I’ve been using the Hunger Scale for a few months now and it’s lead me to have a realisation about myself. What I’ve noticed is that I’m a big consumer of information. However, I’m not very good at sitting down, doing the work and actually using the tools I’ve been learning about.

So, I’ve decided to make a real commitment to keep using this tool as I know I eat a nutritious diet but I also know that I still overeat. I do really believe this tool can help me if I keep practicing at using it.

I’ve become more comfortable with only eating two meals a day now. Unfortunately I’ve started to use this as an excuse to eat more at these two meals. So I’ve cut a whole meal from my diet and yet my current weight loss plateau hasn’t shifted. I’m still not releasing any weight!

My focus now is to really pay attention to my portion sizes and keep practicing using the Hunger Scale but there’s a problem…

I still really have the desire to overeat food and eat when I’m not hungry.

Do you want to know why this happens? Well, when you’re trying to lose weight and eat less there’s three common feelings you tend to experience. These are desire, withdrawal and willpower. Sound familiar?

Our brains are designed to keep us alive and food plays a very important role in this. When we eat food, we get a reward in the form of dopamine. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that controls the brain’s reward and pleasure centre. That’s where desire comes in.

So when you eat food, you get a hit of dopamine. This creates a neural pathway in your brain that reminds you that it’s important to eat food again to keep you alive, hence the feeling of desire. When you eat real foods, you get a slight dopamine response but when you eat processed foods made with sugar and flour, you get a much larger dopamine response. This leads the brain to start believing that these foods are more important and this is the beginning of over desire for these foods.

Over time as you eat more and more processed foods, the brain becomes flooded with dopamine. This down regulates the neurotransmitters receptors in the brain so you need more and more processed foods to get that same initial hit of desire.

As your desire increases, it creates stronger neural pathways and over time these can become unconscious habits. Habits such as unconscious eating, overeating or feeling like you’re eating out of control and you just can’t stop eating.

The good news is we can change these ingrained neural pathways by interrupting our old thoughts and replacing them with new ones. How? The first step is to start becoming aware of our thoughts. The thoughts we have before, during and after we eat.

Once you’re aware of your thoughts, learning how to process them will help you to start breaking down your unconscious habits and replace them with new ones. This will be hard work though and it will be uncomfortable.

Why, because that’s our survival mechanism at work again. Our brain is doing it’s job to keep us safe and alive. We are designed to seek pleasure and avoid pain. That’s what overeating has become for a lot of people. Overeating is a form of seeking pleasure and avoiding pain.

As soon as you start restricting food, your body is going to go into protest. Your brain is going to go into dopamine withdrawal and your body’s going to go into glucose withdrawal. Especially if you’re a sugar burner! Your body’s going to be resistant to tap into those fat stores that have been saved for energy use. Your hunger and cravings are going to increase for those processed foods made with sugar and flour that you’re trying to avoid.

Withdrawal is the sensation that you feel both mentally and physically in the body from the lack of sugar and flour that you’re avoiding. This is what creates cravings and it’s because these foods are really artificially concentrated. Your body doesn’t actually know how to digest and process these foods and so it really ends up throwing off your hormones and your Hunger Scale.

So we try to use willpower to resist these urges but this means we’re fighting against the body and our own survival mechanism. We’re fighting against the dopamine and glucose withdrawal and that’s never going to work long term. That’s why your willpower can feel low or temporary and seems to run out by the end of the day.

When you have an urge to eat something, you can use your willpower to avoid it or resist it but this isn’t a great long term solution. It’s better to start learning how to allow and process your urges.

This is where the thought works comes in so I’ve been trying to really focus on my thoughts around eating. I’m going to continue to do over the coming weeks and hope that you join me in exploring your own thoughts.

Now I want to hear from you. Do you feel a strong desire to eat processed foods made with sugar and flour you’re trying to avoid? Does the feeling of withdrawal lead you to overeat? Does your willpower run out by the end of the day? Can you relate to what I’ve shared?

If so, please leave a comment below. Share with me how you feel about going through this and how you overcame it. The more we talk about our struggles and wins with each other, the more support we feel. This also helps us all to achieve our health goals.

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