Lies, Ice Cream, and the Department of Energy

Isn’t it amazing how gracefully we accept the self-appointed role as our own worst enemy? Some little thing goes wrong in our lives and we head straight for the refrigerator to drown our sorrows in a pint of Ben and Jerry’s. Heck, we don’t even need something to go wrong, we’re willing to give ourselves a little treat just because something went right for a change.

Hey, we deserve it, right? It’s a treat. It’s like Mommy kissing our boo-boo, or Dad patting us on the back when we hit one out of the park. While rewarding ourselves by cheating just a little bit is easy to justify, the truth is: We’re lying to ourselves and we’re all too willing to accept it.

We don’t “deserve” ice cream; we deserve to go to the closet and be able to put on any piece of clothing we find and have it fit us. We deserve to not wear shoes with Velcro  straps because we can’t comfortably bend over to tie our laces. We deserve lower blood pressure and normal cholesterol levels. We deserve to see our reflection in a store window as we pass by and admire that slim person who is looking back at us. That’s what we deserve.

So why do we constantly feed ourselves lies along with a jelly donut?

There may be some complex biological and psychological issues at work according to, believe it or not, a brain-imaging study conducted by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory. According to Brookhaven physician Gene-Jack Wang, lead author of the study, “enhanced activity in brain regions involved with sensory processing of food could make obese people more sensitive to the rewarding properties of food.”

The good doctor went on to say that “obese people have fewer brain receptors for dopamine, a neurotransmitter that helps produce feelings of satisfaction and pleasure, implying that obese people may eat to stimulate their underserved reward circuits, just as addicts do by taking drugs.”

Now hold on a second, because I know what you’re thinking. You’re probably jumping up and down right now, saying, “See, I told you it wasn’t my fault. I can’t help it. I HAVE to eat to reward myself.” And if that is what you’re saying, then it’s just another lie.

The reason that I even mentioned this study wasn’t to give you a crutch to support your food-as-a-reward habit, it was to make you aware that there might be a self-destruct program running in you brain so that you can take steps to shut it down.

At the end of the day it’s all about decisions. When you make a decision to reward yourself by eating something that you shouldn’t, you also made a decision that you don’t care about your body. What you need to do is come up with rewards and little “pain killers” that aren’t food-based, yet will stimulate your “reward circuits” so you feel better about yourself. It’s up to you to find something to substitute for food when your “poor me” bell rings. I can’t tell you what that something will be, but I can tell you this: If you don’t stop lying to yourself and using food as a crutch, you had better buy an extra pair of those Velcro shoes, because you’re going to need them.