The Reward Response
There is one other aspect of addiction I’d like you to know about. We’ve seen that sugar and starchy foods relate to our hunger for serotonin and that high-fat foods feed our need for dopamine. But whenever anything pleasurable happens to us—from receiving a compliment to eating a healthy meal to enjoying a decadent dessert—we also get a little shot of dopamine, a tiny burst of
Yes! That feels good!
That little bit of dopamine serves as a reward for anything we do that feels good. As you can see from the examples I’ve chosen, it can be a reward for good behavior or bad, for a healthy choice or an unhealthy one. It’s simply our body’s way of acknowledging that something felt good—whether that good feeling is “good for us” in the long run or not.
Many of us have struggled with relationships that we know aren’t always good for us but that sometimes
feel
good at the time, even if we know there’s going to be a price to pay later. When that unavailable or unreliable hottie smiles at you or asks you out, it might feel so good that you’re willing to ignore your awareness that he might not show up or that she might let you down later on. That little shot of dopamine often feels so good that it’s hard to imagine feeling low later.
Likewise, when a sweet or fatty treat beckons and we take that first bite—or sometimes just
imagine
taking that first bite—we get that little dopamine rush, and it feels wonderful. We can try to picture what comes later, when we feel bloated, frustrated, or annoyed with ourselves, but our present reality is that brain chemical, which gives us an immediate, powerful reward.
This dopamine reward is one of the reasons addictions are so hard to give up, even when we’ve physically detoxed from them. As we saw earlier, just looking at or imagining a sweet treat can set up powerful responses in our brain, with dopamine kicking in at the very thought of the pleasure we can expect. Even when the physical addiction is broken—when there are no more withdrawal symptoms and our body is back to normal—that dopamine reward beckons, and it can be very hard to resist.
What’s the solution? Giving yourself so many other rewarding, nourishing activities and so many healthy dopamine boosters in your diet that those unhealthy choices are no longer your only or your primary source of dopamine-fueled pleasure. When your body and your brain really feel as though you’re living in a world of plenty, your addictive responses simply become less interesting, and maybe, eventually, not interesting at all. The solution is not to fight them and blame yourself for having them, but to notice them and learn about them while adding all sorts of other pleasurable choices into your life. That’s what Diet Rehab is all about—and that’s why it works.
3
The Secret of Gradual Detox
W
hen Marisa strode into my office, I felt I was in the presence of a force of nature. Short, dark-haired, and intense, she rattled off a series of rapid-fire sentences in a firm, no-nonsense tone. You could tell that this cofounder of a rising new financial services company was used to making things happen—and fast.
Marisa nodded intently as I explained to her the nature of food addictions and the relationship between her brain chemistry and her struggles with weight. But when I shared with her my approach to gradual detox, she balked.
“What do you mean I’m going to spend two weeks adding healthy new foods into my diet before I even begin to cut out the bad foods?” she sputtered. “I don’t have time to screw around, Dr. Mike. I’m a very disciplined person. Just tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.”
I could see that Marisa’s drive and determination—enormous assets in her business life—were actually getting in the way of her personal development. She had already told me that she’d tried three previous weight-loss plans, each of which had failed. I had the feeling that with all three of them, she’d flung herself into a wildly disciplined regime with a kind of cold turkey approach to food detox. Then, when crises hit, she didn’t have the resources to handle them. Her superior discipline crumbled, she returned to all her favorite comfort foods—and then, when her schedule eased up, she looked for another diet.
I didn’t want to be one more failure on her list. More important, I wanted to give
her
the chance to create a lasting transformation.
“Marisa,” I said, trying to find the words that would get through to her, “you told me that last year you quit smoking. Did you do it cold turkey?”
She looked at me in astonishment. “Of course not. I’m not an idiot! I took Zyban. Even then it was tough—but I did it. I do everything I set my mind to.”
“That’s terrific,” I told her. “And I’m glad you gave yourself so much support while you were trying to give up nicotine. That’s exactly what I’m trying to do with your addiction to food. We need to give you lots of support, build up your healthy habits, and ease the pain of withdrawal. That’s what gradual detox is all about.”
Marisa stared at me in astonishment, then made one of her characteristic quick decisions. “Fine,” she said, opening her arms wide in a gesture of surrender. “Let’s get started.”
What Is Gradual Detox?
As I explained to Marisa, gradual detox is a way of slowly letting go of an unhealthy habit by gradually replacing it with something else, allowing you to circumvent the possibility of withdrawal. One obvious example of gradual detox is when smokers use nicotine gums or patches, or when they take Zyban or other medications. These approaches blunt the agonies of withdrawal either by tapering off nicotine intake slowly or by helping to restart the production of dopamine and other brain chemicals that cigarette smoking has undermined.
Likewise, with Diet Rehab, I’ll keep you from feeling any withdrawal symptoms by having you continue to eat the foods you crave. As we’ve seen in previous chapters, addictive foods inhibit your body’s ability to manufacture its own stores of serotonin and dopamine. As a result, when you stop eating them, you feel uncomfortable withdrawal symptoms and crave the addictive foods even more.
With gradual detox, you won’t have to subject yourself to that painful period of withdrawal. That’s because you’ll be adding new foods, activities, and thought patterns to your daily routine, so that you’ll have restored your body’s ability to manufacture its vital brain chemicals. That way, when you begin to cut back on the addictive foods, your body will be getting all the serotonin and dopamine that it needs. Gradual detox makes the transition from addiction to freedom feel easy and even pleasant.
