Are you living in a Rat Park?

Are you living in a RAT PARK?

I have mentioned to many of you the book THE FOUR DAY WINby Martha Beck.  In this book there have been many tools that were/are EXTREMLY helpful in gaining understanding and control of my food behaviors.  One of which she explains as creating your own RAT PARK?!?!

There was a study conducted..on you guessed it…RATS!  Apparently they have a nervous system similar to ours.  I really don’t like to have anything similar to a rat but oh well. They also found that rats do not like cages, they like to be free and have room to roam about.  Ok so I guess I can relate to a rat, especially in WINTER when at times I feel trapped inside.

In this study they took two groups of caged rats.  One group of rats was placed in a standard old boring cage.  The other group was placed in a RAT PARK.  This rat park cage was built like an all inclusive resort with excursions for rats.    They offered both sets of cages a dish of just plain water and another dish of sugar water laced with morphine.  Basically, they found that the ordinary caged rats gobbled up the sugar/morphine water and the RAT PARK rats wanted nothing to do with it.  They didn’t need to “get high”.  They tried sugar water without morphine and they didn’t want anything to do with that either.  Then they placed these drug/sugar addicted ordinary rat cage rats into the RAT PARK.   They were given the same choices of regular water and drug laced/ sugar water and they greatly reduced the amount of drugged water even though they started to go into withdrawal.

So..we want to create a life that is more RAT PARK like.  Not one that creates a trapped feeling and may push us into using food to cope.

Here are the tools Martha Beck guides you through to create this type of life.

What types of things/people/places make you feel…trapped, deprived, bored, smothered, hopeless, resentful, worthless, compulsive, powerless, isolated, overwhelmed, and paralyzed…..any not nice feeling.

Go ahead and take the time to make a list of these situations that can give you these feelings… Then take a look and see what these things have in common.

………

For me anxiety and feeling alone are common to send me straight to the morphine water!  Just kidding..straight to the refined carbs.

Next take some time to think about some situations that make you feel…free, satisfied, content, treasured, respected, calm, secure, productive, creative, motivated…the hills being alive with the sound of music.

Think of people, activities and situations that create these feelings.  What do these things have in common?

………

Go on..I know you all thought of boot camp <wink wink>

GREAT!  NOW WHAT DO I DO WITH THIS LIST?

This next part was SO extremely freeing to me.  She referred to this next exercise and the THREE B’S.

Basically, you take the list of things you struggle with most about your daily life.  Be honest with yourself.  I started with my top 3 daily annoyances.

Next take one task at a time and either --

Bag it—just let it go. (Yes.. something’s can just be let go and the world will still turn)

Barter it—can you trade or delegate this task. 

Better it—is there away to make this activity more pleasurable?

Just taking the time to acknowledge things about my day that were driving me nuts and then taking the control back in how to handle these situations was extremely powerful and freeing. I found myself having less anxiety and running to the snack cupboard less also. 

So take the time to sit down with a scribble journal and figure out how to create that RAT PARK!  Try to incorporate some of these things into each day or at least each week.  YOU ARE WORTH IT!

Hope this was helpful, if so I would recommend getting that book and finding more helpful tools!

Blessings,

Sarah