Setting New Habits
Did you know that with each repetition of an action, you deepen a little road in your brain? Your brain points to various roads (neuron paths) and says, “Here’s the road I follow to brush my teeth. Here’s the one to drive the car.” You don’t have to slow down and ponder every movement in these activities — they’re automatic, well-traveled brain paths. Every habit, both good and bad, is like that. That’s why habits are hard to “break.” But they don’t break — you must persevere with new paths until the old ones fade and the brain learns to take the new path.
And as we all know, it’s much harder to break a habit that is always rewarded by a surge of dopamine, that addictive, feel-good chemical of reward bestowed by the brain. Did you know that drugs (bad) produce dopamine (whee!) and things like running (good) and sugar and sucrose (not so good) also cause its production? After all, there is a reason the tagline for See’s Candy is, “A happy habit.”
Addiction isn’t necessarily bad; it depends on what you’re addicted to! Addiction can work for you (running) or against you (sugar). So when we blithely decide to lose weight and get in shape and then wonder why we seem to resist our own selves at every turn, the cause isn’t weak willpower or lack of focus — it is most often our brain-path habits and dopamine-producing addictions! And those, my friend, aren’t overcome by good intentions.
When you head toward the gym instead of driving to the local coffee haven for a triple-shot, something-sweet latte, you will find that you are trying to steer yourself out of a deeply ingrained brain rut. And let me tell you, it’s a reluctant ride. It feels like the power steering went on the fritz, and you’re trying to navigate with the wheel superglued in place. But before we succumb to complete despair or beat ourselves up because we’re “weak,” remember that just as a muscle will atrophy when not used, so will a brain-path. It will become shallower until it’s only a trace. And a raging, tantrum-throwing sugar-dopamine addiction fades when firmly replaced with an alternate dopamine source – preferably, exercise.
“We can learn to recognize unhealthy patterns and stop them in their tracks. By increasing our awareness, we create new healthy pathways. This new awareness brings personal empowerment and creates greater freedom in our ability to choose new responses to old patterns.” (Referenced from the Earl Consulting Newsletter, Winter 2014). There is HOPE!! Your brain has an amazing capacity for change. Instead of pitting your body against your brain and suffering as collateral damage in their war, put some energy into uniting them.
Double-Edged Dopamine
“A surge of dopamine that thrills us also consolidates the neuronal connections responsible for the behaviors that lead us to accomplish our goal.”*
In other words, the dopamine rush helps create the brain paths that prompt the rush: it creates a habit. Did you know that sugar triggers the same dopamine brain results as cocaine and heroin? So yes, you can become “addicted” to sugar, and your brain will happily repeat any activity (habit) that repeats that lovely “high.” This is why addictions are also referred to as “habits.”
The reason I mention this impressive but distressing fact, is that we are so hard on ourselves when we stumble in our efforts to become slim and trim. We underestimate the forces at work within us, and we don’t pause to consider how deeply ingrained our mental habits have become or how sugar has seduced us into dependence upon it in order to feel good. These are the reasons losing weight and getting fit are so hard to do and feel so “punishing.” All the sugar-induced dopamine rewards stop. All the familiar paths to happiness and peace via food are forbidden.
It will be very hard to jerk our wheels out of those deep mental habit-ruts and guide ourselves into new paths. So instead of being hard on yourself, be in absolute awe of yourself that you would even attempt such a thing! And know that in the end, the same brain of yours that was once mapped one way will soon be mapped in a better way, and the addictions that drove you will not do so anymore. You’ll be free as well as fit. You brave, brave warrior, you.
*Excerpted from “How Sugar Affects the Brain,” by Nicole Avena.