Did you know it takes at least ten exposures to a new healthy food to accept and then to crave it? That’s why Diet Rehab has you adding so many healthy foods to your diet over the twenty-eight days of the program. You’re giving your body time to gradually detox from pepperoni pizza and start to crave salmon, to gradually detox from cookies and doughnuts and start to crave blueberries and mangos. Replacing the old unhealthy cravings with healthy new ones will happen gradually and naturally, so that you never experience withdrawal and you never feel deprived.
Gradual detox is based on the understanding that it takes a month for the human brain to create a habit. So during the twenty-eight days of Diet Rehab, you’ll be creating healthy new habits—habits that you’ll start to cultivate long before you have to give up any of your unhealthy old habits! The five-minute walk in the middle of your work day or the lunch break at that healthy café will become habitual parts of your everyday life.
Pitfalls and Boosters
Gradual detox is accomplished through the two cornerstones of Diet Rehab:
pitfalls
and
boosters.
Pitfalls are the foods, activities, and thought patterns that ultimately lower your supplies of the brain chemicals you need to feel healthy, happy, and energized. A pitfall food—something high in starch, sugar, or fat—temporarily lifts your serotonin or dopamine levels, but the high is soon followed by a crash, and, as we’ve seen, these foods undermine your body’s ability to make its own stores of these vital brain chemicals.
A pitfall activity is any type of behavior that likewise lowers your stores of vital brain chemicals. As we saw in the previous chapter, high-stress situations can boost your levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which contributes to lowered serotonin and dopamine. A long, boring meeting at work, an unpleasant lunch with a highly critical family member, or an ongoing relationship with someone who doesn’t treat you well might all be pitfall activities, lowering your stores of serotonin, dopamine, or both. While you might not always be able to avoid pitfall activities, you can at least be aware that they call for extra brain-chemistry support to undo their damage.
We’ll look at pitfall thought patterns later in this chapter. These are often hard to recognize as pitfalls, especially if we’re used to having them. But if you can let go of your mental pitfalls, you might be amazed at how much better you feel—and at how much better your life becomes.
Boosters are the opposite of pitfalls—they’re foods, activities, and thought patterns that boost your stores of serotonin and dopamine, giving you the physical and emotional nourishment that your body, mind, and spirit crave. If one day’s diet includes Greek yogurt, berries, brown rice, salmon, and fresh vegetables, you have spent that day boosting your serotonin and dopamine, helping yourself feel calm, optimistic, and energized.
Activities can also boost your brain chemistry. Whenever you take a brisk walk, spend five minutes meditating, chat with a friend on the phone, or learn something new and interesting, you are likewise altering your brain chemistry, boosting your serotonin and dopamine levels, and transforming the way you feel.
Thought patterns can further boost your serotonin and dopamine stores, setting you up for optimism, self-confidence, and joy. Later in this chapter, I’ll help you identify some booster thought patterns that you can use to replace your pitfall patterns.
The secret of Diet Rehab can be summed up in two sentences:
1. First add booster foods and booster activities to your life.
2. Then gradually reduce pitfall foods and pitfall thoughts.
That’s it. It’s that simple. Fill your life with foods, activities, and thought patterns that boost your brain chemistry, and you’ll find it remarkably easy to let go of the pitfall foods and thought patterns that have been setting you up for food addictions and weight gain. Once your life is full of boosters, you’ll have a much easier time eliminating the pitfalls—and your body will effortlessly adjust to a healthy weight.
Why Diet Rehab Works Where Diets Fail
If you’re like most people, pitfall foods are a part of your everyday life, keeping you addicted and coming back for more. I’m sure by the time you’ve picked up this book, you’ve tried not once but many times to limit your calories or portions—but to no avail. If you’re like the vast majority of people, you’ve been on diet after diet, all of which have failed in the long run.
Why don’t diets work? Because, as we’ve seen in Chapters 1 and 2, they didn’t free you from your addiction to pitfall foods. You’ll notice that we don’t keep a strict tally of your daily intake of calories or carbs here. Why? Because that’s an approach from the outside in that it imposes an external limit upon you. To make matters worse, it doesn’t address the withdrawal that you’re likely to feel if you try to cut back on pitfall foods abruptly, without addressing your brain chemistry.
To make matters still worse, the outside-in approach is doomed to fail in the long run because, without addressing your brain chemistry, you’re going to long for pitfall foods and their temporary but potent effect on your serotonin and dopamine levels. You may be able to resist those longings when things are going well, but when stress or major challenges inevitably reenter your life, you’re likely to turn to the old reliable pitfalls that pull you deeper into addiction. What’s the result? You feel hopeless, decide you’re a failure, and berate yourself for your lack of willpower. This pitfall thinking keeps you trapped in the downward spiral of weight gain and food addiction.
Diet Rehab, by contrast, works from the inside out. I want you to let go of pitfall foods
only when you feel ready to do so.
That’s why I haven’t even suggested cutting anything back during the first fourteen days of the program. I’ll go further—I don’t
want
you to cut back. Just add in booster foods and activities. The letting go of your old ways of eating, thinking, and feeling will practically happen by itself.
Adding food to your diet will tackle the root of food addiction through boosters that will help you balance your brain chemistry. The boosters will also help you to improve your life. You’ll have both the body you want
and
the life you want, because your healthy, nourished brain will have all the support it needs.
When you’ve completed Diet Rehab, you’ll notice that your addictive cravings will have subsided. Suddenly, adhering to any dietary or caloric restrictions will be doable, because you’ve worked from the inside out. Since you’re now feeding your brain chemistry, you will find yourself wanting to eat less in general. Your body has recalibrated to normal levels. Nothing will be off limits forever, because, as the Scripps study showed, occasional exposure to pitfall foods doesn’t cause addiction. Not to mention that saying “
I’ll never eat this”
sometimes can make you want it more!