As we work together throughout this chapter, I want you to know that I get it—I know how hard it is to break bad habits and form new ones. As a sweets lover, I’ve struggled for years. I can tell you what’s in every bakery within a five-mile radius of my home, and I’m on a first-name basis with the people who run Biagio Fine Chocolate, located just around the corner. Fortunately, I can now enjoy sweets without being controlled by them, because I’m using the same strategies I’ll be recommending to you. So now I’m in control of when I go to these places, and what I walk out with.
WHAT KIND OF EATER ARE YOU?
Among people who overeat, I typically see three different types: garden-variety overeater, food abuser, and, like my client Carol, food addict. Any of these three types may also be an emotional eater, which makes converting to a healthy way of eating even more challenging—but still doable.
Garden-variety overeaters are the least controlled by food; they’re not obsessing over it all the time, and they may not even experience strong cravings. Perhaps the reason they overeat is because they grew up eating big portions at home and/or often eat out in restaurants, where they clean their plate (generally featuring an oversized portion) without much thought. Or they might not eat big portions, but out of habit or lack of nutrition knowledge, they make really fattening choices (steaks, fries, soft drinks), so they wind up taking in too many calories. Or their overeating might be caused by emotions, as Ann covered in the previous chapter.
Food abusers are more under the grip of food. Like drug and alcohol abusers, they do experience cravings and often give in to them even though their habit causes serious problems in their lives: like being overweight and the spin-off social and health consequences.
Food addicts not only abuse food but also experience the same things that people with drug and alcohol addictions do: They need more of the substance to achieve the same effect, and they experience withdrawal symptoms. While anyone who’s ever felt controlled by a chocolate chip cookie has no doubt that he or she is addicted, the terms “food addict” and “addictive food” are still somewhat controversial in the scientific community. Food addiction is not an official condition recognized by the medical field, but more and more researchers agree that it’s a real diagnosis.
No matter what type of eater you are—addict, abuser, or garden-variety overeater—the nine step treatment plan starting on page 98 will help break the spell that food holds over you.
WHY DO YOU OVEREAT?
So, why is the bowl of M&M’s sitting on the conference room table so distracting that you can’t concentrate on the meeting until you grab a handful? Why do you order dessert when you’re still stuffed from dinner? Why do you do things like open a box of minidoughnuts on your way back from the supermarket, swearing you’ll eat just one, and then end up polishing off the entire box by the time you pull into your driveway? Why do cravings always seem to get the better of you? Whether you’re a garden-variety overeater, a food abuser, or a food addict, your overeating problem is not simply a lack of willpower. Below are some of the primary reasons why, despite what you may want to do (eat healthfully, avoid sweets, lose weight, and so on), you still struggle to actually do it. In other words, these are the barriers to eating a healthy, balanced diet that you’ll need to overcome or find a way to deal with if you want to get your eating and your weight back under control. (That’s what we’ll be working on in the Nine Step Program.)
YOU INHERITED A CAVEMAN’S BRAIN
Go back about one hundred thousand years to the time when cavemen roamed the earth (the Paleolithic Age, in case you’re wondering). That’s when many of our food preferences were established. Because pulling together a meal took real effort—in the form of hunting and gathering—human survival was determined by a person’s ability to seek out foods that were safe (not toxic), nutritious, and high in calories. That’s how our tastes for sweet, fatty, salty (a little sodium is necessary for survival), and highprotein (savory) foods evolved. It’s also how our ability to perceive bitter taste, which warned us away from potentially poisonous foods, and sour taste, signaling “proceed with caution,” developed.
Plus, we were attracted to variety. New tastes and flavors—even just the anticipation of them—spark our brain’s pleasure centers. Again, this was all about survival: The more types of plant and animal foods our ancestors ate, the more likely that they would cover their vitamin and mineral needs. Then on top of all of this, a different set of hormones evolved to make sure that people packed on fat, in case they ever had to draw from their reserves. All of this made perfect sense in a time when calories were hard won.
But it clearly makes no sense in a world where all you have to do to indulge your taste for fat and salt is get in your car and pick up a 1,000-plus-calorie meal at the drive-thru. Or where your urge for variety takes you to Baskin-Robbins, where, over the years, more than one thousand different flavors of ice cream have been created. This drive for variety is also the reason why no matter how full you feel after a meal, you suddenly have room for dessert. No problem if you were eating a caveman’s dessert—a 40-calorie handful of berries—but with our built-in penchant for fat and sweets, it’s pretty difficult to resist the hundreds of calories in cookies, cakes, pies, and sundaes.
But the good news: You can retrain your tastes and actually get to the point where you enjoy—even prefer—healthier foods. (It’s true!) And you can rein in the instinct for variety and actually use it to your advantage.
