What to do when your brain chases food rewards
7 min read
In our modern-day food environment, most of us are blessed to have ready accessibility to a wide range of food items. But what’s difficult is that we are also exposed to a great deal of visible foods cues, including:
- Ads
- Open up-principle kitchens
- Coworkers bringing in cookies or doughnuts
- Chips and sweet around the register even at stores that really don’t largely offer foods
This form of environment would make it more demanding to only eat when we detect we’re hungry. Instead, we may want to eat just since we lay eyes on a food items that appears to be like tasty. Over time, visual food stuff cues might guide us to consume when we’re not hungry extra than we would if individuals cues weren’t present. (Observe: this is much less very likely to transpire for folks who hardly ever experienced their inner intuitive eater knocked out of them, or who have reclaimed and practiced intuitive ingesting expertise). We’re feeding on mainly because we are trying to get a reward, and that reward is not (or is not only) the gratifying of hunger.
Why does this take place? Let’s examine.
Evolution and your brain
Some behaviors that really don’t make practical perception nowadays (and may even bring about us distress) made a good deal of sense to our extensive-in the past ancestors. If you have been an early hunter-gatherer, remembering how to accessibility excellent sources of foodstuff (which watering gap the wooly mammoths favor, where to obtain the berries that aren’t poisonous…and when they are in season) would support make it doable for you to endure so you could choose element in perpetuating the species.
Remembering this critical foodstuff information involves both favourable or destructive reinforcement (or the two).
- With favourable reinforcement, you acquire a reward for having a certain motion.
- With destructive reinforcement, you decrease some thing negative by having a certain action.
Both forms of reinforcement improve the odds that you will consider that motion once more in the long term, due to the fact when our brains make the relationship between an motion (or habits) and a reward, it results in a strong emotional memory.
Mentioned another way, if you consume a scrumptious foodstuff, and it would make you truly feel superior (optimistic reinforcement), you embed a memory that allows you afterwards remember exactly where you bought the meals, what you preferred about it, the circumstance in which we ate it, and so forth.
Similarly, if you are pressured or sad or nervous, and you consume something that assists you sense much less negative (detrimental reinforcement), you may embed a memory that taking in sure foodstuff decreases particular awkward thoughts.
I see the effects of this “brain training” for foods rewards participate in out in distinctive ways, most notably “food addiction” and dieting.
The “rewards” of dieting
Let’s say you are counting energy, carbs or fats grams—or if not “watching what you eat” or “controlling part sizes”—and you do eliminate weight (as most folks do for the shorter phrase). If you get compliments about your shrinking overall body, that serves as positive reinforcement to retain carrying out what you’re carrying out. That can assistance compensate for the soul-sucking mother nature of eating “good” food items that you never actually like and providing up “bad” foods that you love.
Chasing the benefits of compliments, praise and acceptance keeps people chasing excess weight reduction, which perpetuates yo-yo dieting.
(There is yet another facet to this coin, nevertheless. I have had clients who have been in a stage of their lifestyle wherever they were being a lot more active than typical and ingesting “normally,” and dropped some weight as a aspect effect. Then the compliments commenced coming, which created them uncomfortable—not most people would like their entire body to be commented on, even in a “positive” way—which brought on them to start binge feeding on and/or being a lot less energetic so they could continue to be indoors and disguise their entire body. When they acquired excess weight and the human body enhances stopped, this served as a damaging reinforcement to stay on this path.)
Let’s not forget about that restrained taking in (foodstuff restriction) frequently sales opportunities to rebound eating. This rebound feeding on could really feel like emotional consuming, “out-of-control” eating, or binging. In some instances, it might actually meet up with the clinical definition of a binge, and of binge taking in disorder (Mattress).
The perpetuation of this rebound consuming in response to real or even perceived restriction (scarcity), is pushed by food tasting so a great deal additional worthwhile following we have been deprived of it. On that note…
Fueling “food addiction”
On the “food addiction” front, I’ve experienced clientele who experienced quite sturdy emotional eating tendencies. Sometimes this started in childhood (when they ended up also young to have made other suggests of coping). Often this began in adulthood (all through incredibly annoying, very fast paced situations of daily life when having time for significant self-care was a pipe aspiration).
Do you imagine that working with meals to really feel loved and cared for (favourable reinforcement) or to numb out (detrimental reinforcement) creates impressive emotional memories? Sure it does.
It’s this reinforcement, and these emotional reminiscences, that preserve neglected youngsters locked in an emotional feeding on cycle a long time later on even if they now have a loving associate, excellent close friends and a satisfying lifetime. It’s what would make a medical or mental health experienced (who you may well imagine would “know better”) comprehend that they have no coping applications other than food items due to the fact meals always worked so nicely for them that they never ever bothered to diversify their coping toolbox.
There is some proof that so-identified as “highly palatable” foods (processed meals high in extra sugar, salt and body fat) can have an even additional worthwhile outcome. It can get to the level in which we so strongly foresee that reward when we eat these food items that it is extremely tough to resist visual cues connected with those people foodstuff. For instance, a picture of an individual taking in ice product, a pizza ad on Television, donuts (even stale donuts) in the crack area.
So is this food items habit, or is it brain teaching?
Retraining the mind
Regardless of what you phone it, feeding on that feels psychological or out of command in some way could possibly sense superior in the instant, but then not so fantastic later.
- You could possibly really feel guilt or shame (which you truthfully never deserve)
- You may possibly have eaten to the point of bodily irritation
- You may worry excess weight get (even while your eating may not truly be causing body weight attain and halting psychological/binge ingesting might not lead to body weight reduction)
Which of these instruments is most effective for retraining your mind about food stuff benefits?
- Willpower
- Mindfulness
- A lobotomy
Oh, I hope you said B! Willpower is serious, but it is not an infinite resource, and we use it up as we make selections and offer with stressors through the day. (When you want to say a thing snarky to a co-worker or honk at a rude driver, and you really do not, you just made use of up some willpower.) And I’m not even going to remark on the strategy of a lobotomy.
Utilizing mindfulness in this context includes:
- Turning out to be conscious of our behaviors and what triggers them
- Checking out and recognizing the genuine benefits (bodily sensations and emotional outcomes) we get from the behavior—without judgement (!)
- Making use of that facts to make a compassionate selection that supports self-treatment
Whilst possessing a common mindfulness meditation observe can support with this, a brief, casual, in-the-minute apply, these kinds of as this edition of the RAIN meditation, may possibly be additional beneficial:
- Recognize the craving/having impulse
- Allow the expertise to exist, just as it is
- Investigate with fascination and treatment what it feels like in the body
- Note the connected physical sensations from minute to minute, with self-compassion
If you would like to understand much more about RAIN, Tara Brach discusses it properly on her website.
The base line
It’s easy to get caught in habitual conduct styles that we did not consciously select and may well also be repeating endlessly devoid of making a conscious preference to do so. These designs are not minimal to food…we could find ourselves repeating specified designs in our interactions, our procuring practices, and other aspects of lifetime.
When we can glow a self-compassionate light on what we’re executing and why we’re doing it, it opens the doorway to making a mindful alternative, no matter whether that selection is in alignment with our founded habit, or some thing entirely unique. The reality that we now have a decision (no far more autopilot) is a win.
Carrie Dennett is a Pacific Northwest-based registered dietitian nutritionist, freelance writer, intuitive consuming counselor, author, and speaker. Her superpowers contain busting nutrition myths and empowering women to come to feel improved in their bodies and make meals options that help enjoyment, nourishment and wellness.
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