulfilling my cravings, and feel-good emotions. But as I came to understand intentions of both players [ my body and me ] with more clarity, the same game resurfaced as a positive-sum game. This change of the game itself happened as my perspective on what I was optimizing for aligned with what my body wanted to optimize. In simpler terms, I’d thought building healthy habits would be boring which turned out to be a false proposition.

I started by clarifying the goals of each player in this optimization game. Each goal has time to feedback as well as importance of feedback. Based on a weighted sum of feedback, based on time as well as importance, the decision’s made. Initially, the goals and their characteristics looked as follows:

Goal for agent 1 ( me )

  1. Tastes good : Immediate feedback, High importance to feedback.
  2. Feels good ( e.g. Drinking alcohol in other’s company though it doesn’t taste good ): Immediate feedback, High importance to feedback.
  3. Avoid any physical pain : No immediate feedback since punishment’s delayed in time. Low importance to feedback. ( e.g. I don’t immediately get obese. )

Goal for agent 2 ( my body )

  1. Not be obese : Very long feedback time
  2. Not have bowel difficulties : Medium feedback time
  3. No soar muscles : Medium feedback time

OVERALL GOAL : Lesser conflicts between body and mind.

NOTE: From now on, I might refer to me as player 1 and my body as player 2.

So, this optimization game is biased more towards me feeling good than my body feeling good because the feedback loops associated to the game have easy short-time feedback circuits that favor Player 1. So, it’s obvious that the game’s results favor me feeling good in the short term rather than both me and my body feeling good in a longer term. So, I needed a way to overcome that.

The optimization game’s thus defined. The players in the game are defined. The goals associated with the players are defined. The weight of each action for these players in relation to the goal is defined.

To maximize my overall goal, I thus needed to find a way to make Player 2’s goals being equally considered as Player 1’s are. I had to change weights on the game in some way that it doesn’t discount short-term rewards favoring Player 1 over Player 2’s fulfillment.

If I can do this, this changes the situation for Player 2 in the game so both players have an equal say for actions that affect them both.

This is how I increased Player 2’s impact in the optimization game. I defined my relationship to my body like a “close friend”. What that means is that I’ll have to maintain basic requisites for being my body’s friend. I cannot just abuse it right away, and expect it to maintain a good relationship with me. I cannot be absolutely naive with my best friend, but we can be a bit abusive to each other every now and then. By hitting rough edges and coming together, our friendships get stronger. I treat my body in a similar fashion now.

Let’s talk about this with some examples:

  1. I want to drink, but I won’t go drinking one day after another just to feel good. I will restrain my taste to let my body feel good as well. My body feeling good is me feeling good too but in a longer feedback loop which doesn’t feel evident immediately. I will eat unhealthy food randomly over a week but only certain times a week. I don’t want to piss my body off. So every time I eat something that’s unhealthy, I tell my body to take care of it this time. And my body usually takes care of fewer messes I create. Hence, There will only be a few incidents when I act harshly with my body. Even when I do, there will be a difference in one action after the other, so that we both feel good.

  2. Then, I don’t want to exercise. But, my body doesn’t want to feel sore because of inactivity. I immediately put exercise as my top priority whenever my body feels even a bit sore. I have to be there for my friend when my friend needs me. On top of that, I’ll do exercise sparsely over the week without any schedule since it gives me a dopamine hit immediately afterwards. Previously, I would avoid doing a single physical exercise over months on end whenever I felt busy from my work, but can’t avoid like that now. My friend might just fuck me over if I don’t maintain my basic friendship. And that puts some obligation to exercise mentally.

    I had an interesting insight that came along with this change of weight for Player 2. In trying to change weights of the game for Player 2, the game redefined itself into a 2-player positive sum game. How can this be the case given that our goals conflicted each other ?

This happened because I thought eating healthy would be boring. Doing exercise would be boring. But, once you pass the tipping point, you actually start loving the dopamine hit. Now, it feels good to eat healthy. It feels good to not drink on subsequent days. And, my friends rarely push me to break my restraint. Now, it’s a positive sum optimization game. My body helps me have fun. I help my body feel good. We both feel good.

I have been spending time thinking why this fooling technique even works at all as well. It sounds so silly, to which, I too agree without a doubt. But, it has worked for me really well over past few years. I have kept my aggressive sinusitis in check, prevented myself from getting fat all over my stomach, and feeling back pain every now and then.

This positive sum game implies that we both try to optimize for each other’s best and take care of it to get net positive output for both players.

My reasoning to why this works comes from what modern researchers believe why meditation works. They note that whenever you meditate, you see your emotions from a 3rd person perspective, without identifying yourself to the same degree, as when you aren’t in meditation. We cannot observe facts with clarity when we feel overwhelmed. Thus, by decreasing the intensity of our emotions, meditation helps connect the dots that we were too clouded to see beforehand. This practice with my body, is in a sense similar, since it detaches me from my body so that I can’t do whatever I desire. That decreases the intensity of what I feel in short-term. Because what I desire in the short term is usually not what I want for myself in the long term, I needed to find a way to de-intensify the short term rewards similar to de-intensifying my overwhelming emotions. And the way is to treat my body as a foreign agent ( not me ).