How to Eat Healthier: Stop the Caveman Brain

Do you sometimes find yourself snacking aimlessly? Can’t stop eating (or even thinking) about those cookies after you opened the pack? Ditching cooking a healthy meal and instead having a frozen pizza or ordering out? All that despite your better judgement and knowing it can’t possibly be good for your health? That’s your caveman brain looking for what’s known as instant gratification! The better we understand why this happens, the easier it will be to make informed decisions, eat healthier and reclaim our health. So let’s find out how to ditch the caveman brain for good!

Understanding Instant Gratification

Humans have been roaming this earth for quite some time, but some parts of our brain still work like they did thousands of years ago. Our reward system was designed for survival in an environment very different from the one we live in today. Food was scarce, so our brain developed to instantly shower us with reward for finding the most calorie-dense, easiest to come by food options. The fattier, sweeter or saltier the better. What ensured energy availability - and with that, survival - back then is still hard-wired into our system. However, food is no longer scarce. In fact, it is everywhere, it’s highly processed, and it’s tastier than ever. A mismatch that’s at the heart of a lot of issues we face in our modern society. [1]

Eating Healthier vs Big Food

Of course, big food companies have long understood and cashed in on our natural reflexes. Our supermarket and pantry shelves are stacked with foods that are engineered to be hyper-palatable. Sugar, fat and salt are combined in perfect proportions and laced with artificial flavourings to make products that are impossible to resist. Think about your favourite snack foods: Chips, cookies, sweets and ice cream. From the first bite, they trigger our brain's reward system and make us crave and eat more, NOW - even if we’re not hungry. [2] A highly profitable business model!

Processed Food and its Consequences

The consequences of our new food reality, paired with our caveman brain, are severe. Obesity rates have skyrocketed, along with increased rates of metabolic syndrome, diabetes and heart disease. And not only this. Despite food being available anywhere, anytime in our western society, many suffer from malnutrition as these calorie-dense foods are often incredibly low in essential nutrients like vitamins and minerals, as well as fibre that we need for our gut microbiome to function properly [3]. To make matters worse, processed foods alter our taste preferences and eating habits over time. We get so used to intense flavours that natural foods seem bland in comparison, and constant overeating makes us unlearn our hunger cues. 

Healthy Habit Changes and Delaying Gratification

Breaking free from the desire for instant gratification can be hard, but it’s certainly not impossible! The key is to make small, sustainable habit changes that lead to long-term success. You can start by slowly integrating more plants into your diet and cooking more of your meals from scratch to have full control over the amounts of sugar, fat and salt. But most importantly: learn to embrace delayed gratification! [4] Eating a piece of fruit instead of chocolate might not be the most fun and rewarding thing right now, but the long-term benefits of a healthier diet far outweigh short-term pleasure. Delaying gratification is like depositing money into a savings account with a high interest rate!

Tips to Eat Healthier

Here are some practical steps you can start to incorporate into your daily life to help you eat healthier:

1. Identify and replace processed foods: Make an inventory of what you buy and consume regularly. Reduce your intake or swap it for a healthier alternative with less artificial ingredients. If you’re using protein powder, use one that’s naturally flavoured like our Protein +.
2. Make the healthy option easy: Put your fruit on display instead of hiding it in a cupboard and you will be more likely to eat it. Have some healthy pre-cooked meals in your fridge to reach for in an instant instead of ordering takeaway. Or why not make some overnight protein oats?
3. Make the unhealthy option difficult: Keep unhealthy foods out of sight, or even make them harder to reach by putting them in the highest cupboard in your kitchen. This will make them less appealing to our pleasure seeking brain.
4. Mindful eating: Pay attention to your hunger cues and savour the diverse and complex flavours of natural ingredients. Eat slowly and without distractions. 
5. It’s not all or nothing: It’s about finding a balance that works for you. You don’t have to cut processed foods out completely and enjoying a pizza or burger once or twice a week won’t ruin your diet. Most people find great success with an 80/20 approach. Eat healthy, unprocessed foods 80% of the time and enjoy less healthy options in the remaining 20%.  

How to Eat Healthier: Recap

Rewiring our caveman brain and embracing delayed gratification is a process that takes some time, but is completely worth it in the long run. By understanding better how our brain works and making intentional changes to our habits we can reclaim our health (and our taste buds) while still enjoying an indulgence here and there. 

Are you ready to start eating healthier? Connect with us on Instagram or TikTok for more information, tips and recipes or email us at hello@wamfit.com . 

Sources

[1] Brunstrom JM, Cheon BK. Do humans still forage in an obesogenic environment? Mechanisms and implications for weight maintenance. Physiol Behav. 2018 Sep 1;193(Pt B):261-267. 

[2] Edwin Thanarajah S, DiFeliceantonio AG, Albus K, Kuzmanovic B, Rigoux L, Iglesias S, Hanßen R, Schlamann M, Cornely OA, Brüning JC, Tittgemeyer M, Small DM. Habitual daily intake of a sweet and fatty snack modulates reward processing in humans. Cell Metab. 2023 Apr 4;35(4):571-584.e6. 

[3] Barazzoni R, Gortan Cappellari G. Double burden of malnutrition in persons with obesity. Rev Endocr Metab Disord. 2020 Sep;21(3):307-313. 

[4] Caleza C, Yañez-Vico RM, Mendoza A, Iglesias-Linares A. Childhood Obesity and Delayed Gratification Behavior: A Systematic Review of Experimental Studies. J Pediatr. 2016 Feb;169:201-7.e1.