Eating & Me
Ever hear the one about the overweight woman who swears there's a thin person inside her just screaming to get out? I tend to shut the bitch up with chocolate. As it turns out, this explains a lot, such as why I've gained a pound (or two) every year for the last 25 years.
The first ten pounds, gained in my thirties, didn't make much impact. I'd never had a weight problem in my life, so I figured I was due a little poundage after I stopped smoking. After all, food tasted good again. Better than ever, really. Little did I know that enhanced taste was the first symptom of what would later become a big (ahem) problem.
Like a lot of women, I've tried every diet on the planet. Twice. These days I'm studying the psychology of weight gain. Why is it that I want to lose weight and control my eating more than almost anything else, and yet, over and over, I fail to accomplish my goal?
The End of Overeating by David A, Kessler, M.D. has some interesting answers. According to his research, humans are genetically programmed to enjoy sugar and fat and salt from back in the caveman days when such items were scarce. Skip ahead to contemporary America, when our food industry discovered the oh-so-human penchant for highly palatable foods. These titans of business were after profit, so of course they wanted us to eat more. They began layering huge amounts of salt, sugar and fat into processed foods and restaurant meals.
When these flavors hit some of our mouths, they light up the less-evolved, caveman part of our brains, releasing feel-good chemicals that mimic the pleasure of heroin or cocaine. As if that isn't bad enough, every time people like me eat highly palatable food, we hardwire the intent-on-survival part of our brain to respond to the cues of juicy hamburgers, sweet ice cream, and salty nachos. The cavewoman in me says "Eat it at any cost!" to the tune of "I Will Survive."
Subliminal cues like smelling or seeing (or in my case, reading about) the desired food urges us to put on our coat in the rain and drive to the store for the reward of fat, sugar, and salt. Thus a vicious cycle of cue, urge, and reward becomes embedded into our daily lives.
Kessler doesn't stop at why we overeat, but goes on to explain how to extinguish the cycle of cue/urge/reward. It involves using the more highly evolved part of the brain, the fore brain, before the cycle completes. There's a tiny window of time during the "urge" phase when I can call upon my smarts to stop the madness. Becoming aware of this fight for dominance between the two parts of the brain is the first step, and it was an eye-opener for me.
Did you hear the one about the cave woman inside who didn't care what happened to her health? I shut her up with science.
An Original 50-Something Moms blog. Cynthia Harrison has been keeping A Writer's Diary since 2002.
