How I Duped My Greedy Brain Into Taking Back Control of My Life
A gentle approach with unexpected results.
We all want to feel good. Great. Awesome. Hit it out of the park amazing. Until we take it so far that nothing can satisfy our need for more.
Pleasure is the precursor to happiness until… it isn’t.
To most of us, eating a greasy burger will always feel better than eating some boiled parsnips with a twist of carrot.
But I also met some people who were committed to a very simple diet of boiled veggies with a garnish of nothing more.
It took me a long time to find out where this determination is coming from until I finally figured it out: it’s no determination at all!
They like it better that way. Is there some difference in the way they perceive taste? There very well might be, but for sure there is a difference in the way their brain connects to food.
Both of these people, one of them an ex-boyfriend and the other a dear friend, enjoy a diet of boiled veggies, usually potatoes and carrots, simple salads with some cheese, boiled eggs with (half!) a piece of toast, cream soups, etc.
I, on the other hand, if left to my own ways, would love a full day of eating everything fried, greasy, and salty.
I’d pile on the bacon on my sunny-side-up eggs and chase them with as much toast as I could fit in my stomach. I also wouldn’t mind a mountain of fries topped with enough shredded feta cheese to look like an avalanche of snow on that mountain, and a steak to compliment this luscious ensemble.
What’s the difference between me and them?
Well, I grew up in a toxic peasant home where fried meat was abundant and mealtime was the only good thing happening in the house.
They grew up in much more balanced families where there was an emphasis on healthy eating and healthy living.
My ex’s mom was not the best cook, so she would frequently resort to boiling whatever veggies and meat happened to be around the house in a big pot. The broth would be the soup and the boiled veggies and chicken would be the second course, paired with a garlic clove for taste.
In my friend’s family, the parents were both working in the medical field, so they knew the dangers of overeating fat and sugar. They were always advising their young daughter that no matter what she was eating, always leave some on the plate.
Quite a difference from most families who demand that the child eats everything on the plate, whether it’s hungry or not. Because pork and fatty or sugary foods were not served much in the house, my friend finds red meat appalling and cakes with a lot of icing or butter disgusting.
OK, you get it: if you were served healthy foods as a child you got used to their taste and you want those, and if you didn’t, you want the deep-fried donuts.
What are you supposed to do about it? You can’t change the past!
It’s true, unfortunately, you can’t, because if you could I’m sure a lot of us would. No? Just me? Ok then.
You can’t change the past, but you can change the future.
If you keep eating this way, you can guess what the future will bring: obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and everything that comes with unhealthy food in high quantities.
Of course, this works the same for everything that spikes up our dopamine levels and leaves us wanting more: video games, social media, pornography, alcohol or drugs, and substance abuse of any kind.
It’s not that we’re too stupid to know those things harm us.
We all know drinking until our brain is nothing but a pickled prune is bad for us, right? We’re not idiots. We also know how destructive porn addiction is for intimate relationships.
We’ve heard the news: drugs are bad for you! But you just cannot stop!
You’re not lazy, you’re not stupid, and you’re not subpar as a human being. Actually, you’re absolutely normal.
This happens to everybody who is repeatedly exposed to factors that create heavy dopamine release. It’s not you, it’s your brain. Your brain is a dopamine junkie. You’re not greedy. Your brain is.
Craving the dopamine your drug of choice gives you is pretty much the same as the will to live. It’s the life force, raging through you.
Of course, it’s the life force taken to extremes that will seriously harm you in the long run, but it’s important to note there is nothing wrong with you because you feel this way and act this way. It’s a natural consequence.
And there is a way out. Actually, several ways out.
The first one is something that has been very trendy in the past few years and is still talked about today.
It’s called ‘the dopamine detox’ or ‘dopamine fasting’. This is not a scientific term and it’s not a scientific approach either.
The term was coined by a life coach on YouTube and it gained huge popularity because let’s face it, we all want to be free of harmful behaviors, no matter how pleasant they might be.
Why am I mentioning it if it doesn’t work? Because for some people (the more hardcore of people) it does work.
