Georgie Fear: Hey everyone. Welcome back to the Breaking Up with Binge Eating podcast. I'm your host, Georgie, and we are in season three. Welcome to episode three. This season is the urge proof life. And for the first couple of episodes, we've talked about the different types of urges there are. And we're going to continue on today, deepening our understanding of how urges and desire play into this whole recovery business. I spend a lot of time trying to help people move from confusion to understanding of their own behaviors. And one of the things that confuses a lot of my clients comes across like this. They'll say, I don't even like it that much, but I still want more. Or sometimes they'll say, I was binging on this stuff, but it was just gross. It was terrible.

If you've ever had that experience. I want you to know two things right off the bat. First, you're not alone. This is common. Second, it's not proof that something's wrong with you. This is a clue about what's happening in your brain. I'm with you here, and I want this to make sense in a way that actually helps. Because when you understand this piece, you can stop treating urges like evidence. Your brain is defective and start treating them like useful information, which they are.

In the last episode, we built your urge map. We talked about different urges coming from different mechanisms and matching the tool to the mechanism. I've gotten so much great feedback on episode two. Thank you so much to everybody who went out of their way to let me know you're enjoying it.

Today we're going one layer deeper. We're going to talk about why the urge to binge eat can feel so strong even when the pleasure is not that great, or why you can be halfway through something and think this is not even tasty, and yet you still feel pulled to keep going.

The simplest way to say it is this wanting and liking are not the same thing. Wanting is the motivational pull. It's the drive, the urgency. Something in your brain that says go get it. Liking, on the other hand, is the enjoyment, the satisfaction of a current experience. The. This tastes good and I'm glad I'm having it.

Here's the sciency part in pretty plain language. Wanting and liking overlap. But they're not the same thing in the brain. A big chunk of wanting is driven by motivation circuitry that uses dopamine signaling. Dopamine here is less about pleasure and more about importance and drive. It helps your brain, tag something as important and energizes the go get it behavior. That's why wanting can spike just from a simple cue. Seeing the food, opening the pantry, sitting on the couch before you've even taken a bite. Liking actual pleasure leans more on hedonic hot spot circuits that use opioid and endocannabinoid signaling to amplify enjoyment. Those systems can increase the pleasure response without necessarily increasing the chase, and the reverse can happen to the chase can stay loud even when pleasure is fading.

This is simplified, of course, but the takeaway is that drive and pleasure can completely decouple. A lot of people will assume that those two things should match. If you want something a lot, mustn't you like it a lot? And if you don't like it very much, well, you shouldn't want it much. But in real life, when these come apart, it can feel scary. Like, what's wrong with me? Why am I doing this? If I'm not even enjoying it? And why on earth is it hard to stop doing something that's admittedly lousy? Nothing is wrong with you. That mismatch often tells us a whole lot.

A simple non-food example is going for a walk. A lot of people can say, honestly, walking always feels so good once I'm out there. That's liking. But there are still days when you just don't feel like lacing up your shoes and heading out. That's low wanting. It doesn't mean you secretly hate walking. It means the motivational system isn't currently energized in that moment. Maybe because you're tired, stressed, cold, overwhelmed, or your brain is prioritizing the couch. So if you notice, I usually like X, Y, Z, but I just don't feel pulled toward it right now. It's a clue about state and motivation systems. Reminding yourself that you reliably enjoy the fresh air and seeing some nature can help you take action to initiate that walk. Despite a relatively sluggish motivation system and reminding yourself that every time you buy fast food, you reliably find it kind of gross can help you resist the idea of heading for the drive thru. If your motivation system is running a little hot.

Imagine somebody we'll call her. Tina has a stressful day. She gets home, notices she's not hungry, but she feels keyed up, tense, like she wants to relax. But she can't. Her husband has left her a plate of dinner, but she's not interested in it. She opens the pantry and sees a familiar food chips, cookies, cereal, whatever her thing is. And now the wanting goes up. Yes. Eat now. So she starts eating, and the first few bites are nice, maybe even lovely. But a few minutes in, the enjoyment is dropping. The food starts to taste kind of normal or bland or even too sweet. And yet the wanting is still yelling more. Keep going. Don't stop. Tina feels like she's trying to scratch an itch, but somehow it keeps getting itchier.

