Excerpt from Enlightened Weight Loss
You’re Not Weak; You’re Human
Almost every new patient that comes to my office complains about their lack of willpower as though it’s a character flaw. They expect to be able to constantly deprive themselves for the rest of their lives, which will not ever happen. What they don’t understand is that our brains are hardwired to crave, and it has almost nothing to do with who we are. To feel like you’re in control, you will only need to become aware of how your instincts function and how to work around them.
You can enjoy good food while you lose weight, but there are some limits. No matter how motivated you are, there will still be times when it’s hard to stop yourself from overindulging. Especially when you’re at a restaurant and one part of your brain is telling you to eat every piece of bread in the basket even though another part of your brain is telling you not to. The part of your brain that’s urging you to eat the bread is called the “reward center.” It can easily overpower the other part of your brain that’s trying to keep you on track.
The reward center is strong because it’s built for survival. It’s designed to give you pleasure for doing things that keep you alive like eating.
In the past, eating bread triggered your reward center to release dopamine, which made you feel good. The reward center remembers that. When you see the breadbasket, the reward center lights up and triggers dopamine in anticipation of the bread. Then, it releases stress hormones to make you feel bad. You feel like the dopamine you’ll get from eating bread is the only way to feel better. This is why it’s so hard to resist food when it’s right in front of you.
The reward center makes you crave food, even if you aren’t hungry. It urges you to keep eating, even if you’re full. It also builds up a tolerance to the dopamine it gets from food. This makes you want to keep eating more and more until you feel the same “high” that you got the first time. But you’ll never really feel satisfied. It usually takes willpower, or a stomach ache to make you stop.
The reward center isn’t going anywhere. But it helps to understand that it is responsible for all of your cravings and overeating. It will help you realize that you aren’t weak, you’re just human. The next time you have a craving, take note of how you feel. It isn’t just the taste that you crave. It’s the survival part of your brain, tricking you with stress hormones and dopamine.