YOUR BRAIN GETS STUCK ON THE
BAD HABITS YOU’VE CREATED
Whenever you repeatedly give in to high-fat, indulgent foods, you create a habit. For instance, if you always eat in front of the TV or when you go to the mall, or if you typically eat at a certain time (your two o’clock trek to the vending machine) or with a specific person (your reliable binge buddy), you’re conditioning yourself to expect food in these situations. It carves a pathway into the brain, and the more you repeat the behavior, the deeper the groove in the brain becomes. And if eating the food temporarily quells stress, loneliness, or other emotions, now emotions have become another trigger (as you’ve read about in chapter 2). The next time you’re stressed out or in emotional pain, your brain seeks out those foods again, which once more brings temporary relief. With each turn of the cycle, the connection between food and mood gets stronger and more reinforced in the brain.
You can unlink addictive foods from their triggers. I’m not saying that breaking these types of habits is easy, but you can do it and still have a life full of pleasure. In fact, you’ll have even more pleasure. After all, our hardwired tastes for food aren’t the only source of gratification. Feeling in control of your life as well as the sense of pride and accomplishment—and relief—that you broke a destructive habit also tickle the pleasure centers of the brain in a big way. Which, in turn, only helps further ingrain your new healthier habits.
YOUR BRAIN GETS A HIGH OFF FOOD
You may not be exaggerating when you say you’re “addicted” to a food or that you get a “high” after eating your favorite sweet. In fact, the way the brain responds to addictive foods can be strikingly similar to its response to drugs or alcohol. For instance, some of the brain chemicals, such as opioids and endocannabinoids, that are released by eating certain foods, are, as they sound, the body’s own version of opium and cannabis (marijuana), and they share the same brain receptors as these drugs. A receptor is like a lock located either on a cell’s surface or inside a cell; it takes a specific “key” (for instance an opioid) to fit into the lock and trigger a reaction. (Most likely, you’ve already heard of endorphins, which are the best-known type of opioids.) These “feel-good” brain chemicals have one job in common: to keep you coming back for more tasty, high-calorie foods, a trait that was so critical for our caveman ancestors’ survival.
And, of course, the foods that give us the biggest spike in feel-good chemicals aren’t apples or whole grains. “The brain chemical rush from doughnuts, hot dogs,
or other high-fat and/or high-sugar foods is so strong that you keep going back for another rush,” says Stephanie Fulton, PhD, a professor at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Montreal in Canada, who researches food and brain-reward circuitry.
This brain chemical rush is only partly responsible for the drive to eat, though. A number of other things occur in the body, all of which get you primed to eat: Your thoughts turn to food, your sense of smell becomes sharper, and you actually get spurred on to seek out food. One study showed that when people were injected with the appetite-stimulating hormone ghrelin, not only did their appetite increase, but they started vividly imagining and describing their favorite meal. And another hormone, orexin, both stimulates our muscles to move when we’re hungry and strengthens our sense of smell, which made it easier for our ancestors to find food.
YOUR WIRING MAY BE A LITTLE OFF
If what I’ve just described above sounds hard enough to contend with, imagine having an amped-up version of this wiring. Believe it or not, some people are even more vulnerable to food, the smells and the pleasure hit that eating brings, because the brain wiring that makes them turn to fatty, sweet, and salty foods is “supercharged.” Compared to others, they get even more of an opioid rush from food, which drives them to keep going back for more.
Up until only recently, researchers had to rely on what people said about the pleasure they derived from eating to support this theory. For instance, men and women who score higher on questionnaires that indicate what researchers call “reward sensitivity”—the amount of pleasure and sense of reward that people say they get from food—tend to eat a lot more junk food and be more overweight. In a Canadian study, the subjects who scored highest in reward sensitivity tests were 50 percent more likely to be frequent visitors (five or more meals per week) of fast-food restaurants than low scorers.
But more recent research using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans and other technology shows that the brains of these people actually are different. Thanks to these new technologies, scientists are now able to watch how the brain reacts to food, to photos of food, or just the anticipation of receiving food. If an area of the brain known to house endorphin or dopamine receptors lights up on the screen, scientists are pretty confident the area is awash in brain chemicals.
An increase in these brain chemicals isn’t the only thing that can cause overeating, however. Researchers have also discovered that a dopamine malfunction may also play a role. Dopamine is involved in many brain functions, such as learning, memory, and movement. But its role in pleasure may be key to why some folks are so much more susceptible to addiction of any type. “Some people may not produce enough dopamine or their dopamine receptors aren’t fully functional, so it takes a lot more ice cream, French fries, or other foods to give you that buzz or satisfaction,” explains Dr. Fulton. In a sense, their wiring is “undercharged.” The same thing happens to people who abuse drugs or alcohol.
This faulty dopamine response may be inherited, or it could be the result of overeating. The overeating theory goes like this: When you first started overeating, the brain originally reacted by firing lots of dopamine. But it can do that for only so long. Then either the levels decline or the brain doesn’t react to them as intensely. So you wind up with less of a rush than before.
It’s possible that you could have supercharged wiring when it comes to opioids and other pleasure-inducing brain chemicals but also be undercharged when it comes to dopamine. That probably makes you the most vulnerable to overeating: You’re still getting a big rush from food in some areas of the brain, but a normal amount of food isn’t satisfying you because of the dopamine malfunction.
