If you have not noticed, the brain is a powerful thing. The more we know about it and furthermore understand its ways, the more we can shape our lives to get the outcomes that we want. But to know what to do is not good enough, we need to also understand it. For example, knowing how to ride a bike is different than understanding how to ride a bike. Watch this insightful video here to grasp this concept.

As you see in this video, it takes practice (and a lot of failing) to understand a new concept to the point to where we can do it. The same is true for our eating habits. It takes a lot of devoted time and effort to change the way we go about selecting food. But once it clicks, buying, preparing and eating healthily does become natural and our bodies do start to crave and want these healthier habits. They become a part of us just like riding a bike, we do not need to focus on them with such intensity any longer.

As you may know, the reward center of our brain is stimulated by sugar, fat, and salt (as discussed in my last post). So it is easier to fall into a habit of poor eating than it is healthy eating. If we don’t pay attention, just like a boat stuck in a current, we can slowly drift toward eating too much sugar, fat, and salt. These cause us to eat more, eat faster, eat more often, eat foods of less quality, and we can’t recognize when we are actually full.

Not only can we naturally drift toward poor nutrition but there also are forces pulling us that way for financial profit. Food scientists are exploiting our urge to want to stimulate our brain by developing foods that specifically target stimulation of the brain. Even after we diet and clean up our eating, the reward center of our brain will continually try to pull us back to our old eating habits. But the longer we stay away, the easier it is to maintain a great diet. People who learn how to control their reward center part of their brain (or not stimulating dopamine and serotonin), will be 2 to 3 times more successful in maintaining or achieving weight loss.

When the brain is stimulated or triggered, it releases dopamine. It is released with just thinking about certain foods that have stimulated it in the past. Once dopamine has been released, you will become strongly focused to do whatever in your environment is the most important thing at the time. Think of dopamine as a seek and find drug, it focuses your attention sharply on what will stimulate the reward center of your brain.  If there is nothing more important than obtaining food, it will be an irresistible urge or craving. Sugar, fat, and salt are the main drivers for this urgent seek and find mentality.

So how does the dopamine cycle work and more importantly, how can we break it?

Dopamine is set off by either eating or anticipating a food high in sugar, fat, and/or salt. Once triggered, it causes us to lust after the food unless we break the focus.  After eating the food, more dopamine is released, and the cycle continues as we go seek more food in that moment causing us to overeat or we seek food too quickly when thus we eat too often.

The more we stimulate these pathways in our brain, the more powerful it becomes and the habits formed are strengthened. In order to break the cycle of these habits, we have to create new habits that feel like they are going against what we want in the moment. This going against ourselves can feel like death, it can feel like “if I don’t get ______ life will not go on” but in fact life will go on and you will be ok. This process is called dying to yourself; meaning giving up what you want in the short term to gain what you really want in the long term.

Cravings are the adaptation of our brain circuits to a predictable pattern of behavior in a cycle:

Cue (sight, smell, taste or emotion around a food)
↓
Release of dopamine in the brain
↓
Strong focus on getting and eating that food
↓
Reward center in the brain is stimulated
↓
Beta Endorphins and Serotonin are released
↓
Cycle is repeated, the brain is rewired to a new habit
↓
Repeated over eating
↓
Weight gain and other health problems

Half of the battle in stopping this cycle is to understand what causes it and how it works, then the other half is building habits that promote health.