Rewarding great workout with FOOD. Anyone else?

How serious would be the appropriate level of seriousness, in your opinion?


I find this to be stimulating and enjoyable. But I want to be sure I conform to social norms at the same time. Can you give me some tips?


Emoticons maybe? Or fart jokes?

Withholding food is a punishment, not a reward. It's negative reinforcement based on punishment. It appears you really, really, associate rewards with punishments, despite your extensive studies. My experience with dogs and self implies this is quite typical but not necessary. I had a lot of trouble eliminating punishment from my work with dogs, because it provided an emotional reward for me by creating the impression that I was decreasing the unwanted behavior in the dog. It was so bad I give up on dog training.


Adding a particularly rewarding food choice to reinforce a behavior can be completely uncoupled from punishment, morality, or any other useless system of teaching and learning specific behaviors (but highly effective for altering group behaviors).

It simply doesn't have to be so, unless one is lacking in imagination.


I think I've pointed out why using rewards is more effective than leaving things to chance. You can either leave things to chance and hope you are one of the lucky ones, or take control of your own fate.


As for whether science is helpful to everyday people, we will have to agree to disagree. I feel the whole point of science is to help everyday people. These concepts are empowering. Increasing desired behaviors is a good thing. Many of us don't have the luxury of being picky or only using techniques that work for a particular subset. I know I don't, and I've observed how rewards affect my every day choices whether I like it or not, so I prefer to increase my ability to shape my behavior.

A smart dieter will keep trying new things, observe the results, and then apply what they have learned. The OP is on the fence about this, and I'd hate to see someone avoid a potentially successful technique for completely arbitrary reasons.

I would just take it as a compliment not an attack. I find your argument persuasive enough to merit the time and energy I put into writing a dissent.


By "leaving it to chance" I mean to imply that we all run on rewards. If you don't acknowledge it and use those rewards according to a plan, you may be successful, but then again you may be unsusccessful and baffled by your own behavior.


I find the "you aren't a dog" argument unconvincing, for the reasons stated above. To wit, the qualities of a dog that make rewards effective are not mutually exclusive with other qualities in humans that make altering all of our behaviors more complicated than shaping a dog.

Action - big workout
Reward - tasty food

Action - adjusting food to level of expenditure (treating it like a fuel)
Reward - tasty food


Both actions are desirable. Both rewards are desirable. The OP is wondering if this is a bad habit. I say no, it isn't. It's a great way to teach yourself consistency and by being conscious of both things, to avoid blowing up when you haven't expended the calories, because your lifestyle has changed, or better yet, to find motivation to take make an effort to find effective ways to maintain fitness when the environment changes. This is the top reason I have continued my progress despite living on the road for the past month and a half. Otherwise I would be depending on willpower, which is already being taxed by my environmental change.


I sincerely hope you don't find this exchange to be unrewarding, because I am thoroughly enjoying it and appreciate your energy and intelligence.

I would just take it as a compliment not an attack. I find your argument persuasive enough to merit the time and energy I put into writing a dissent.

duly taken as such... I wasn't taking anything as an attack, just that I was there to give advice, not get drawn into a debate.

By "leaving it to chance" I mean to imply that we all run on rewards. If you don't acknowledge it and use those rewards according to a plan, you may be successful, but then again you may be unsusccessful and baffled by your own behavior.

There's more than one way to view human behaviour. You take quite a clinical psychology approach, I take a more evolutionary biology approach.

I'm not baffled by my own behaviour, I'm probably a lot more aware of myself, what motivates me and what doesn't motivate me than most people. From my point of view, human behaviour makes sense when you consider that we're all just Homo erectus with a bit more cerebral cortex. Does that mean I think that everyone should view themselves as a Homo erectus but with a greater faculty for logical thought? No. But it is what we are, and that's the approach I take for studying human behaviour and human biology, and it's how I tend to explain things if people ask my advice/opinions on stuff... because it's how I think.

I find the "you aren't a dog" argument unconvincing, for the reasons stated above. To wit, the qualities of a dog that make rewards effective are not mutually exclusive with other qualities in humans that make altering all of our behaviors more complicated than shaping a dog.

I really and truly don't find it useful to frame my behaviour in dog terms. I'm not saying dogs have nothing in common with humans (actually the convergent evolution between humans and dogs is interesting from an evolutionary point of view, but that's more from a perspective as to why dogs get on so well with humans, not from a "I should do x because x works for dogs" way of looking at it). I just don't see anything helpful in framing human behaviour in that way, in particular in framing learning to stick to lifestyle changes as akin to training dogs. you do, and that's great. But it's not for me.

There are one or two aspects of human behaviour that I'd liken to chimpanzee behaviour, like how internet debates tend to be more about chest beating and displays for dominance than they are about exchange of information, but that's a whole other debate and i'm well and truly drawn into this one LOL. Trying to keep it intellectual and not chest beating though.... (and I'd love to see how Homo erectuses argued... i.e. more chest beating like chimps or more verbal debate like Homo sapiens or a unique combination between the two... but that kind of thing doesn't fossilise so I guess we'll never know...)

Action - big workout
Reward - tasty food

Action - adjusting food to level of expenditure (treating it like a fuel)
Reward - tasty food


Both actions are desirable. Both rewards are desirable.

I still don't see why I have to view one as a reward for another though. I workout because I enjoy working out and because I want to be strong. I eat because I enjoy eating and because I want to be strong. Why should I frame one thing that I enjoy as a reward for another thing that I enjoy? If I were to start framing it like that, then I'd start to see exercise as a chore and food as a luxury item that needs to be earned, rather than seeing both food and exercise as things that are both essential for health and enjoyable in their own right.

