THE POWER OF HABIT
- Author: CHARLES DUHIGG
- Language: ingliz tilida
- Writing: ingliz yozuvida
- Publisher: Toshkent
- Year: 2014
- Views: 191
PROLOGUE
The Habit Cure
She was the scientists’ favorite participant.
Lisa Allen, according to her file, was thirty-four years old, had
started smoking and drinking when she was sixteen, and had struggled
with obesity for most of her life. At one point, in her mid-twenties,
collection agencies were hounding her to recover $10,000 in debts. An
old résumé listed her longest job as lasting less than a year.
The woman in front of the researchers today, however, was lean and
vibrant, with the toned legs of a runner. She looked a decade younger
than the photos in her chart and like she could out-exercise anyone in
the room. According to the most recent report in her file, Lisa had no
outstanding debts, didn’t drink, and was in her thirty-ninth month at a
graphic design firm.
“How long since your last cigarette?” one of the physicians asked,
starting down the list of questions Lisa answered every time she came
to this laboratory outside Bethesda, Maryland.
“Almost four years,” she said, “and I’ve lost sixty pounds and run a
marathon since then.” She’d also started a master’s degree and bought
a home. It had been an eventful stretch.
The scientists in the room included neurologists, psychologists,
geneticists, and a sociologist. For the past three years, with funding
from the National Institutes of Health, they had poked and prodded
Lisa and more than two dozen other former smokers, chronic
overeaters, problem drinkers, obsessive shoppers, and people with
other destructive habits. All of the participants had one thing in
common: They had remade their lives in relatively short periods of