Super Brain (13 page)

Now instead of
spider
, insert the word
Catholics, Jews, Arabs, people of color, the police, the enemy
, and so on. Prejudice gets stated as a fact (
All those people are the same
), but at bottom there is fear, hatred, and defensiveness. Despite its subtle manipulations, the ego can be countered by a few simple questions. Ask yourself:

Why do I think this way?

What’s really motivating me?

Am I just repeating the same old thing I always say/think/do?

The value of questioning yourself is that you keep moving on. You refresh your responses; you let self-awareness take in as much as possible. Having more to process stimulates the brain to renew itself, and the mind, with more responses at its disposal from the brain, expands beyond imaginary limitations. Whatever is fixed is limited; whatever is dynamic allows you to expand beyond limitation. Super brain is about removing limitations entirely. Each step brings you closer to your true self, which creates reality in a state of freedom.

SUPER BRAIN SOLUTIONS
OVERWEIGHT

Being overweight is a problem that is ripe for using the brain in a new way. More than one-third of Americans are overweight, and over a quarter are obese. Leaving aside medical issues, this epidemic is caused by the choices we make. In a society that consumes on average 150 pounds of sugar a year, eats one-tenth of all meals at McDonald’s, and indulges in larger portion sizes every decade, you’d think our bad choices are so glaring that we’d rush to reverse them. But we don’t, and massive public health advisories don’t seem to help. Obesity has grown beyond reason because reason isn’t effective in stopping it.

What is the baseline brain doing wrong? The culprit used to be considered moral. Being overweight was a sign of personal weakness, a holdover from the medieval inclusion of gluttony among the seven deadly sins. In the back of their minds, many overweight people accuse themselves of lack of willpower. If only they could stop being self-indulgent! If only they could stop punishing themselves with calories that fuel a vicious circle: eating puts on pounds, which leads to a worse self-image, and feeling bad about yourself gives you a good reason to console yourself by eating even more.

Decisions are conscious; habits aren’t. In that simple statement, we begin to see being overweight from the brain’s perspective. The unconscious parts of the brain have been trained to demand food that the higher brain doesn’t want. The swing between overeating, remorse, and overeating has a counterpart in physiology. The hormones that serve as natural signals indicating that you have satisfied your hunger either get suppressed or are countered by other hormones that signal a ravenous appetite. Food itself isn’t the issue. As tempting as a hot fudge sundae or a twenty-four-ounce porterhouse steak may be, they aren’t addictive substances.

What is the issue, then? The answers, familiar by now, have the ring of futility. So many factors enter into diet and health that no matter where you turn, there’s new blame to cast. People get fat, according to the experts, from

• Low self-esteem

• Poor body image

• A family history of obesity

• Genetic predisposition

• Early childhood training in bad eating habits

• Unhealthy fast foods and processed foods heavy in additives and preservatives

• The decline of whole foods

• Society’s fixation on a “perfect” body that is unattainable by the vast majority

• The built-in self-defeat of constant dieting and yo-yo loss and gain

When you face such a discouraging pileup, the baseline brain gets quickly overwhelmed. This leads to a familiar pattern of self-defeating behavior. One failed diet leads to the next, out of sheer frustration and confusion. Failure breeds more frustration, but it also makes you prone to gimmicks and quick fixes: the unreasoning pressure of hunger, habit, and fantasies clouds your higher brain’s ability to make decisions.

How can super brain change these entrenched patterns? First off, we need to declare a truce with fat. The baseline brain has not won the war. Studies show that many dieters lose weight, but up to 100 percent fail to keep the weight off for two years. Those who do keep a sizable amount of weight off relate that they are prepared to watch every calorie, day by day, for the rest of their lives. Brain chemistry plays its part. Dieters typically feel hungrier after they lose some pounds than before. Australian researchers believe the reason
is a biological shift. The stomachs of successful dieters who then began to put the weight back on showed 20 percent higher levels of ghrelin, the so-called “hunger hormone,” than before they went on the diet. A December 2011 report in the
New York Times
says, “Their still-plump bodies were acting as if they were starving and were working overtime to regain the pounds they lost.” Your brain is responsible for regulating your body’s metabolic set point through the hypothalamus, and dieting seems to affect that, too. People who come back down to a normal weight need 400 fewer calories a day than those who have consistently remained at their ideal weight over the years.

What the overweight person needs, in order to break out of self-defeat, isn’t a new brain, a better metabolic set point, or balanced hormones. That is, the answer doesn’t lie in these factors—they are secondary to something else: balance. An imbalance in the brain’s circuitry results when the areas for impulsive behavior have been strengthened while the areas for rational decision-making have been weakened. The repetition of negative patterns also harms decision-making, because when you blame yourself or feel like a failure, lower parts of your brain are once again overriding your cerebral cortex. You restore mental balance by successfully making choices that are self-enhancing, such as when you stop reaching for food as an emotional fix. Once you restore balance, the brain will naturally tend to preserve it. This balance, known as homeostasis, is one of the most powerful mechanisms built into the involuntary or autonomic nervous system. The unique thing about the brain is that it runs on dual control. Processes run on automatic pilot, but if you instruct them to run the way you want, will and desire will take over. But this isn’t a matter of willpower. Willpower implies force. You want to eat a second piece of pie or raid the fridge at midnight, but through sheer determination you resist.

