By Dina Aldabbagh

If you’ve struggled with being able to refrain from eating something even when you’re not hungry or when the food isn’t that great, you’ve understood this feeling like you’re being controlled by food. Instead of being able to recognize, “Oh, I don’t like this,” “This actually isn’t that good,” or “I’m not actually hungry right now,” you continue to eat whatever is in front of you, and further, seek out more. Why, right? It’s so hard to understand what is going on here that you feel like all self-control is lost. Here it is: you’re not seeking food, you’re seeking dopamine. There’s a key here that did a full unlock and helped me understand just what was causing this to happen.

I call it dopamine stacking. You may have heard of habit stacking; it’s when you combine two habits to increase productivity and the likelihood of creating a new habit. So what people do is they’ll take a habit they’re already consistent with and add a new one onto it. This helps in triggering the new habit to be added to one’s arsenal without as much of an effort. Well, dopamine stacking is an intuitive effort we make to increase the amount of dopamine felt in a single experience.

We combine food with other experiences to try to deliver the highest hit of dopamine we possibly can to our brain. This then has the dual effect of getting us addicted to chasing dopamine and addicted to the things that had once delivered that dopamine. Like a drug addict, we end up becoming tolerant and getting less of a dopamine hit each time, prompting us to seek more and more each time. 

“What can I do to make this meal the best meal ever?” Maybe once, all you needed to do was eat a single oreo after your meal, but now one oreo isn’t that exciting. You’ve done that so many times. Now, two oreos seems like a real treat! And the cycle continues until oreos just don’t do it for you anymore, and even after having 4 oreos after your meal, you think, “I’m still just not satisfied. What else can I go get to give me that satisfaction I crave?” I.e. to deliver the dopamine hit you seek — that you’re dependent on. While meal satisfaction is important to consider in our diets, this is something else. This isn’t just making sure you get a little bit of everything in your diet so you can have a balanced lifestyle. This is an endless cycle of trying to fill a void. My emotional eaters, does that sound familiar?

The more sinister part is that it works in 2 ways. We use food to make not-very fun experiences more enjoyable, and we use dopamine boosting activities to make our food more enjoyable. It’s a two way street that keeps us constantly seeking out more, more, more dopamine.

I’ll use the parallel of social drinking to help illustrate. Why do people who don’t like alcohol drink in social situations? It enhances the experience. For one, everyone else has a drink in their hand, so if you’re averse to drawing attention to yourself, it’s easier to have a drink in yours as well than to have to deal with many people asking you, “Why aren’t you drinking? How long have you been sober? Do you not drink? Why don’t you drink?” They can make it a big deal, so if you want to avoid that, you’ll be influenced to just get a drink and stop the chatter. Another reason people may drink socially even if they don’t care for alcohol is that they want to loosen up and evade social anxiety. Getting a couple drinks in you will lower your inhibitions and that lack of overthinking can open you up. Could you be doing something similar with food? Could you be not even that interested in the food itself, but really the experience you think you can get from or avoid if you eat whatever the thing is available to you? 

Could you be the drinker who wants to avoid the bad experience of everyone singling you out? If all you truly want is to “blend in” and not call too much attention to yourself, and that’s why you’re eating food you don’t want, it’s time to start facing what you’re avoiding. If you reject a drink while out, there’s no need to be embarrassed if people single you out for not drinking because the truth is, they don’t really care either. You might get some comments, but everyone just kinda moves past it pretty quickly. No one’s comments or questions are worth you partaking in something you don’t even really desire. You don’t matter that much to people. No one needs you to drink in order to have a good time themselves — and if they do, steer clear of them. The same goes for food. If someone’s personal enjoyment is hinged on whether you’re eating or not, that’s a them problem. You don’t need to take on any responsibility that isn’t yours.

Or perhaps you’re the drinker who wants to make hanging out with a certain group more enjoyable by drinking alcohol. What if you didn’t drink next time with your friends? What if you still went and hung out, but didn’t drink? Would you still enjoy your time with those people? If you can’t be around people whilst sober and enjoy yourself, you don’t want to be around them drunk.

Let me tell you, we do this same thing with food. We use food to make certain experiences that we’re not enjoying, more enjoyable. If you can’t get the enjoyment from the experience itself, then you shouldn’t be there. There’s no point in doing those things because you feel like you need to, or “should” based on what you think my life should look like, and then really just getting the dopamine hit from food. If the experience in and of itself doesn’t give you enjoyment — or, dopamine — then you need to stop doing that activity. It’s not for you. If you do go and do that thing and don’t eat food, would you still feel some sense of fulfillment? Let those things be stand alone — would you still enjoy them? Or do you only enjoy them because you’re integrating food into the experience — something you do enjoy and can always count on enjoying?

Are you trying to make bad experiences better by integrating an experience you always get rewarded by mentally: eating food? Next time, ask yourself, “If food wasn’t a part of this experience, would I still enjoy it?” If not, leave. Go do something you would enjoy. If you can’t hangout with people sober, why would you want to hangout with them at all? They’re not real friends — not if you can’t actually connect when you’re not in an unaltered state. Are you using food as the “enjoyment” in your relationships with people? Do you have a friend that you only like being with when you’re doing something, like…eating maybe? Then you’re using food as a way to make an unenjoyable experience enjoyable, instead of just admitting to yourself that maybe you don’t actually like being in their company all that much. If you can’t hangout with them without food, you don’t want to hangout with them at all — you don’t actually enjoy their company. 

