Using Food as a Reward or Punishment?

More often than not we find ourselves caught in a vicious cycle of rewards vs punishments. Our brain goes- ‘ I can eat the pizza because I worked out today’. Okay, now, if you are one of those people who do food math, you’ll think this is true and say ‘calories in vs calories out…., etc, etc….’. What most of us fail to consider here is how that makes us feel.

Have you heard of Pavlov’s classical conditioning experiment? The one where dogs were conditioned to respond to a bell ringing and being served food? Mr. Pavlov soon learned that the dogs started salivating at the sound of the bell, just from the anticipation of being served food. Their brains had made a connection between the bell ringing and food getting served.?

The SAME goes for humans! If we condition ourselves to ‘get a reward’ every time we exercise, we’re no longer gaining any benefits from that workout.?

The same can be said for emotional eating. If we consistently seek comfort in food when the slightest of things go wrong, we’re more likely to reach out for something comforting which usually happens to be sugary or fat-laden. Even worse at times, we begin to associate our go-to-comfort food with not-so-good feelings. Those same feelings then tend to become feelings of guilt.?

Now let’s flip the situation. How often do we tell ourselves that we can't have something because we didn't meet certain criteria? Pretty common?

Sit down and tell yourself that just because you didn't complete a workout, or didn't burn what the brain thinks is a 'suitable' number of calories,? it is OKAY to eat! Having said this, it doesn't necessarily go as far as to say "You should eat whatever you want and never do any physical activity." All of us know how that'd end up. It's about breaking that negative connection with food.

Intentionally restricting food because you didn't do something creates a negative, punishing connection with food. Just like the reward system loses its charm after some time, so does the punishment system. It starts slowly, with not eating a particular food and then skipping snacks or whole meals.?

At what point did food and eating become a source of guilt? Everywhere around us we find food labelled as ‘sinful’, and ‘guilt-free’ and we started tagging days on which we resisted our cravings as ‘good days’ and those on which we gave in as ‘bad days’. It's not easy to understand the connection between eating certain foods and moral values like guilt shame or regret.

Guilt only serves to make us feel worse and foods are not inherently 'good' or 'bad', even if their nutrient profiles are different. These nutrient profiles are there to help us make choices that can contribute to short-term indulgences' AND our long-term well-being.

More than often we experience a confusing combination of fear and anxiety which is behind these negative feelings and the only antidote is a combination of knowledge and kindness.?