Many of us have tried lots of ways to lose weight and we can be successful for a while, but then we find that the weight creeps back on again over time. Do you ever wonder why you cannot take control of your eating or your weight?
It’s down to the way our brain works.
Our intellectual brain, our conscious mind, will always come up with a sensible assessment of a situation and it does not have a problem with logic – it knows you don’t need that cake.
However, our primitive brain, the part concerned with emotional responses, is not logical and does not come up with sensible solutions – it will encourage you to eat that cake.
The primitive brain contains all our patterns of behaviour. Childhood memories often associate food with love and security, with reward and comfort. Patterns can develop that lead to emotional eating as a way of revisiting these emotions.
In fact, we feel good due to hormones, chemicals in the body. We can mistakenly associate good feelings with food, when it is actually the situation we are in that produces the hormones, not the food itself.
In order to control our eating, we need to examine our patterns of behaviour and develop strategies to build new, healthier patterns. Exchanging those unhealthy habits such as snacks in front of the TV, finishing left-overs, chocolate when paying for petrol for healthy behaviours such as exercise, hobbies, interactions with people, completing tasks which give us those feel-good hormones without the calories.