Your brain is playing tricks on you

Have you ever noticed that after a hard day of work, you crave a stack of biscuits or a big glass of Merlot NOT a really tough spin class or a “box breathing” exercise?  Have you also noticed that after you plough through that sleeve of Hobnobs, you don’t actually feel better?  That’s messed up, right?!  In a word … yes.  The human brain is clever, but it’s also dumb - it doesn’t automatically uncouple our experiences of “wanting” and “enjoying” so we often get the two confused when actually our “wanting” and “enjoying” systems are governed by two different pathways in the brain.  But there is a way to hit “override” and start to know the difference.  Let us explain…  

“Wanting/craving” is governed by our mesolimbic pathway, which releases dopamine BEFORE we feel pleasure, fueling the urge to seek rewards.  “Liking/enjoying”, on the other hand, is governed by the endocannabinoid system (ECS).  In this process our brain releases its own cannabis-like molecules that flip “on” switches in small pleasure spots known as Hedonic Hotspots, giving rise to joy and euphoria.

While sometimes “wanting” and “enjoying” can go together, like anticipating a concert and then enjoying rocking out, sometimes they don’t (such as in the example above where you’ve scarfed that sleeve of cookies and you feel sick rather than blissed out).  

So … how do we uncouple craving from enjoying?

Simple: just force the habit.  We aren’t wired to crave exercise or a cuddle the same way that we crave sugar or booze.  However, when we do finally exercise or have a nice chat with a loved one, it makes us feel good.  (In fact, exercise releases endocannabinoids which are naturally produced by your body and are similar to the cannabinoids found in cannabis plants. 😉)  So we can jerry-rig our lizard brains by forcing ourselves to do things we WILL enjoy and then forcing ourselves to notice that we feel good after the fact.  The same principle works in reverse: if we crave something then have it and feel bad afterwards, we can take a moment to notice that too (without berating ourselves).  

Whilst we are not going as far as to rewire our brains, we are retraining them to learn that enjoyable things make us feel good, things we crave sometimes don’t … and that rational path is the best we’ve got right now.