One study provides strong proof that you can be both supercharged and undercharged. The experiment compared MRI scans of two groups of girls both before they were given a milkshake and then as they were sipping the drinks. Half the girls were overweight, the other half normal weight. Certain brain areas lit up more strongly among the overweight girls when they were told that a chocolate shake was coming and while they were drinking it. However, the area of the brain responsible for reward and pleasure—and the section that responds to dopamine—exhibited a more tepid response in the overweight subjects than in their lean counterparts.
How can you tell if your wiring is driving you to overeat? signs include: (1) Thoughts of food dominate much of your day. (2) You find it not only incredibly difficult to resist fattening foods but also get excited just thinking about them. (3) You seem to have a much harder time resisting foods than other people do. (4) You’re easily swayed by just the smell of food or by seeing food commercials. (5) You feel addicted to food.
If you think you have this abnormal wiring, we’ll give you useful strategies for dealing with it in the Nine Step Program, which starts on page 98. And to keep up with this emerging and fascinating research, be sure to check out www.thebestlife.com, where we’ll be posting updates on the topic.
YOU LIVE IN A TOXIC FOOD ENVIRONMENT
Even if a cavewoman had the most amped-up brain wiring, odds are she still wouldn’t have been a pound overweight. And that’s not just because she was burning up calories hunting, gathering, and child rearing; what also saved her figure was that she never had to contend with the likes of a 42-ounce soda, a large order of fries, or a brownie sundae. But today we’re under a constant food assault: At the office, you’re fending off cookies and minimuffins. Go buy a book, and you’re tempted by candy at the checkout. Shopping for furniture? At my local Crate & Barrel, the constant whir of blenders is a reminder that high-calorie frozen coffee concoctions are just a few steps away at the coffee chain lodged in the store.
Just the sheer number of products available is overwhelming, and, remember, variety stimulates appetite. Even in the recession year of 2009, nearly sixteen thousand new food products—mostly cookies, candy, frozen foods, and other processed foods— were introduced. And they sell at bargain prices. Between 1952 and 2003, the cost of food relative to other purchases fell by 12 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
So you have high-fat foods sold at low prices virtually everywhere you turn. Sounds like a recipe for disaster, but it gets even worse: Portions of these fatty, cheap, and widely available foods are enormous. Compared to 1980, fast-food drinks, burgers, and fries are twice as hefty; muffins, steaks, and burgers are double or triple in size; and cookies are about seven times larger. You’ll find megasized containers of cereal, juice, cookies, and other grocery items at warehouse-type stores. (Notice that you rarely see supersized veggies or pumped-up portions of fruit or whole grains at restaurants or in stores.) Even the portion sizes in classic cookbooks like the Joy of Cooking have increased. These larger portions (as well as their higher-calorie ingredients) have caused a spike in calories: There was a 63 percent increase in calorie content per serving between the year the book was published, 1936, and the 2006 version. The largest jump happened between 1997 and 2006.
Our bodies are paying a high price for this cheap, fatty, and oversized food. There’s an intricate system of hormones, nerves, and brain chemicals in the body, which not only drives us to eat, but also tells us when to put down the fork; unfortunately, this system has been thrown off in the last few decades. It has been well publicized that the percentage of Americans who are overweight or obese has tripled since 1960. Now the majority of Americans—68 percent—weigh too much. “The factors driving us to eat, especially highly palatable foods like sweets and fried foods, can, and often do, override our satiety signals,” says the University of Montreal’s Dr. Fulton.
In other words, in the face of 6-ounce muffins, Buffalo wings dipped in blue cheese dressing, three-meat pizza with extra cheese stuffed in the crust, and the like, our caveman drive for high-calorie food trumps the weaker signals telling us we’ve had enough. Foods this rich and caloric were never part of our caveman ancestors’ experience—and weren’t even mainstays in our grandparents’ generation—but are now a part of what researchers have
dubbed the “toxic food environment.” This food landscape has not only overwhelmed our brain circuitry, it’s actually changed it in ways that make food even harder to resist. As I explained, researchers suspect that overeating is one of the causes of a blunted dopamine response, which drives people to need more food to feel satisfied.
And that’s just what we’re doing: eating more than ever. According to a government study, women today are taking in 308 more calories per day compared to 1971, and men are consuming 162 more calories. That might not seem like a lot, but it ends up adding up to an extra 17 to 30 pounds a year. Plus, when you consider that most people significantly underestimate their calorie intake, it’s likely we’re taking in even more calories than that.
FIND YOUR MOTIVATION
Now that you understand why resisting food and losing weight has been so difficult— thanks to the internal and external forces pushing you to eat—I hope that you’ll cut yourself some slack. Instead of beating yourself up for ordering the muffin instead of the oatmeal, you can start working on changing the impulses that drive you toward the muffin. Because now that you know the enemies, you can start outsmarting them. The first step is to come up with a meaningful and important reason for changing your behavior.
The Life You Want Page 10