Junk food is addictive, and this addiction works on the same neurochemical pathways in your brain that do drugs, alcohol and gambling.
You want to know what else works on those same neurological pathways? The good feelings you get from exercise. What this means is that people who exercise a lot can get that same feel-good “fix” from exercise as they do from eating crap.
When your need for a rush is satisfied via strenuous effort rather than food, that’s a good thing.
So how do you get there?
EXERCISE MUST BE DONE MINDFULLY TO CONTROL FOOD INTAKE
The key to success is to do this in a mindful way. There are cases of people who actually gain weight when they start an exercise program (and I’m not talking about building muscle) because they adopt a “reward mentality” that I mentioned earlier.
The key with exercise is the way you visualise what it does for you. You’ve got to go way beyond seeing it as just a calorie burner because, again, that’s just about the least important thing it does until you get up into hardcore territory – then it can start making a significant contribution to weight loss and weight management. The vast majority of the population is never going to burn a ton of calories via exercise. Weight loss will always mostly be a dietary issue.
So, instead of seeing exercise as something that allows you to be rewarded with eating junk, you must view it as something that gives you the power to resist such garbage. What’s more, you can cross over to the good side and visualise it as something that makes you crave healthier foods to fuel your new, high-performance lifestyle.
There’s a lot of chemical interactions taking place in your brain that help the above come to fruition, but you’ve got to think it to make it happen. It’s a mixture of physiology, with your body starting to send you signals about what healthy foods you should be eating, and psychology, which involves some positive self-talk and self-hypnosis even about convincing yourself that you’re ready to handle giving up the crap and embracing good food.
ARE YOU WORKING UP AN APPETITE?
But what about working up an appetite? Doesn’t exercise cause you to eat more?
This is a myth that is in desperate need of busting. Yes, there are some critics of exercise who say that exercising will “work up an appetite” and cause you to actually gain weight.
It sounds good as a hypothesis. If you exercise really hard then you are going to want to eat more to fuel that exercise, right? That axiom about working up an appetite has been around for a long time, hasn’t it?
There is also the fact that stress can lead to eating, and exercise is proven to reduce stress, creating an environment better for making healthy food choices.
To get your brain in the right head space, contact Transform Personal Training, your personal trainer in Chicago.