How to Stop Overeating

Did you know you can hack your brain to stop overeating?

To understand how to hack your brain, you have to understand a bit about two of the parts of your brain, the primitive brain, and the neocortex.

The primitive brain is the part of the brain that generates the urge, but on its own it can’t do anything.

All your power lies with the neocortex, the newest part of the brain, who gets to decide whether or not to give in to the urge and reward it.

Now if you’ve read the story of Pavlov’s dogs – or even if you just have a dog – you know the way we reinforce a behavior is to reward it.

So every time your primitive brain says “cookies” and your neocortex rewards it with a cookie, that neural pathway – the trail in your brain – gets stronger and stronger. 

The key to stopping your brain from going down and down that neural pathway is to remove the reward, but NOT by resisting the urge and pushing it down.  When we do that, the urge just gets stronger.

So the way to stop overeating is to start to pay attention – to notice the urge – and then to allow the urge rather than resisting it.

An urge is just a feeling, so we are going to feel the feeling by moving toward it with curiosity and openness.  What does it feel like in your body?

You will find the urge will just pass within about 90 seconds. 

The more you just allow yourself to feel that feeling, the less you will reinforce the behavior and the less strong the urge will be.