That's the mismatch. Wanting is running hotter than liking. So what is this a clue toward? It's a clue that the urge isn't primarily about taste anymore. It's about an effect. Relief, quiet, numbing, turning down stress, changing state. This is the part I want to say very gently. Sometimes the urge is less about pleasure and more about regulation. Your brain is reaching for the fastest available change in how you feel. And here's the extra twist that matters for recovery. When you have repeatedly used a behavior for relief, your brain gets better and faster at generating wanting for that behavior. Your brain becomes more cue driven, more predictive, and more urgent. Not because you're weak, but because learning works. Your brain is a prediction machine. It learns. When I feel this way, eating helps. So it starts generating urges to eat sooner, louder, and with more confidence, and it starts generating those urges for a wider and wider and wider array of sensations. This is why someone can have an urge while they're still at work, because your brain can generate wanting based on a forecast. It doesn't need you to be hungry. It doesn't even need the food in front of you. It just needs the association.

So here's where this becomes useful. If you assume wanting equals liking, you'll treat the urge like a command. I want this so much. Therefore I must need it. And I will like it so much once I get it. But once you understand that wanting and liking can decouple, you can make much better predictions. You can treat wanting as a signal that your system is asking for something. But you can know that eating may not be the actual scratch to your itch.

Sometimes you do need food. Sometimes you need relief of another kind. Sometimes it's rest or comfort. And while you're eating, you can check whether food is actually delivering what the urge promised.

This is where I like to introduce a tiny bit of urge algebra. Don't worry, no math. It's just a way of thinking if the payoff is dropping. But the drive to eat is still very loud. It means the system is not being satisfied by food or by the taste. It's chasing relief, or it's chasing completion or the end of discomfort. Just something else. And bingeing for many people is not a very effective strategy for that. It ends up creating more urges later because it reinforces the loop and it creates new pressure afterward.

So the goal isn't to shame yourself for having strong, wanting desires. The goal is to learn how to respond when wanting is loud and liking is low.

Here are the three most common things that make wanting run hotter than a liking. One. Cues. this is the autopilot cue chain thing from the last episode. A time of day place routine. The package itself. Your couch or the screen. All of these are cues that can crank up wanting before you even taste anything.

Number two scarcity. If you've been telling yourself I can't, I shouldn't. Tomorrow I'll restrict your brain treats food like a limited resource. Scarcity increases wanting even if the liking doesn't follow through. This can be why limited edition treats sometimes lure people to overeat, because it's only available for a short time. We've got to get it now.

Three. Stress and depletion. When you're tired or stressed, immediate relief becomes more valuable. Your brain will prioritize fast regulation over long term goals, or the type of regulation that is actually good for you. Wanting gets louder.

So what do we do with all this? I want to give you three tools for moments when you're eating something that isn't delivering much pleasure anymore.

Tool number one is what I call the not worth it list. And this is more of a preventive thing. Using this tool will hopefully spare you some of those episodes where you're mid-bite chewing something and going, I don't even like this. I help my clients develop a not worth it list, and what we put on that list is any low nutrition foods like desserts, fried food, alcoholic or sugary beverages. we have conversations about what types, what flavors, and what circumstances of treats have really added up to enjoyable experiences in the past, and which ones have been rather flat on the enjoyment scale or even yucky? There's always patterns.

Maybe you never really enjoy doughnuts, but you keep trying them in the break room because they're free and they're just so pretty with the sprinkles on them. Taking a second to acknowledge that some foods just don't deliver for you is a big step. You can start to change your brain's prediction that donuts equal fun by reminding it of contradictory evidence, and your not worth it List is exactly that a list of the evidence so you're not worth it list may include donuts. It may include circumstances like eating while driving, or while crying, both of which are on my personal not worth it list because I've recognized I just can't savor whatever food I'm eating if I'm driving or very upset. Generating this list alone helps you predict which times you're going to want to say no thank you to those items, and it can save you from regrettable eating incidents.

