The F*ck It Switch- The Rebuild Week 20

Understanding why we make poor choices

Sep 07, 2023

What Is The Fuck It Switch?

“The Fuck It Switch is a cognitive switch that when flicked, temporarily tricks us into thinking we don’t care for the consequences of our actions”
-Sam Wilson (just now)

Over the last couple of weeks, I have been trying to figure out the real reasons why I sometimes make poor decisions around food.

I’d been going along nicely until last Sunday I hit the dreaded fuck it switch and overate by over 1,000 calories.

It’s the same switch I used to flick when I was abusing substances.

A part of your brain works tirelessly to convince you that you should do something that will make you feel some temporary reprieve, even though you are fully aware that doing that thing will be bad for you in the long run.

It’s not the calories I am concerned about in this instance. We are human. Some days, we will get hungry. It’s that all too familiar behaviour of giving in and giving up on myself.

In those moments of weakness, I convince myself I don’t care about my actions' consequences. I’ve convinced myself that somehow I could get away with it. Maybe the calorie tracker made a mistake? Surely there are not THAT many calories in an entire packet of jatz coupled perfectly with a container of dip.

I’d do the same with drugs and alcohol, too. After a stressful day at work, I would tell myself that I didn’t care about work, ironic given I wouldn’t be stressed about work if I didn’t care about it. I’d say to myself that I could easily have a few beers to destress, get to bed reasonably, and get back into it tomorrow. Throughout the night, I would convince myself I’d still be okay tomorrow if I stayed up just one more hour and had just a couple more, and so on.

This is the fuck it switch, and I think deep down we all have one. We’ve all had similar experiences to the above, but I think some people have more control over their fuck it switches than others. Some people are better at identifying when they’re getting close to flicking her fuck it switch than others.

But why? Why are some people better equipped to cope with these moments of temptation than others? Why are we all, at times, susceptible to making poor choices, giving in to temptation and potentially doing something we know we will come to regret later on? If someone told you to light your house on fire before you went out to do the groceries and just see what it looks like when you get home, you’d tell them they’re crazy. So why do we make other choices that we know we are likely to regret later?

What Causes Me To Flick The Fuck It Switch

Firstly, I need to stress that anything I write from here is purely a theory based on nothing more than my own experiences.

I’m always far more likely to hit my fuck it switch when I am stressed, frustrated, tired, annoyed or have physical ailments like a sore back or whatever.

We had to travel to Sydney on the weekend and spend the night up there before returning home the following day. As just about anyone with children would know, travelling with toddlers can be difficult. You have to be strategic.

“HE JUST RUBBED HIS LEFT EYE TWO TIMES IN A ROW! GET HIM IN THE CAR, QUICK, QUICK, RUUUUNNN! WE NEED TO GET AS FAR AS WE CAN WHILE HE’S ASLEEP!”

I’ve been battling a bit of a cold for over a fortnight now. It's more of a cough than anything. It's one that isn’t bad enough to keep you home from work or stop you from exercising.

It’s a deceptive fucker too. You wake up and cough your guts up, but as the sun rises, you start to feel okay again. Each day, you think, “Maybe I’m getting better. Maybe I’m finally coming out the other end of this bullshit”. But sure enough, as the sun goes down that night and brings a cool change with it, the coughing starts again.

I was sleeping really well before I got sick. But now I was coughing badly enough in my sleep that I would wake myself up. Often, I’d start coughing and get some phlegm stuck in my throat, and I had no choice but to keep coughing until I cleared it because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t have been able to breathe.

So my poor old body is now fighting this annoying sickness but not getting enough rest at night. It's a lovely little negative feedback loop. The poor sleep and sickness were compounding as the days stacked up, and my mood would drop incrementally each day.

I probably should have had some days off from exercising, but I was annoyed. I figured if I was good enough to work, I was good enough to exercise. It's a silly attitude in hindsight, but I can be a stubborn prick at times.

