“You are what you eat.”
Day 9 Morning Scorecard and Permission Giving Self-Reflection:
Feed Your Whole Brain Not Just Your Emotions
Our brain's emotional centers "get fed" before our rational brain gets a slice of the pie. The impulse control center of your brain, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, is located towards the top of our brains but the emotional limbic center is located in the middle of our brain. So when glucouse, aka sugar, gets put into your body the first brain area served up the delicious goodness is your emotional brain. Think of the emotional brain as a big brother who takes control of the food supply and only gives the leftovers to the rational little brother brain when there is enough to go around. What this means for you is that the impulse control center in your brain is last in line for nutrients. So if you eat crappy food and spike your glucose levels quickly, your impulse controls centers will never have a vote in what you eat. The only way to give your future self a fighting chance is to give your body a steady supply of nutrients throughout the day and a consistently healthy diet throughout the week. What I'm trying to point out is that bad decisions about what you eat leads to future bad decisions about what to eat. To put it simply, eating well helps your whole brain become active and therefore helps you to make better decisions in the future.
FACT: Your stomach takes 20-30 minutes after eating to feel full even if it has already reached its limit earlier.
TAKEAWAY: If you eat slowly your leptin levels have a chance to tell your body you're full and you won't overeat.
Wanting and Liking Are Not The Same Thing
It's a strange paradox of brain functioning, that often what our brain's "want" and what they actually "like" are two different things. This is why you may "want" to eat a McDonald's Big Mac but will not "like" the after-effects. So often with food, our brain will give us the order to engage only to be left with feelings of regret after the deed is done. This mystery of the brain is mostly due to our dopamine systems being misled by high calorie and highly processed food sources. The first time you ate a big mac, your brain must have thought it hit survival gold, all those calories in such a small package. However, once your digestive system came in contact with the greasy ingredients rebellion was likely to occur. This occurs because desire and satisfaction are processed in entirely different areas of the brain. Your brain "wants" dopamine in any form even if the side effects are harsh, but "liking" something only occurs after all systems give a report. So we must be smarter than our brains and help it make the right choice. The best option is therefore to limit access to foods that make us feel ill, because often out of sight is out of mind when it comes to food. So try to change your environment and not your desires, make a healthy shopping list and stick to it. Undoubtedly, you will find yourself staring down an unhealthy food choice, but play the tape forward and ask yourself what that "food-like" substance will make you feel like in twenty minutes.
FACT: Your brain will give you a large dopamine burst on first contact with a high calorie food, but subsequent usage only delivers a tiny percentage of that initial tasting.
TAKEAWAY: The desire network in the brain is programmed to deliver dopamine while your hungry. When you start eating, however, the dopamine supply backs off in order not to waste the precious neurochemical.
“Food is the most abused anxiety drug. Exercise is the most underutilized antidepressant.”