How often do you find you reward yourself with food?
“I’ve been good, so I’ll just…”
“I deserve this, I’ve worked hard”
“It’s been a hard week and I got through, so…”
We’ve all been guilty of it at some point.
I want you to think about it now, did it help? Did you feel better, rewarded, and satisfied by whatever the ‘treat’ was?
If the answer is yes, then great! But I’d be interested to know if there was something that would have made you feel better.

The other day I was unlocking my front door and the thought came into my head, “why is it that we feel deprived when we stop eating things like chocolate, crisps, and fried food? And eating healthily feels like a punishment… but eating healthily makes us feel all round better and junk makes us feel sluggish and crap.”
One reason we feel so rewarded by those high-fat and sugar foods is that it releases dopamine in our brain making us feel happy. But often that dopamine hit comes before we eat it. It comes from the anticipation of the flavour, the smell of a warm pastry, the feeling of happiness that we anticipate, and the memories that may be attached.
So what does that mean? Well, it could be that having something to look forward to is what we need. That could be time planned to spend with good friends, or knowing that at the end of the day you have some nice food, or chocolate to enjoy.
It means that you could get as much satisfaction (maybe even more) from only eating one or two pieces of chocolate instead of 12.
Think about it, if the dopamine hit comes from the anticipation, but not really from the action. The excitement of that tasty piece of chocolate would come first and be satisfied as soon as it starts to warm and melt on your tongue. Not when you’ve eaten your body weight in chocolate and feel sick.
Give it a try. Plan once a week or every couple of days to have that food that makes you feel happy, but reduce the amount. Let’s see if it changes some of our all-or-nothing approaches to food and health.
Whilst you do that, look for some new recipes and make the meals around it more exciting and enjoyable. Let’s build a better connection with quality food, so we get the same sense of joy.
One day, maybe you’ll get the same sense of joy as I do when I bite into a crunchy vegetable (I still love a Tuesday morning almond croissant to share though too).
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