That isn’t will; it’s resistance. Whatever you resist persists. There’s the rub. As long as you engage in an inner war between
what you crave and what you know is good for you, defeat is all but inevitable. In its natural state, will is the opposite of resistance. You go with the flow, and the will of nature, which has billions of years of evolution behind it, carries you. Homeostasis is the way your body wants to go; every cell has been engineered exquisitely to stay in balance (which is why, for example, a cell typically stores only enough food to last a few seconds. It has no need for extra storage because in the body’s overall balance, every cell can count on being continuously nourished).

Super brain is about being in control of what your brain does. Our slogan is “Use your brain, don’t let it use you.” The area of weight includes patients suffering from eating disorders. A seriously anorexic girl can look in the mirror, see an emaciated frame with exposed ribs, elbows, and knees grotesquely sticking out, and a face that seems like a thin mask stretched over the skull. Nonetheless, what she sees is “I’m fat.” The raw data entering her visual cortex at the back of her brain is irrelevant. As someone with an eating disorder, the body she sees is in her head. The same is true for everyone. The only difference is that we match a normal reflection in the mirror with a normal image in our heads. On the fringes of normal, millions of us see “too fat” when we look at a body that is comfortably within the range of normal. Of course, denial can set in, and after a certain point we may have too much extra weight to admit to. (A clever
New Yorker
cartoon has a woman asking her husband, “Tell me the truth. Does this body make me look fat?”)

The key is to bring your brain into balance, then use its ability to balance everything—hormones, hunger, cravings, and habits. Your weight is all in your head because, ultimately, your body is in your head. That is, the brain lies at the source of all bodily functions, and your mind lies at the source of your brain.

Super brain requires you to relate to your brain in a new way. Most people are out of balance because their brains are so adaptable. The brain compensates for anything that happens in the body. Severely
overweight people work around their obesity, leading normal lives within limits, raising families, enjoying loving relationships. At another level, however, they are miserable. Imbalance feeds more imbalance, perpetuating the vicious circle. They need to stop adapting to obesity and relate to the brain as the answer, not the problem.

WEIGHT LOSS AWARENESS

Stop fighting with yourself.

Ignore calorie counting.

Give up diet foods.

Restore balance where you know that your greatest imbalance exists (e.g., emotions, stress, sleep). Deal with the things that bring you out of balance.

Focus on reaching a turning point.

Let your brain take care of physical rebalance.

You can change a habit only in the moment when you feel the urge to act on your habit. Eating is no different. You find yourself reaching for pizza or sneaking ice cream at midnight. What’s happening at that moment? If you can answer this question, you have an opening for change.

1. Either you are hungry or you are pacifying a feeling

These are the two basic choices. At the moment you reach for food, ask yourself which one you are choosing.

I am hungry:
If this is true, then eating is a natural bodily need, and it is fulfilled when hunger is no longer present (which is far short of
being full or stuffed). A few hundred calories will fulfill a passing hunger pang. A meal amounts to roughly 600 calories.

I am pacifying a feeling:
If this is true, then the feeling will be just as present as hunger. But you are in the habit of racing past the feeling. Or it may be disguised. Either way, stop and notice what you’re feeling:

Overwhelmed and exhausted

Frustrated

Pressured

Distracted

Anxious

Bored

Insecure

Restless

Angry

Once you identify the feeling, name it to yourself, preferably out loud: for example, “I feel frustrated right now,” “I feel exhausted right now.”

2. Once you know what you’re feeling, go ahead and eat
.

Don’t fight with yourself. The inner struggle between
I shouldn’t be eating this
and
I have to eat this
never ends. If it had an ending, one side or the other would have won long ago. So register if you are hungry or are pacifying a feeling. Then eat.

3. Wait for an opening
.

If you have been faithful about asking “What am I feeling?” before you eat, the time will come when your mind will say something new.
I don’t need to eat this
. Or
I’m not really hungry, so why eat?
You don’t have to anticipate such a moment. Certainly don’t force it. But be
prepared and be alert. Your urge to free yourself from a habit is real. It just happens, for the moment, to be not as strong as your eating habit.

When such an opening comes, act on your new urge, and then forget about it.

4. Learn better ways to cope
.

When you pacify a feeling, it goes away temporarily, but it always returns. You are eating to cope with feelings. There are other ways to cope, and once you learn them, the urge to eat will lessen, because your body and mind will know that you aren’t supplied with only one major coping mechanism.

Coping skills include:

Saying how you feel without fear of disapproval.

Confiding to the right person, someone who is empathic, nonjudgmental, and detached. (Confiding to people who depend on you for money, status, or advancement is never a good idea.)

Trusting someone enough to follow their guidance. Complete self-reliance is lonely and easily leads to distorted perceptions.

Finding a way to dispel the underlying energy of fear or anger. These two basic negative feelings fuel any addictive behavior.

Taking your inner life as seriously as your outer life.

Feeling good enough that you don’t have to indulge yourself. Feeling bad is what tempts you to indulge yourself. It’s not how good the food smells that leads you astray.

5. Make new neural networks
.

Habits are mental grooves that depend on networks in the brain. Once set, they automatically respond. When a person fights the urge
to overeat, the brain is “remembering” that overeating is what it is supposed to do. It follows the groove automatically and powerfully. So you have to give your brain a new way to go, which means building new neural networks. You can’t build them when the urge to eat hits you, but there are lots of times and lots of ways to build new brain patterns.