The dopamine detox method asks you to set aside a minimum of a day a week where you need to stay away from all the high dopamine triggers. Include here: junk food, masturbation, social media, listening to music, or talking to friends.
Namely, whatever makes you feel good, stop it. You can live a day without feeling good, can’t you?
Of course you can. The only problem is that… it doesn’t solve much.
The purpose is to let the dopamine receptors in your brain relax from all the over stimulation and the next day you’ll allegedly be able to enjoy things that are not so overly stimulating.
Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. It takes much more than a day for that to happen.
And when you get back to your regular life, the dopamine centers, starved of their usual daily dose, will rebel and ask for even more dopamine to make up for the one you took away that one day you went rogue.
Dopamine is not a drug, it’s a hormone occurring in your body naturally. You can’t do away with it and imagine you’ll never need it. You need it, it’s part of you.
However, for some people, it works. They are hardcore, they like it when things are tough and their brain creates dopamine from doing hard things. More power to them, they are my personal heroes, but most of us are not like that.
So here’s the solution for the rest of us regulars who need to take things slowly and still hope for a great outcome.
Yes, we can do it. But through a different system.
The different system is not taking your dopamine sources out of your life completely. And not taking them out at all. But adding extra dopamine sources that can, in time, substitute the ones that are causing you harm.
For example, a lot of American soldiers that fought in Vietnam came back home with serious heroin addictions. And most of them cured these in a matter of weeks after returning from the war zone.
Why is that?
- Because they were using the drug to cope with their hard life on the front lines. So when they took the hardship away, there was nothing more to cope with.
- Because when they came back home they were surrounded by the love and care of family and friends. Those are great dopamine stimulants that they used instead of the drug.
That’s what you need to do as well.
Take out the negative things in your life.
The bad boss, the stressful partner, the mean friend. Make your life easy. If there is something that bothers you, move away from it. There’s no need for details. You know what you need to do and who you need to let go of.
Next, bring more positive dopamine into your life, like:
Support
The positive support and interaction with friends and family. Positive! Toxic ones won’t work, avoid those and take care of your heart and soul.
Meditation
In time and if you keep doing it, meditation can be the biggest source of dopamine in your life.
I can tell you from my own experience that there’s nothing that takes me higher than meditation and I constantly advertise it as the best thing anyone can do.
Exercise
It also creates endorphins and all good things from the hormone department.
The only problem is, it doesn’t happen from the start. It will take about a month of daily practice for you to truly start to enjoy exercise, but when you do, there’s no going back.
You’ll crave it just as much as you crave those over-stuffed chili dogs.
Creativity
A huge, tremendous source of pleasure can come from the act of creation: painting, writing, playing an instrument, name your art.
There is a trick to it though… You need to be good enough at what you’re doing so that the words flow or the brush strokes just explode out of your hand.
If I were to start learning the piano right now it wouldn’t give me much pleasure, because I wouldn’t have that flow that produces dopamine.
But if I write something I enjoy and my hand on the keyboard can hardly keep up with my train of thought, that’s pure pleasure right there.
As you can see, all the things that bring dopamine to your greedy brain but are also beneficial for your life take time to implement. And in the beginning, they’re not that much fun.
They can even be annoying or stressful. That’s why it’s so easy to turn to the ones that provide pleasure and relief from the first bite, puff, or…well, stroke.
That’s why it’s important to keep the old damaging ones in your life, try to not go overboard, but start bringing in the new ones one by one until you get the hang of them and they start producing the dopamine you crave.
Once they do, once you start loving the process itself, once your body is healthier, leaner, and more alert from exercise, once your mind is more at ease from meditation and you feel safer and more at home in this world from your contact with loving friends, you’ll see that the old habits no longer serve you.
It takes time, it’s true, but as long as you treat yourself with love and care and work at your own pace, your escape from the shackles of your greedy brain and taking back control of your life is just a few months away.
What have you got to lose? You’re not giving anything up, you’re just adding new healthy pleasant habits. You’ll be amazed by how far you can go in just one year!
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