I was organised with good food for the Saturday leg of the trip. I ate well and could even take advantage of being in the big smoke, where they have many vegan takeaway options and have something nice for dinner without going over my calorie target. But given I was run down the week before we left, I didn’t have the energy to be organised enough to consider what I would do the next day.

On Sunday, I woke up from another sub-standard sleep. I was keen to get home because I like to spend a few hours of a weekend getting my shit together for the week ahead to remove as much friction between myself and what I want to achieve as possible.

Because I was unorganised and hadn’t planned much to eat, I couldn’t eat much until I got home around 2 p.m.

I was tired, sick, and annoyed that I had so much left to do to get organised for the week, but most crucially, I allowed myself to get to a point where I was so hungry that I no longer gave a shit what I ate. I just wanted to eat now and eat lots. Whatever I could eat with the least amount of effort. This is where I hit the fuck it switch and entered into an afternoon binge that didn’t stop until shortly before bed.

How To Better Control The Fuck It Switch

The tricky thing about the fuck it switch, mine in particular, is that it can take a lot of energy to switch, but once it switches, it can take the same amount of energy, or more, to switch back.

I like to think of it as a circuit breaker on a switchboard that switches one way when using clean, renewable, sustainable energy and the other when using dirty, carbon-dense power.

The only difference is I can’t actually control the switch. The switch is behind a locked case, and I don’t have the key.

The only thing I can do is control where the energy comes from. The things I can do that I know will keep the fuck it switch at bay are;

Prioritising sleep
Regular exercise
Eating a primarily whole food, nutrient-dense diet
Daily breathwork
Daily journaling
Setting aside time to make sure I’m organised
Avoiding social media and garbage TV
Prioritising spending time with my family

I know all of the above is pretty cliche, but there is a reason why these things are so prevalent when talking about looking after ourselves. Because they fucking work.

For a long time, I let that fear of failure or fear of other people’s opinions and probably my fear of admitting hard truths to myself prevent me from doing so many of them. Still, now that I am doing these things, my only regret is that I didn’t start doing them sooner.

What I’ve Learned

My biggest problem has always been that I struggle to deal with and process stress, negative thoughts and feelings. So, I have conditioned myself through repetition to avoid doing those things by any means necessary. It’s caused issues with substance addiction, poor food relationships, self-esteem issues, depression and anxiety.

Essentially, before getting sober, I wasn’t doing my own mental maintenance.

Getting sober was like taking an old, poorly maintained car to the mechanic for the first time in a decade and then being shocked by how much work needed to be done and how long it would take.

This is just part of that work.

There is no silver bullet. I have to remove the things I was using to avoid doing the work that needs to be done. Instead of drinking, drugging or eating to distract myself from feelings and thoughts, I need to keep working on sitting with them.

On Sunday afternoon, I kept eating even after I was no longer hungry. I was eating shit too. Because I was feeling like shit, and the food I was eating made me feel good at the time.

I know there will be times when I hit the fuck it switch again. I’m only human, after all. For me, it’s not about avoiding the fuck it switch altogether. It’s about minimising the damage it causes when it’s flicked and getting back on track sooner than I have been, and that can only come from being more self-aware and identifying and remaining conscious of these triggers so I can be better prepared to deal with them.

I guess I probably have a greater fear of the fuck it switch than most because it reminds me so much of when I used to hit the fuck it switch and ended up on an unplanned two-day bender, and these behaviours around binge eating are precisely the same.

Ultimately, though, things are going well. Since starting with the nutritionist a fortnight ago, I have exercised daily. I have been hitting my macronutrient targets, and to date, I am down 2.3kgs, all while still enjoying a little bit of junk each day and not feeling like I am starving. I just need to keep working on that emotional relationship with food and stop distracting myself from dealing with my thoughts and feelings.

Cheers Wankers.

How do you identify when your fuck it switch is close to being flicked, and what do you do to manage it?

I’d love to hear about other people’s experiences.