I am sure you had times in your life when sticking to a diet wasn’t a problem. You were motivated, committed and totally rocked the healthy eating and exercise things.
But sometimes it’s just a fucking nightmare. You want to lose these few extra pounds, but it just doesn’t happen. Even though you really want to clean up your diet, an occasional cookie or piece of chocolate somehow lands in your mouth in a mindless moment and throws off your calorie balance.
Why does it happen?
Imagine every person has an inner ‘pleasure tank’. You want to have your pleasure tank always full to be happy.
If your pleasure tank is already filled to 95% because it’s warm and sunny outside, you just got a salary raise and you are in an amazing relationship, then there is only 5% left to fill. You can use delicious food as a tool to fill up the tank completely, however, you won’t need too much of it. For this reason, you are more likely to be in control of your eating behaviour and your portion sizes.
In contrast, if your life sucks; there’s a storm outside, you feel cold and uncomfortable, stressed by all the stuff you have to do, and there isn’t a single pleasure drop left on the bottom of your pleasure tank, then it’s very likely that you will look for a way to get some pleasure. At the end of the day, that’s how we evolved as humans. Comfort food is nothing but a tool to get some pleasure and satisfy your craving for comfort.
The question is: what can we do to resist temptations and stop using food as comfort tool?
Project into the disappointing future
Before grabbing this cookie, think about it how you will feel after you eat it and realise that you didn’t stick to your diet again?
Will you feel disappointed about yourself? Frustrated? Angry?
Usually, when we get tempted to eat something that doesn’t fit into our diet we just imagine the moment we eat it. The delicious taste, the amazing texture and how it makes us feel good. We don’t think further to the moment we realise that we acted against our health or body composition goals.
Use the thought that motivates you to eat food to get comfort as a cue to think further. Continue this thought to project how disappointed you will feel not sticking to your diet. Eating this cookie gives you only a minute of sugary pleasure, but the feeling of disappointment not being able to resist and follow your diet will stay for hours.
Projecting negative emotions should do the trick to make the tempting food less appealing and helping you to resist the temptation.
Eating what you shouldn’t eat is mostly a symptom of a problem, not the actual problem
Food is often used just as tool to increase neurotransmitter levels that give us happiness, motivation and pleasure, such as serotonin and dopamine. However, food is not the only thing that increases these. So do social interactions, light exposure, and doing things that feel comfortable and you enjoy, such as listening to music, having a hot bath etc.
Maybe you are lacking social interactions or daylight light exposure in the first place, because you work hard or don’t feel like going out, especially now, as it is cold in winter. This is the reason why your brain suggests using food as a tool to increase dopamine/serotonin levels to feel better.
Impulse to get something that gives you pleasure is just a suggestion the reptile part of your brain makes. Suggestion, on how to leave the pain zone and get into the comfort zone. It is up to the rational part of your brain to decide if to follow these suggestions or not. You have the power to resist!
To sum up, your plan of action:
Go out for at least 20 min every day to get daylight exposure.
Pay attention to have social interactions every day; meet a friend, call a family member or in emergency case message with someone on social media.
When you get the impulse to grab something that doesn’t fit to your diet, project into the future and image how disappointed you will feel for not sticking to your plan.
Pro tip: make a list of activities that give you pleasure and pick one thing from this list and every time you feel the craving for comfort.
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