Why you can’t say ‘no’ to chocolate and why you’ll always start your diet tomorrow

Have you ever wondered why it is so difficult to say ‘no’ to a chocolate/sweet treat that is right in front of you, and why you’re always starting your diet ‘tomorrow’?

The answer is simple: it’s your brain’s fault!

The first thing you need to know about our brains is that they evolved before modern times. This means that certain parts of your brain (especially the older ones from an evolutionary point of view) still operate as if you were living in the savanna, where food was scarce and any type of food as sweet and dense as chocolate would be a highly nutritive piece of fruit! These older parts of your brain care mostly about helping you make it through the day alive, and they don’t know that you are actually surrounded by supermarkets and restaurants.

So when you’re hungry, and in front of you lies such a ‘nutritious’ snack, they push you to eat it! And since these parts of your brain are the ones responsible for your survival, they are extremely hard to counteract.

Your brain also has more modern parts that focus more on the long-term and planning your future. These parts are aware of the supermarkets around you and they know you should start your diet today, so that you are healthier later on.

The problem is that when you’re hungry, it’s just too hard not to eat whatever is available. So you eat the chocolate and rationalise that you can start your diet tomorrow. Always tomorrow…

But there is hope!

The older parts of your brain don’t always have to push you to do things that are bad for your future. There are things you can do to overcome their power, when it makes sense.

Here’s a little secret: these parts of your brain are extremely lazy. They want you to eat food right away but they don’t want to go running around searching for it unless they have to. So if chocolates are not readily available when you’re hungry, they will push you to eat whatever is.

Based on this, here are three things you can do to succeed in starting your diet and avoiding unhealthy food:

1) Don’t have unhealthy food around you. One good strategy is to never go groceries’ shopping when you’re hungry. It will be much easier to only buy healthy food

2) Always carry healthy snacks with you for when you start feeling hungry. Nuts and fruit are some great examples

3) Avoid reaching a point of extreme hunger. Eat regularly

This way, tomorrow will be the second day of your healthy diet!

A special thank you to inesvanmuysen for her amazing help and feedback on this story!