Make Your Dreams Come True: Plan
You have the ability to make your dreams come true through planning.
We humans are special.
Our mammalian brain has the addition of the prefrontal cortex.
The prefrontal cortex is our most evolved section of the brain, and it can make all of your dreams come true.
The prefrontal cortex can plan, make conscious decisions ahead of time, create goals, and envision dreams.
Without the prefrontal cortex, we would be ruled by our desires and impulses, lack an ability to plan for the future, or think about the consequences of our actions.
The primary purpose of the brain is to keep us alive, and an undirected mind operates naturally in survival mode.
Our brain focuses on 3 simple motivations to increase the odds of survival:
1. avoid pain
2. seek pleasure
3. be efficient/conserve energy
These 3 simple things form your brain’s Motivational Triad.
You will always be motivated to do something that won’t hurt you, feels good, and is easy.
The brain is wired to enjoy food—especially foods high in fat and sugar because of the immediate energy they provide.
Dr. Vera Tarman explains in her book, Food Junkies: The Truth About Food Addiction, “Since consuming food is essential to survival, it is the pleasure of eating that ensures we do so. Certain basic human survival needs, like sex and sleep, are related to natural pleasures built into our DNA blueprint; we experience pleasure to ensure we don’t ignore our needs.”
The emotion that propels us to eat is DESIRE.
You have a thought like, “I’d really like to have that ice cream,” and you eat a spoonful of ice cream.
As soon as the sugar and fat hit your taste buds, in a little more than half a second, information is sent to your brain, and the brain is aroused.
The brain then releases the chemical DOPAMINE which gives you the feeling of pleasure, causing you to do it again.
This reward system has worked beautifully to keep us alive.
Today, however, we consume a lot of processed foods that are loaded with sugar, fat, and salt, all of which, especially when combined, cause an unnatural reward response in the brain.
This overreward from the food creates overdesire for it making weight management difficult.
Michael Moss, in his book, Hooked: Food, Free Will, and How the Food Giants Exploit Our Addictions, noted sugar and fat are rarely found together in nature; breast milk is composed of 3.5% fat and 7% sugar while the typical processed snack is composed of 24% fat and 57% sugar.
Additionally, these foods are packaged and designed to be consumed mindlessly so we can multitask and eat while watching TV, or eat while working at our computer, resulting in overeating.
Planning meals ahead of time is the way to take back control of your biology that has been hijacked by foods designed to unnaturally stimulate the pleasure center of your brain.
The brain has the amazing ability to rewire itself.
We can change and interrupt the ingrained neural pathways we unconsciously created that are causing overdesire for foods, and replace them with new ones.
The cornerstone of my 8 week 3 to Free™ program is using the power of our prefrontal cortex to plan by making conscious decisions ahead of time about food so we are deliberately living in alignment with our weight management goals.
Planning your meals ahead of time turns unconscious, mindless eating to conscious eating.
Planning also allows you to choose foods on purpose that serve your weight management goals.
You design your life instead of letting your auto-pilot brain wired for survival make compulsive decisions for you in the moment that never support your goals.
It has the best intentions, but this 2 million year old organ hasn’t caught up with modern day processed foods that create overdesire because of the unnatural dopamine response they cause.
Use the gift of your prefrontal cortex, and plan your way to weight management success!