OVERVIEW:When I first signed up for this class I thought it would be interesting to learn what motivates others, why certain people act the way they do. As I became more engrossed in the chapters, I began to learn more about myself. The first few chapters covered more of the basic concepts and definitions regarding motivation, then it went into more of the philosophical and historical side of motivation. This was particularly interesting for it brought up concepts that I never really thought about before when it comes to motivation.For example, evolutionary history and personal history or better yet, nature verse nurture. Throughout the chapters you will learn more about addictions and personal disposition; dieting and all its characteristics surrounding it; arousal and all its traits, from physiological and brain arousal to psycologcial arousal; and stress, the events that cause it, how to deal with it, and the harmful effects of it. The second part of the class started off with the importance of motivation and the tricky slope of knowing how you are acting but not knowing the motive, reason behind it. The second part of class we also learn that personality has a strong correlation towards a persons motivation, and the incentives. Goals are the main drive behind why a person becomes motivated. However with everything there is always a cost, and the cost of motivated behavior comes in many forms; whether it be time, money, physical or a psychological cost. Then we finish up the book with how motives affect our emotions from physically to behaviorally, and even through our expressions.
FAVORITE PART: Being a girl and especially with bikini season here needless to say my favorite part was chapter 5, where it broke down the way the body functions and its responses to hunger, thirst, and eating. The body goes through so many changes throughout the day, that it needs homeostasis in order to stay balanced. For example, you've probably have noticed when you are cold (which means there was a drop in temperature in your body) and start to shiver, well that shivering is homeostasis at work. By shivering your blood vessels constricted to raise your body temperature.
Although homeostasis works to regulate body temperature, there isn't a way to replenish the body naturally when its dehydrated . Thirst can be indicated by the body in many ways. When an individual is thirsty it derives from the loss of intracellular fluids due to a high concentration of salt in extracellular fluid that draws the water in the cell out. A lot of times one looses fluids and becomes thirsty through going to the bathroom or sweating. I use to have a trainer that would always say, "if you're thirsty, then you are already dehydrated". He was very big on replenishing the body before, during, and after a workout. Now understanding a little more of how the body functions, I am much more conscience of what I need to do to keep my body at a happy medium. For instance, two weeks ago my cousin and I took a boxing class, we ate something small before class and drank periodically throughout the class so I thought I would be fine. Unfortunately the class was way more intense than I had anticipated and I was only drinking water so I really had nothing to refuel my body. By the second hour I had already burned up all my calories from that day. By the time I got home my sugar had dropped and I felt so weak, I had no energy what so ever. I've done intense workouts before, especially during preseason for soccer but I had never experienced such a drop in energy and have felt so weak before.
Food is an essential part in keeping that happy medium within the body, for food is energy. For short term energy food is changed from glucose to glycogen, and for long-term energy the body relys on its fat storage which is determined by the set point model. When someone becomes hungry that usually means that they are running low on energy/ food in their system, however this is not the only case a person may decide to eat. The palatability of foods (appearance, texture, aroma, flavor) all play a large part in how much someone may eat. there is also something called the mere exposure effect, where liking foods comes from exposure to them. Especially in the United States food is everywhere, along with variety. The documentary "Super Size" holds the statement that food is everywhere to be very true, for it shows that ridiculous amounts of food chains (ie. McDonalds) are only blocks away from each other.
This chapter also made an interesting point in where dieters and those suffering from anorexia have different hunger boundaries (lower) and satiety boundaries (higher) than 'normal' eaters. Even though it does make sense for a dieter's satiety levels to be lower than a 'normal' eater for dieters typically will consume less food in which their stomach "shrinks" and they get full quicker, but I just think it is interesting that they lumped being with eating disorders to those on diets. Regardless whether you suffer from overeating or from anorexia, eating disorders are becoming more and more apparent in our society. In Christina Aguilera's music video "Beautiful" she touches on many social issues, eating disorders being one of them.