𝐃𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐭 𝐝𝐢𝐟𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐮𝐥𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐠𝐞𝐭 𝐛𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐚𝐟𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐬𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐨𝐧? 🙅♀️🙅♂️
Well It’s normal, let me explain why!
I absolutely love riding horses! I also like to ride horses with character to keep me on my toes. From time to time when I have disagreements with my horse, I end up on the ground. It’s a known fact that if you get bucked off the horse, it is important to get back on, for both the rider and the horse. But it’s not always easy, especially if you had a hard fall. Our brains are wired to keep us away from pain.
It works in similar ways with getting back on track after the holidays. We do everything in our lives to avoid pain and experience pleasure. This is how our brains are wired and we train our brains to be that way throughout our life. Here is how it works and why it is not so easy to get back on track.
As humans, we are wired for survival. For thousands of years, food was not readily available to us and we had periods of starvation. The way for our bodies to survive was to store extra energy (fat) any time we could. That is why it is so easy to gain weight. Our brain is a very smart machine. It understands and records calorie density in the food you eat. For that reason, in order to survive, it will make you go after high calorie foods first. That is why we get attracted to sugars and not kale. Let’s talk about how this process works.
You eat a cookie for the first time in your life. 🍪 Your brain remembers that it has high calories by secreting pleasure hormones and attaching pleasure feelings to eating the cookie. 🍪 The more you repeat this process, the more hardwired it becomes. But this is only the first half of the story.
The second one is more important, as I have mentioned before, your brain is wired to save you from pain at all costs, even if it is not good for your health.
Let’s imagine next that you have a stressful day at work and it bothers you a lot when you get home. What happens next is very interesting. Your brain is trying to save you from that emotional pain and remembers that if you eat a cookie, you will get pleasure. And so, you eat a cookie. The problem with that is now your brain linked avoiding pain with eating a cookie, without you even knowing about it!
So, the next time you experience pain or stress, you go back to eating a cookie. The more you repeat it, the harder it is to change. 🍪
On the other hand, exercise, if it’s done correctly, is a physical stress to your body and even though it is great for your health, your brain is not too excited about it. Again, we avoid pain at any cost, even if it’s good for us. Now, we combine the two and it is easy to see why any time we fall off track, it is so hard to get back. Similarly, with getting back on your horse, you just have to do it.
Why?
Because once you get back, your brain realizes that it’s not that bad.
So, how do you get back on track?
The easiest way is by changing your chemical balance. And the easiest way to change your chemical balance is to do physical exercise.
So, the next time you fall off track and can’t seem to stop eating cookies, get out and train. 𝐑𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫, 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥 𝐠𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠. 𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥 𝐠𝐨𝐨𝐝! 💪 🏃♂️🏃♀️
