I’ve talked about the mental aspects of healthy eating in the past. Recently I’ve backslid a little on indulging in junk food, so when I did my annual physical at the Doc (“wellness visit”, in Medicare parlance), my weight had crept up a bit. I’ll be seeing her for a follow up in August so this is a good opportunity to be stricter for 3 months.
I had an interesting chat with Gemini about things like mindful eating and what to do when the voice of temptation whispers sweetly in my ear. I shared the chat here. I asked for suggested reading and Gemini told me about the book “The Craving Mind” by Dr. Jud Brewer. Good tip, it was an excellent and fascinating book. It is not specifically about eating but about cravings in general, but the neuroscience of various cravings has a great deal of overlap.
Dr. Brewer improved his own mental health and happiness by diligently doing mindfulness and meditation in medical school. This led him to choose psychiatry as his medical specialty. He has been treating patients and doing research using mindfulness techniques and cutting edge technologies like fmri ever since graduating and this book chronicles his experience.
One interesting theme is that the old Behavioral psychology ideas of BF Skinner on rewards and learning are still valid when it comes to cravings. This reward system comes from a more primitive part of our brains, which we share with a lot of species, including, as Dr. Brewer points out, and not-too-flattering for humans, the sea slug.
Traditional ideas about mindfulness have useful therapy applications in this area. The most fascinating takeaway to me is the connection between cravings and the area of the brain known as the Posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). There is a strong correlation between activity of the PCC and the default mode network. Things like cravings and obsessive behavior light up the DMN, while relaxing activities that loosen our tight grip on ourselves tend to calm it down. It is easier to monitor changes in the PCC in real time, so Dr. Brewer uses it a lot in his work.
In addition, to his research Dr Brewer has worked with patients with tough addictions like smoking and substance abuse as well as eating disorders. So he has good experience with what works. The bottom line is that mindfulness helps break the cycle of addition. In addition, insight into your craving thoughts is powerful. So when the little voice is whispering “Aw, Cmon, what could one more slice of pizza hurt”, if instead of giving into it, I can get insight by trying to notice what is going on in my body right now. This actually a practical application from Buddhist insight meditation.
Between the book (and some free resources from Dr. Jud’s website) and the chat with Gemini I’ve got some good tips to try. So far so good, I’ve been able to cut way back on junk food for seven days now.
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