Have you ever wondered why you feel hungry when you are not actually hungry but you don’t have anything but just eat something or the other to keep your craving under control? Let’s cut short we do it because our mind has no answers to the current situation we are facing. According to an article by Harvard Health “When we feel stressed or sometimes lonely The adrenal glands release a hormone called cortisol, and cortisol increases appetite and may also ramp up motivation in general, including the motivation to eat.” That’s what the science says but here’s what happens with me.
Many times I have these moments of loneliness where I’m clueless about what to do. So I open the fridge or search for snacks in the cabinet. I’m not hungry or something but I have this constant feeling of eating just to you know feel that I’m doing something by chewing, I mean that’s still work, right? I just wanted to get rid of the feeling of being alone in my room. Nowadays I have found something different i.e. scrolling through reels, it just gives me a lot of dopamine. When you get instant dopamine your body doesn’t feel like exerting any kind of necessary effort. It makes the whole process.
Recently I was watching a Bollywood movie 🎬 “Dil Dhadakne Do” in which the woman was stuffing huge pieces of cake to get rid of the feeling of grudge and sadness. So, many people handle their stress differently. Many have their stress-releasing mechanism which resorts to drugs, cigarettes, or alcohol. Why do we resort to such things even eating food? Well doing something like this acts as a distraction, this makes us forget our feelings, sadness, grief 😔. It’s a short-term reward that we receive and that is dopamine. Dopamine is a villain to the rewards from your long-term goals. But as we say a delayed reward is much more fruitful, we forget this jittery nonsense and fall prey to our rewarding handsome friend dopamine.
Many of us might have planned some resolutions at the start of the year, like eating healthier. Some might have succeeded but for some, it is again going back to square one. I want to ask you why you had junk food, was it a situation where you were back from work late and just ordered something, or you were not able to resist that craving when you saw your favorite outlet on the way back home? Whatever the reason it was Mr. Dopamine has worked its wonders. The effects of eating healthy are seen in the long term and junk food gives you that instant satisfaction that you ate something tastier than usual, but is that good for your body in the long run? No right. Here’s a thing you need to know it is difficult to stick to long-term rewards but you can use it wisely too. Like a workout for a week every day and then as a reward, you can have a burger 🍔. Something like this still feels right. It's always difficult to completely change your diet in a short span, change is always done slowly and gradually. Rewarding your craving every time is not a good idea to overcome your food habits.
It is not always the food that you crave, it's also regarding entertainment wasting your time on some random Instagram reels or YouTube shorts📱, but anyways we need to start living our life like that because it's going to be more distractive in the future.
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