Pleasure and Reward ~ Food Addiction

I am teaching a bariatric counseling class with Richard Nongard to a group of therapists Thursday and Friday this week in Dallas and one of subjects is food addiction and how our brains are hard wired for pleasure and reward. I frequently talk with Slender For Life™ clients about the addictive qualities that the most unhealthy foods have. One way to overcome food addiction is to learn hypnosis so that you can be in control of you. With self-hypnosis you can take back your power from from addiction.

Hedonic (Happy) System

Our brains are hard wired for pleasure and reward in the mesolimbic system (a.k.a. “twinkie circuit”) which can make food act like a drug addiction. Dopamine motivates our behavior and strengthens our anticipation. It encourages us to engage in a complex set of pursuit- and- acquisition behaviors. Dopamine drives desire through a survival-based capacity known as “attentional bias”, which is the exaggerated amount of attention paid to highly rewarding stimuli at the expense of other (neutral) stimuli. This gives rewarding foods (and other rewarding experiences) prominence in our minds so that we focus our attention on pursuing them. We get a hit of “happy.”

Food activates brain reward circuitry both through palatability (involves endogenous opioids and cannabinoids) and through changes in ghrelin, insulin and leptin concentrations (this is how homeostatic and hedonic systems normally interact in the control of food intake and regulation of body weight).

Drugs activate this same circuitry via their direct effects on dopamine cells or indirectly through neurotransmitters that modulate dopamine cells such as opiates, nicotine, y-aminobutyric acid or cannabinoids.

Slender For Life™ clients learn hypnosis for weight loss and are able to end the addiction to food and create healthy and natural ways of  happiness.

My challenge to you today is to do at least one healthy activity that provides you happiness.

Click here if you’d like more information about the Bariatric Counseling and Hypnotherapy Certification course that Richard Nongard and I are teaching in Dallas, Tampa and Seattle.

Check out Slender For Life™ and call (206) 903-1232 or email for your free consultation.

Remember to sign up for your FREE 8-part audio course, Understanding Hypnosis, at the right side of this page NOW!