Maybe you'd say being strong is the reward for having a healthy lifestyle... but framing it like that makes having a healthy lifestyle into a chore (for me), and then it'll stop being rewarding in its own right. And that's one major issue I have with it.

There is more than one way to frame human behaviour. it's not necessary to reduce everything to "reward seeking" for human behaviour to make sense. i reduce human behaviour to its evolutionary origins, as that's what makes sense to me. There is usually more than one way to frame a question, and more than one accurate answer to it.

So the problem in this debate is "I want to be motivated enough to stick to my exercise programme without falling into the kind of mindset which leads to behaviours that will stop me from progressing towards my goal" - then the question as to how you frame the behaviour of people who don't do well at dieting so you can avoid doing that yourself, can have different answers.

Your answer is that you see people as not understanding how to train themselves to behave the way that's going to give them the best results, so you frame it as a necessity to understand that we're all motivated to achieve a reward, similar to training dogs. I have no doubt that this works for some people, provided (as we've established) the mindset of punishment is absolutely avoided. (I'm not convinced that many people can easily do that if they're already firmly in the reward/punishment mentality, but for those that can, great.)

However I frame the behaviours as we're all Homo erectus with a bit of extra cerebral cortex, and what we consider to be "undesirable behaviours" in terms of dieting such as bingeing are actually (usually) physiologically normal survival responses to a food shortage. The way to overcome this is to not put yourself in the situation where these survival responses are set off to begin with, i.e. don't deny yourself nutrition that your body needs, and view food as something that's essential to survival (i.e. it's not a reward, it's an essential thing for survival... you don't reward yourself with oxygen....) and do exercise that you enjoy.

These two ways of framing the behaviour are not by any means mutually exclusive, and neither of them are necessary in order to understand human behaviour, because there are other ways besides these to frame the question and explanation.

I would predict that the actual practical solutions we come up with are very similar, in this case we both enjoy a post-workout meal without guilt. Is either approach wrong, per se? No. It's only wrong if it leads to a negative mindset and behaviour that stops you from achieving your goal.... your mindset would do that for me, I know that because I know myself well and how I react to things and as you have observed, at an emotional level, I don't separate reward from punishment and/or doing something I don't want to do.

I also know that when it comes to psychology, we can all be very different from each other, because so much of human behaviour is learned rather than hardwired. So while from a biological point of view, to lose weight you need a calorie deficit, and to be healthy you need exercise and healthy food and this is the same for everyone... from a psychology point of view, people should go with whatever enables them to stick with a healthy lifestyle while avoiding self-destructive behaviours.

The OP is wondering if this is a bad habit. I say no, it isn't. It's a great way to teach yourself consistency and by being conscious of both things, to avoid blowing up when you haven't expended the calories, because your lifestyle has changed, or better yet, to find motivation to take make an effort to find effective ways to maintain fitness when the environment changes. This is the top reason I have continued my progress despite living on the road for the past month and a half. Otherwise I would be depending on willpower, which is already being taxed by my environmental change.

Well I've managed to do all that without framing it all as "rewards" - and without being dependent on willpower... and also in adverse circumstances.

I sincerely hope you don't find this exchange to be unrewarding, because I am thoroughly enjoying it and appreciate your energy and intelligence.

It would be more enjoyable if I had enough time to be on the internet arguing all day... I'm popping in between doing other stuff and don't really have time to devote to these kinds of debates... and if I do then I'd rather they were on my blog and about issues I'm more invested in, such as evolutionary biology. In terms of this debate, whether someone should reject the whole mindset of reward and punishment, or have rewards without the punishment, really doesn't mean a lot to me. I don't really care which of those you or the OP chooses to do, so long as you're in a positive mindset that is keeping you motivated, getting you results and not causing you to be trapped in a negative cycle of punishment and self-denial. So really there's not much debate to be had, just quibbling over some small details, which I don't really like doing all that much (although I love talking about human evolutionary behaviour so that kind of makes up for it). I'm more of a "whatever, it works for you, but it doesn't work for me, just lets do what works" kind of person... so long as it really is working and isn't a justification for self-destructive behaviour.

All I have to say about this topic is that I am especially motivated to work out on the weekends since I will likely be in situations where having more calories available is to my benefit. I don't see anything wrong with that. If you are going to a buffet, it's just cruel to only have 500 calories available.

P.S. Totally miss Souplantation. Haven't been to one in over 20 years!!! I wonder if anything is the same.

With the MFP method (NEAT method), you're supposed to eat back exercise calories anyway OP...I wouldn't say it's a bad habit, I'd say you are using the tool as it is intended. Your calorie GOAL is a GOAL...something to be achieved, not shot under or over.

I have had a bad habit for a while and basically I am rewarding myself with food after a great workout. Today was a perfect example where I burned over 1200 Calories playing tennis which put me in the green as far as left over calories. I went to Soup Plantation with my family and had over 2000 calories for the meal which still put me under my calorie goal for the day but wish I could stop this habit. I did have a fair share of water which should have made me feel full but no go. Anyone else have this same habit and can you share any light on this ongoing dilemma?

I exercise in the evening so usually treat myself with a sugar-free icecream and maybe some nuts if I need to make up some calories.

Why do you want to stop this habit? You are exercising (good), you are eating under your calories (good). It's normal to eat after exercising - your body needs to replenish the fuel it just burnt off. As long as you are eating healthy food, and maybe a small treat, then why not?