STUCK in a snacking loop? It’s time to rewire your brain and change your relationship with food – for good.
It’s easy to wallow in guilt that you have no self-control after reaching for biscuits to get through the mid-afternoon slump, or crunching through a family-sized bag of crisps while binge-watching Netflix.
But it might be down to the hard-to-change habits you’ve created over the years.
According to psychiatrist and neuroscientist Judson Brewer, it is possible to break free from mindless eating and, in the process, heal your relationship with food. In his latest book, The Hunger Habit, the author and US Olympic coach says: “Years of extensive research has shown that people can learn to rewire their brains to transform their relationships to food, potentially permanently, when they change old habits and replace them with new ones.
“Simply put, if you break the habits, you will break the cycle.”
And just by understanding why you mindlessly snack, you can relieve some of that guilt. “We have a hardwired tendency to turn away or distract ourselves from unpleasant emotions because we’d like to avoid the pain they cause,” explains Judson.
“Because we know how cravings feel – uncomfortable – the negative reinforcement process in our brain kicks in. Unpleasant urge?
“Make it go away. So we prefer to indulge the urge as quickly as possible. The more we do this, the more we learn to do this.”
But it doesn’t have to be this way! Here are eight tips from Judson’s 21-day plan to change your relationship with food for good.
First, understand the habit. When we’re sad, mad or feeling any uncomfortable emotion, our survival brain starts searching for something that will perk us up or distract us.
Unfortunately, one of the few tricks it has up its sleeve is an exquisite taste for food.
You might have planned to eat healthy, but instead, you’ve been seduced by the comforting power of habit.
Take a few minutes to think of a goal – it might be to stop mindlessly snacking, but it could also be to stop eating when you are full, be healthy no matter how much you weigh, or take care of emotions without bingeing.
Ask yourself: Why is this important to me? Is it driven by wanting to fit a societal standard or caring for yourself?
Why is it important to you to make a change?
We subconsciously fall into habitual eating patterns when we pay less attention to the why, what and how of eating.
Think about this for each thing you eat. The “why” is the urge or craving that drives us to eat.
Eating when truly hungry is different from eating when stressed or bored.
The “what” is the type of food. Eating food high in sugar affects our brains differently from eating more nutritious foods.
Lastly, there’s “how” we eat. Shovelling down a sandwich at lunch instead of mindfully eating it affects our perception of how full we are.
Your answers may be simple – “I see a chocolate bar at the till, I eat it while driving.”
To break a habit loop, you don’t need to unearth childhood trauma. You just need to begin by identifying the habit loop itself.
Our perceptions of ourselves get unfairly wrapped up in what we look like and how this compares to a societal standard.
People often talk about feeling “out of control” or disconnected from their bodies, sometimes due to shame or guilt.
When that happens, we override the messages our brain sends us, for example: “I am full.”
For an entire day, see if you can notice the body signals you ignore.
Did you drink a third cup of coffee, even though you were already feeling jittery?
Did you force yourself to stay at your computer, even though your body was telling it was time to get up and stretch?
For each example, think about how your body felt when you ignored a signal.
And see what happens when you listen to them, instead of ignoring them.
If you’re an overeater, you may often eat past your “bliss point”, when food doesn’t taste terrible, it’s just not as pleasant as before.
That’s your brain’s signal to slow down. It doesn’t feel good to overindulge in sweets.
Our bodies know this and try to help us stop, yet we override this feeling repeatedly. It can help to locate the “pleasure plateau”.
Pay attention to each bite and ask yourself: “Is this more pleasurable, the same, or less pleasurable than the last bite?”
Awareness won’t make your favourite food suddenly unpleasant, but if you notice that as you eat it is becoming less pleasant, that’s a sign that you might have reached your pleasure plateau, and future bites will decrease in their reward value.
Total deprivation is not the answer.
If you’ve ever tried to avoid your favourite sweets, you know how the thought of them becomes even sweeter.
Research led by British psychologist Paul Gilbert has shown that kindness – especially toward ourselves – can be scary, and that this fear is linked to self-criticism, stress, anxiety and depression.
Letting go of guilt and shame empowers people, opening the space for self-kindness and even a desire to address the root causes of emotional distress, rather than avoiding them through eating.
