Stop Letting Your Food Get You High!

Have you ever been around someone who acts like an “addict,” needing a fix whenever they go without food too long? Or they might see, smell and think about sweets like chocolate cake throughout the entire day. Have you ever been that person? Many of us can relate one way or the other but many of us tend to dismiss the fact that the same hormones regulated by drugs can also be impacted by the food we eat.

According to Wikipedia “Dopamine has many functions in the brain, including important roles in behavior and cognition, motor activity, motivation and reward, sleep, mood, attention, and learning. Dopamine is commonly associated with the pleasure system of the brain, providing feelings of enjoyment and reinforcement to motivate a person proactively to perform certain activities. Dopamine is released by naturally rewarding experiences such as food, sex, some drugs, and stimuli that become associated with them. Dopamine is closely associated with reward-seeking behaviors, such as approach, consumption, and addiction.” The brain is wired for survival not performance.

In essence, we are all addicts. By rewarding and reinforcing the activities that keep us alive and procreating, the human race has made it this far. This is great for survival, but not necessarily optimal for performance. Let’s take a look at how you can stop getting high when you eat and how that alone will impact your performance.

First of all, insulin is the fat storage hormone of the body. It is the key that unlocks your cells so that nutrients, energy, oxygen can enter. Any amount of any type or quality of carbohydrate intake triggers the release of insulin because the energy has to get in the cells somehow.

The higher the quantity and especially the lower the quality of carbohydrate intake, the higher (and faster) your blood sugar levels will rise. In an attempt to bring the system back to homeostasis (balance) the brain will trigger a large amount of insulin (typically more than is required) and the pendulum will swing the other way!

Insulin release also triggers a dopamine release of relative size (think reward system – “Good job, you found food!”). The larger the quantity, and the worse the quality, the higher the dopamine release. Rewarding this kind behavior which quickly can spiral into carb binging may be great for survival, but from a performance standpoint, people who eat high carb diets are either really weak and really thin or really weak and really fat!

Here are three tips to help you get off the “crack”!

1. Don’t go too long without eating. When blood sugar gets too low, even Superman will overeat at the next meal and chances are higher that the sources of carbs will be worse.

2. Stop buying poor sources of carbs at the store. Only go shopping after eating a well balanced meal.

3. When you are feeling cravings for sweets, eat fruit. Give yourself permission to eat as much of any fruit you’d like so long as you are not eating processed carbs as well. It is much easier to back off of fruit to optimal levels than processed carbs.

As you start to get off of the “crack,” your body will begin to sensitize to insulin. As a result, your recovery time between workouts will go down, and your performance will go up. And who knows, maybe you’ll get lucky and get a high from your workout!