Serotonin and Dopamine play important roles in our brain. These chemicals can make it hard to make wise eating choices. Understanding how serotonin and dopamine work can do wonders for creating a healthy lifestyle. Especially when trying to lose weight.

Serotonin is a neurotransmitter - a chemical released by neurons to send signals to other nerve cells, and is found in our gastrointestinal (GI) tract, blood and central nervous system (CNS). While it is partly responsible for a feeling of well-being and happiness, most of it is responsible for intestinal movements. When it does affect the CNS, it aids in the regulation of mood, appetite and sleep where it can affect memory and learning too.

Dopamine is an organic chemical of the catecholamine family that plays several important roles in the brain and body. In the brain, dopamine functions as a neurotransmitter. One of the big ways it affects the brain is through reward-motivated behavior. Rewards increase the activity of dopamine in the brain, and many addictive drugs increase dopamine levels.

When serotonin and dopamine are off, they can:

• Can cause you to eat food that you originally had not set out to eat
  • Make us feel like we can’t go on without getting what we want

• Can cause overeating

  • Seek to feel better now

• Is a difficult cycle to break

  • Our body will crave, seek and find your “reward”

Researchers have discovered:

• Rats will seek to increase the level of dopamine and serotonin in the brain repeatedly by eating high sugar foods far past when they are full.

• We react the same way as rats, stimulating these chemicals by eating enormous amounts of foods high in sugar, fat, and salt.

  • We tend to do this most often when we are pressured, sad, stressed, anxious, rejected or lonesome.

  • Low self-esteem (coupled with insufficient sleep) can cause excessive eating of processed foods.

• It’s important to understand that eating out of control to feel better (through serotonin and dopamine) is a natural thing.

  • When food was scarce, this response helped us stay alive. But now, it has made us less healthy.

  • We no longer need the excess calories to live.

  • Our bodies are not always trying to move toward health but rather toward survival.

• Understanding our bent on eating this way, can lead us towards abundant strength to overcome it.

  • First, this abundant strength will help you have the ability to stop what is happening

  • Then, you can understand what you are feeling and knowing that those fleeting feelings caused by serotonin and dopamine can trigger unhealthily eating

  • Finally, you can choose. You do not have to react in that way, it is a meaningful reward in itself to have the power to overcome and make the choice.

When our brain feels rewarded and “happy”:

• This chemical reaction happens in the middle of our brain, an older portion that is more reactionary and does less critical thinking.

• This middle part of our brain has been helpful by letting us know when to eat, and where to find food.

  • For example, if we were to find blueberries in the bushes. The higher sugar allows us to remember where they are so we can more easily find them again.

  • This reaction is due to the fact that our brains are strongly aroused by sugar, fat and salt in foods.

  • It is important to know our brain is not affected by foods such as meat and vegetables in the same way.

Most people’s problem is that they overeat:

• People eat for many reasons

  • Hunger

  • Boredom

  • Habit

  • Store energy for exercise

• There are a lot of people who think that they have no will-power when it comes to eating. However, I would say that they:

  • Start eating without knowing it.

  • Cannot stop eating until they feel gross and dislike themselves.

  • They feel hungry far too often.

    • Hunger replaces thirst, boredom or entertainment.

• This compulsion is often caused by diets that are high in sugar, fat, or salt.  

  • When this problem starts early in childhood, it is more deeply linked with feelings of comfort that are harder to overcome.

• There are individuals who are not overweight and may be eating with the same compulsion.

  • This reward centered eating is not healthy regardless of an individual’s weight.

  • Weight is only one aspect that makes up our health.

  • Some people dangerously jump in and out of fad diets just to continue to eat compulsively at times.

  • It is shown that fluctuating weight is linked to increases in cancer, or heart arrhythmias.

  • Compulsive eating can be triggered with anything that is associated with those foods. Therefore it’s important to acknowledge those links, and have practices and strategies for how to avoid and disrupt them.

Sugar is the primary driver of our brain’s pleasure center.