Raw Superwoman

Meet Michael Hebranko. Before 1990, Michael Habrenko weighed in at nearly 900 pounds and needed to be fork-lifted out of his house to go to the hospital. Over the next two years, with the help of exercise and dieting, Michael lost an astounding 706 pounds. He has lost more weight than most of us could imagine. However, in the next 7 years, he put all the weight back on again – plus more! By 1999, Michael Habrenko weighted 1,100 pounds.

Why can’t some people stop eating? While Michael Hebranko has one of the most extreme cases of food addiction, many non-obese people struggle with a similar problem; they are addicted to the pleasure that certain foods provide and find themselves feeling powerless and out-of-control in the face of their addiction.

People may need or want this pleasure for different reasons and this desire/need may, or may not, be fully conscious. Do you know the song Hotel California, and the words; “Some drink to remember, some drink to forget?” It is the same with food. Some people wish to suppress negative or even painful emotions, some to bring out positive ones, some to escape fatigue, some simply out of boredom or as a tool for procrastination. Some do it because their compulsion to spend money on food is just as powerful as their compulsion to eat it.

The reason that food is addictive is because it releases the chemical dopamine in your brain. A flood of dopamine in the brain is responsible for giving a person that happy feeling. This is the same reason that the drug cocaine is so addictive: a person on a cocaine high experiences a major flood of dopamine in the brain.

My drug of choice has always been sugar. Having struggled with insomnia a lot in my life, I know firsthand the euphoric feeling that refined sugar produces, just when you need it the most. It makes you feel awake, alert, happy – if only for an hour. On sleepy afternoons in the office, candy was my only rescue.

Not all foods are addictive and just because you eat and enjoy food does not mean you are an addict. Since everybody’s body (and mind) works differently, different people can become addicted to different foods. An addiction is when you eat foods you know you shouldn’t even when you don’t even want to. You may even feel like you are just “watching” yourself doing it, unable to stop. You don’t understand why you are doing it when it does in fact go against your better judgment.

Dopamine withdrawal has the peculiar effect of adversely affecting the decision-making process of the addict. The person knows they shouldn’t eat, but want to eat because their brain is starved for dopamine and the one way it knows how to get it is by performing the act that usually guarantees the fix: eating that particular food. The dopamine-starved brain becomes so focused on getting the fix it needs, the person may feel completely powerless against this need and find themselves giving in “against their will”.

So the chain reaction is as follows:

need dopamine (for a variety of reasons) -> eat food -> get dopamine -> feel GOOD

Regardless of the situation, the reaction happens exactly the same way, every time.

The task at hand is to invoke that feeling of euphoria by means other than your usual method which has, up until this point, been food.

The good news is that it is totally possible to release the exact same chemicals in your brain – by doing something else which also gives you pleasure. Basically anything which gives you pleasure will release endorphins in your brain.

Certainly, there are other things in life which give you pleasure. What are they? What gives you pleasure? What do you love? What gives you comfort, what gives you hope, what makes you feel inspired, calm and satisfied, what makes you feel alive?

Maybe what you really need is a hug from someone you love, an afternoon away in a beautiful place or a good night’s rest?

Of course, it won’t feel exactly the same right away; that’s because your brain associates the dopamine release with the specific activity itself. But new habits can be established and new associations can be created and strengthened in the brain more easily than you think. Scientific research has shown that a new habit can be formed with brute force in as little as 30 days.

So you can change the above chain reaction to:

need dopamine (for a variety of reasons) -> do something extremely pleasurable -> get dopamine -> feel GOOD

Producing euphoria naturally on a regular basis creates a much higher quality of life. The feeling isn’t fleeting and there is nothing to regret after you come down from your momentary high, which only serves to perpetuate the negative cycle. On the contrary, you experience feelings of deep satisfaction which stay with you for a long period of time. It feeds your soul, not your addiction.

I challenge you to discover what your soul is actually hungry for.