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Why We Overeat

Our brains are wired in such a way to guarantee that our bodies never go hungry. Dopamine, a neurotransmitter in the brain, gets us to focus on what’s most important in our environment for us to pay attention to. Now you may think it funny to hear that something like chocolate chip cookies could serve as a cue to stimulate dopamine in the brain. But if you’ve experienced chocolate chip cookies in the past and enjoyed that experience, when you see them again, the brain remembers how you felt. It will do anything it can to be satisfied like that again. Of course, if you experienced something that wasn’t so pleasurable, say liver, seeing it again will just set up avoidance behavior on your part.

Let’s take that experience with chocolate chip cookies one step further. Your brain remembers where you were, how you felt, what time of the day, etc. when you ate those cookies. Now if any of those stimuli are activated even when there are no cookies in sight, you’ll feel a strong need for chocolate chip cookies. We can be very resourceful and will figure out a way to make sure we get those chocolate chip cookies. Your brain even remembers the smell, the sound, and the taste of the cookies.

But what in the cookies got us stimulated the first time we experienced them? Chocolate chip cookies are a combination of fat, sugar and salt. As it turns out, that combination of sugar and fat is something that the brain never can get enough of. It never gets satiated to the point of you’re not wanting it any more. As long as that it is true, if the brain is stimulated to secrete dopamine, the dopamine will stay elevated before, during and after your encounter with the cookies. Because of that, it is very hard to stop eating the cookies.

Salt does something to the tongue that accentuates the flavors of the sugar and fat. Try making a batch of cookies with and without salt and see which one you like the most. Food manufacturers are well aware of that quintessential triangle of factors (sugar, fat, and salt) that make a food experience memorable. The more you eat of these foods, the more you need to eat these foods. In a way, the more times you repeat a particular experience, especially when it is a pleasant one, the more you reinforce the cues that stimulate you to repeat it. It’s just this reason that diets don’t work. You’re using willpower to break your habituated behaviors, which we know doesn’t work.

So you’re probably wondering what does work? How can you stop overeating? It really is a weaning process you need to go through. Let’s say you’re used to eating the very sugary cereals for breakfast but you would like to cut back on the sugar. Some people go “cold turkey” and are successful at it. However, they are the minority. What you need to do is put some of your favorite sugary cereal in a bowl along with some of the non-sugared cereals. Acclimate yourself to that taste. Then take away more of the sugared cereal and add more of the non-sugared cereal, until the point that all you’re eating is the non-sugared cereal. You’ve just weaned yourself off of what’s unhealthy for you.

Always keep in mind that food manufacturers are in the business of feeding the American public. So it’s in their best interest to tease and tantalize you, advertise in a way that makes you feel better about yourself when you eat their foods. But remember that you do have control over what goes into your mouth or into your grocery cart. It may take time to wean yourself, but every little or big thing you do protects you from all the negative conditions associated with overweight and obesity. Don’t let the food industry control your neurotransmitters.

While Robin Williams in the movie, Dead Poets Society, “carpe diem” or “seize the day”, what you need to do is “seize control back”. The more foods you eat that don’t control your dopamine like sugar, fat and salt do, the easier it will be to lose weight. Pick foods you enjoy but that you know aren’t going to trigger a strong dopamine reaction. Determine ahead of time what you plan to eat. Look at restaurant menus online and order in your mind foods that don’t destroy your good habits. Eat foods that are as close to the way they came out of the ground as possible – whole grains, fruit, vegetables.

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