To help you keep your health-related New Year’s resolutions top of mind, we’ve been interviewing experts on health topics throughout January. So far this month, we’ve found that reducing your salt intake by one teaspoon a day has the same health benefits as taking your high blood pressure medication every day. They were also taught how to reflect on how food made them feel after eating it. It can help reset your focus on foods that have an effect on your energy levels, especially if you are aware of the positive effects of those foods.
This week on the Seattle Morning News, Dave Ross and I interviewed Dr. Judson Brewer, author of “The Hunger Habit.”
“It doesn’t really work when people try to use willpower to change their eating habits. From a neuroscience perspective, it’s not even a topic,” Brewer says confidently. Ta.
First, how do we form food habits?
“Everyone shares the same mechanisms. There are three factors that drive behavior and outcomes. So think about our ancient ancestors on the savannah. They saw food and the trigger was… There’s eating food, there’s behavior, and their stomach sends dopamine signals to the brain, “Remember what and where you ate.” You found out. ‘
“It continues today, and we don’t do it when we’re hungry, but when we’re angry, when we’re sad, when we’re lonely, when we’re bored, when we’re tired, for all these emotional reasons. They’re starting to learn to eat food,” Brewer continued. “Or we might eat beyond fullness, as if we were part of the ‘clean plate club.’ So all of this becomes a reason why we don’t eat out of hunger, but just out of habit.” It is.”
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Speaking of the “Clean Plate Club,” it was never a creed in my family, but I’ve heard plenty of childhood stories from fellow Millennials about this enforced dinnertime ritual. To put it kindly, they hated it. And, according to Dr. Brewer and science, this type of eating is one of the ways your brain is programmed to eat for habit or reward (dessert) rather than out of hunger.
“Children were taught not to pay attention to their own hunger or fullness signals, but instead to pay attention to their parents’ wishes and requests,” Dr. Brewer noted.
Dave then asked what actual hunger should feel like since we are all programmed to eat out of emotion or boredom. Click here for that part of the interview.
Listen here or click below to hear more about our conversation with Dr. Judson Brewer.
Listen to Seattle’s morning news with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien weekdays from 5-9 a.m. on KIRO Newsradio on 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.