Questions to Ask Yourself:

1. If food wasn’t a part of this experience, would I still enjoy it?

If not, leave. Go do something you would enjoy. 

2. How can this experience be made more enjoyable without food?

If it can’t be, you shouldn’t be doing it. 

3. If I eat this food with no other stimulation — no show, no podcast, no journaling, no book, no people — is the food still as enjoyable? And would I still want as much of it as I’m eating?

If you don’t even want to eat the food without additional stimulation, you’re not actually that hungry. Because if you were hungry, you would 100% choose food. Simple. When we’re hungry, our bodies are asking for energy, so food alone is a worthwhile experience. Further, the dopamine hit you get from food when you’re actually hungry is high — because eating is rewarding — but yes, it will probably be lower most of the time if you take away that additional stimulation. And that’s okay. That’s actually what you want if you’re someone who’s obsessed with food. You want food to just be food. Enjoyable in its time, but not this incredible experience that hinges all this pressure of being the sole source of your dopamine every day. It’s good to enjoy what we’re eating, but we need to take away the dopamine dependance from the food itself.

4. Would I rather do what I’m doing right now or eat?

If you can’t do both at once, if you had to choose, what are you choosing? If it’s the things you’re currently doing, then don’t supplement the experience with food. If you were really hungry, without question, you’re choosing food every time.

Stop trying to make the experience of food better with other things. 

Stop trying to make the experience of life better with food.

Stop using external stimulation to deliver a higher dopamine hit.

That’s the key. We’re trying to take away all the external dopamine hits from the things we’re doing to see if it’s actually worth it to do the thing itself.

Let me be clear, this does not mean you can’t combine two experiences — drinks and friends, food and celebration — that’s such a normal part of life and culture. However, what I urge you to do is to take a break — literally all you need is a week or two. Get back to baseline and see how you really feel about certain experiences individually and how you really feel about food on its own. Our experiences are so interconnected and so rarely measured on their own merit that we only know the value of things in their relation to other things. This may be heavily skewing the amount of value you give things, therefore giving them disproportionate importance in your life. 

You may think you love those friends, until you spend time with them sober. If you and that friend went on a walk, do you still like them? You may think you’re such a foodie, until you realize you’re not actually looking to eat, you’re just looking to relax, and food gives you that permission. You eat and watch Netflix, but what do you really want in that moment? Is it more food or more relaxation? Maybe it’s just guilt-free time to just do nothing. But you’re pairing Netflix with food because then you’re “multitasking” and “taking care of two needs at once.” If you let yourself slow down and be honest about what you’re actually seeking in that moment, you can go get it. 

You know what place you get to when you’re honest with yourself about what you’re truly seeking from things? Where you want to be. But you have to take the shame away from whatever answer you truly have about what you’re looking for. The best answer is the honest one, because that’s something we can actually work with. 

For someone who’s not much of a drinker, if they don’t want to drink, it doesn’t matter if everyone else has a drink, they still don’t care — they don’t desire it. They don’t feel pressured because they don’t want it. It’s not like they want it but they’re not letting themselves have it, they just don’t want it. You may notice they don’t typically prioritize drinking because they’re not there for the alcohol, they’re there to spend time with their friends or to partake in whatever the activity is at hand. That doesn’t mean they won’t drink simultaneously, it just means it’s not a condition to them being there. They check in with themselves and if they want a drink, they get one. But if not, they don’t feel pressured to. 

It’s the same thing with food. If they’re not hungry, it doesn’t matter what super appealing food is available or if everyone else is eating, they don’t want to eat. It’s not like they’re stopping themselves from doing something they want, instead they’re really just not interested. The enjoyment of their experiences aren’t dependent on whether food or drinks are a part of them. It is very possible for you to get here to — it happens through the renewing of your mind.  

The truth to being pleased in life, I’m realizing, is to be present. And part of being present is to accept that slight dissatisfaction that is innately engrained in almost every experience in life. Dissatisfaction is the name of the game. That doesn’t mean you’ll never be happy, but that if you want to be happy, you have to be okay with everything not being perfect — with every single thing in life not being the most exciting, the most fulfilling thing ever with 0 flaws or room for improvement, but rather, to allow every experience to give you exactly what it’s giving you. 

That doesn’t mean, ‘don’t hope for better,’ it just means that it’s okay for what you currently have to be giving you the level of fulfillment it currently is, and that for now, it doesn’t need to give more than it is. It’s a place of balance you reach. While on the road to greater, bigger, better, you’re also content with what currently is. You can feel both simultaneously — and it’s so fulfilling. 

If you want to stop feeling like food controls you, you must become present in your experience. You must start becoming mindful and noticing what you’re feeling inside and what’s going on outside that’s impacting that. And then, you must change. First, observation. Then, honesty. And finally, change. It’s easier than it seems, it just takes some time. You must undo whatever the previous programming was and add on the new. Having a healthy relationship to dopamine and food is not just achievable, but with enough practice, it will become second nature for you. You will forget that you ever lived another way — only remembering that it occurred, but feeling so disconnected to that lifestyle.