Tool number two is a pleasure check. This is a habit of simply checking whether the food is delivering the thing your brain predicted it would deliver. Maybe after a few bites or one serving, you ask yourself, am I still getting pleasure or am I just chasing a feeling? Essentially, we're holding the food accountable. Is eating this providing the experience that I was after? If you're really liking it and you want more, fine. Enjoy it. Eat with intention. But if the liking has dropped off, this is when you might notice. And if you do notice that the liking has really plummeted or was never there in the first place. You know your motivation isn't actually about this food or taste. It's about relief, completion, numbing distraction or something else. And that means you have options like putting the food down and choosing another activity.

It may sound strange to check whether you're enjoying something you wanted so strongly, but wanting can get loud enough that we stop noticing the actual experience of eating. The pleasure check brings that information back online. I find this one is especially helpful in people who experience a lot of food noise, the type where they're midway through breakfast and already planning lunch or midway through their afternoon snack, already thinking ahead to dinner. In this sort of mindset, it can be really difficult to tune into the current thing that we're eating because we're so future oriented.

Tool number three is a concept I call diminishing returns. when you're eating something and it's just not as wonderful as you expected. Your brain can start bargaining. Oh, just eat a little more. It'll get better. Just try another bite. That negotiation keeps the loop alive. You're still predicting that this is somehow going to improve into an enjoyable, satisfying experience, even though so far it hasn't. But to be honest, food almost always tastes best for the first few bites, and then the pleasure per forkful declines. Rarely, if ever, does something start out meh, but then become amazing because we kept eating it. Bearing this in mind, you might catch yourself falling into the. Let me keep going to see if it tastes better. Trap. Spoiler alert it almost never does. I find this trap is especially dangerous when I have put time, energy, and hope into making a new recipe and the more involved the recipe, the more likely I am to be so emotionally invested that even if it's not very good, I just keep taking bites. Like somehow it's going to turn around.

So if you realize you aren't enjoying what you are in the middle of consuming, what do you do? Ask yourself, since I'm chasing relief, what's the smallest relief deposit I can make right now that isn't more food that might be lying down for five minutes if you're depleted. It might be texting someone if you're lonely, putting on a show and knitting. If you're in an auto pilot chain, maybe you need a nervous system. Downshift. Hop in the shower. Eating a real snack. If you're actually under fueled, you could use your after hours menu if you want some permission with structure instead of a free for all and you feel like you're heading that way.

It's important to me to communicate that eating for pleasure is absolutely fine. Part of being human and something I truly hope you do. The problem is not eating for pleasure. The problem is when we want something desperately and then we're eating it and we're not enjoying it, and yet we just keep going because we hope the enjoyment will show up. That's what leads to disappointment and over consumption. A not fulfilling experience.

So here's the practice for this week. Let's do an experiment. I'd like you to pick one time when you notice you are really wanting food. You're really hankering for your lunch or interested in getting an ice cream after dinner, something like that. And then if you do get the food, I want you to practice the pleasure check. That's it. If you eat it part way through, I want you to ask yourself, how much am I actually liking this? Forget about how much I wanted it. How much am I liking it right now? If you're liking it, awesome. Enjoy it. If you're not liking it much, this is an opportunity to try one rerouting action. Something that matches your urge. Map from episode two might be nourishing a soft landing, soothing, permission with structure, or breaking a cue chain. Don't worry about trying to do it perfectly. We're just trying to notice new things because every time you notice a mismatch, you're teaching your brain something new. Hey, wanting doesn't necessarily mean liking. Wanting is not the boss. I can respond whichever way I choose.

Next episode, we'll get extremely practical about the first 60s what to do right at the start of an urge before it escalates and before you're negotiating with yourself. I'm with you all the way. This is learnable, and it gets easier not through heroics, just through repetition. And we can practice together. I'll see you next time. Take good care of yourself. If you need me, drop a line to Georgie Fear at gmail dot com with any question at all.