The Reason You Are Craving Food

Have you ever stopped and wondered why you crave certain foods?  Do you feel like you just have to have ice cream in the evening?  Have you ever felt out of control, as though you were eating it against your will and you were powerless to stop?  There is a reason that this happens.  In order to overcome these cravings, you must first understand why they are happening. 

Our Brains are designed to seek pleasure

All species’ brains are designed to seek pleasure and avoid pain.  This is an evolutionary trick to reward life preserving activities.  Consider that the main things we gather the most pleasure from are food, sex, and human connection.  We need to eat to live, need sex to propagate the species, and need connection with others for safety.  All of these activities cause a release of dopamine in the brain which is what gives you the sense of pleasure.  It is a chemical reaction that occurs in the brain.

When you eat food, you get a release of dopamine.  This cues the brain to strengthen the neural pathways around that food.  Strengthening these pathways reminds us that this is important, so the next time you encounter that same food, the neural pathway triggers you to want that food.  The more often you eat certain foods, the stronger the neural pathways become.  This leads the brain to subconsciously trigger cravings for these foods, which is why you can feel out of control.  It is not a conscious thought, but rather your neural pathways triggering your desire for food. 

Concentrated Pleasure

Going back to caveman times, food was all natural without any processing.  Since then we have discovered how to concentrate sugar into high fructose corn syrup.  We have taken flour and concentrated it down to a fine powder (which is immediately converted to sugar in your body).  This processing turns sugars and flours into highly concentrated hits of pleasure for the brain.  Our brains have not yet evolved to handle this.  When the brain gets a taste of highly concentrated sugar it says “Wow!!!  That was amazing – you definitely need more of that!”  Imagine a toddler after eating something very sugary – they are literally bouncing off the walls because they are not yet accustomed to that much sugar.  The brain then believes that this concentrated food is more important than it really is for survival, and creates very strong neural pathways is the brain. 

Consider the case of someone using cocaine for the first time.  The euphoria they feel actually lights up the same areas of the brain as sugar, which has been shown in multiple MRI studies.  Almost any drug addict will you tell you the first time is the best with using drugs, and each time after that gets successively less rewarding, however the craving becomes stronger and stronger.  This is due to the body developing tolerance, so that it takes more each time to achieve the same feeling.  This is similar with food over time. 

Unconscious Habit

If you have been eating ice cream every night for some time, you will have developed extremely strong neural pathways around that eating activity.  The brain remembers all the cues, such as time of day, if you usually watch TV in the evening, etc.  When those cues appear, the brain starts sending signals that its time to eat ice cream again.  The brain really just wants its hit of dopamine.  It starts sending these signals more and more urgently until eventually you go and get the ice cream out of the freezer.  This is why you often feel helpless to stop it, or as if getting the ice cream was out of your control. 

Does this sound familiar to you?  Do you have a craving that is not serving you, but you feel powerless to stop?  The good news is that you can break the cycle and have freedom around food.  This is one of the many things I teach my clients in my weight loss coaching.  Losing weight is much more than choosing the right foods – it is about managing your mind around food.  If you would like to know more, please sign up for a free mini session.