This article may be a “hard one to swallow” for many people but it has been confirmed that you can train your brain to crave healthy vegetables and whole grains instead of junk food and sugary sweets. If you’re on a diet, you don’t need to force yourself to go through the grueling task day after day to eat steamed chicken breast instead of KFC fried chicken. There has been extensive study done by scientists at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tuffs University and Massachusetts General Hospital proving that your brain can be conditioned to crave low calorie foods over healthy foods.
Before this important study was done, it used to be suspected by scientists that once unhealthy food addiction circuits are established in the brain it may be too hard if not impossible to restructure those electrical bonds, meaning that if you’ve gained weight from a lifetime of unhealthy eating and temptations, reversing those habits and retraining your brain may be harder than quitting cigarettes. Luckily, we didn’t start out in life craving French fries and hating whole wheat pasta and modern technology using brain MRI scans have helped scientists learn how to reverse these cravings.
Unfortunately, the process is not easy. It takes time and you must responsibly eat healthy food repeatedly to allow changes in your brain to occur. The group participants in the scientific studies were conveniently fed a low glycemic diet high in fiber and it took an average of 6 months for changes and consistent new cravings to form. In life, habits don’t just start at your taste buds. Emotional triggers can occur from social events, just walking or driving by your favorite bakery or convince store or emotional destress.
One problem we face is that healthy food is not as convenient as unhealthy food. McDonalds and some restaurants sell salads as a small list of choices but if you truly want to be successful it begins at making healthy food more convenient. I personally recommend cooking healthy grab and go meals in bulk so that whenever you feel hunger, you’ll already have a low-calorie healthy meal ready to eat and not tempted to make a quick drive to the convenience store or calling Uber Eats. Taking a meal out of the freezer and putting it in the microwave is much faster and most jobs have refrigerators and microwaves in their break rooms for employees. This can also save you money on your monthly budget, not to mention less cooking time in the kitchen.
There’s also an issue of taste. The study concluded that their participants took an average of 6 months to see MRI restructuring and retrain their brains, so if your meals consist of over-cooked hard to chew chicken breast, pork tenderloin and boring spinach, you’re not going to last long. There are many delicious recipes on this site that I love to cook in bulk, such as Muscle Cook Chili, Homemade Protein Bars and Greek Pork Tenderloin. I also suggest learning how to add herbs and spices to your meals. Dried herbs like Turmeric, Oregano, Basil, Garlic Powder and Paprika are some of my favorites. Herbs and spices don’t just add flavor, they’re also packed with nutrition density and antioxidants. Also don’t be afraid of adding salt. Salt adds flavor to your meals and although too much can raise blood pressure, not enough of it makes any meal very hard to eat. When making home cook meals, learn how to do taste tests so that you have just enough salt to satisfy your taste buds.
Out of sight out of mind is also very popular among some of the leanest people in the world. If you don’t keep unhealthy snacks on your kitchen table and you replace it with healthy fruit, you won’t be tempted to eat it. If you eat healthy meals that taste good and are convenient, retraining your brain will be as easy as pie.
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