“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food” (Hippocrates) doesn’t apply to hyper palatable foods.
Today I’m going to share the dangers of eating hyper palatable foods to your gut, brain, and all the rest of you as well as point you towards specific tools and strategies to help you build your health.
Why? Because your health is your greatest wealth. Without it, nothing else matters.

What is hyper palatability?

Hyper palatability is when a food combines high levels of fat, sugar, sodium, flavorings, and/or carbohydrates to trigger the brain’s reward system, encouraging excessive eating.



Your brain can handle normal amounts of flavors, but when things are designed in a lab to hijack your innate appetite control mechanisms, you are in trouble.
You see, it’s no secret that certain flavor combos trigger chemical reactions in the body that cue us to eat more often and larger amounts than we normally would.

Your Brain On Hyper Palatable Foods

When you eat hyper palatable foods, your body releases several key chemicals that influence appetite, reward, and stress.

• Dopamine. This neurotransmitter is associated with pleasure and reward. It gets released in higher amounts when you eat hyper palatable food which creates a sense of pleasure that reinforces the desire to eat these foods. 
• Dysregulated leptin and ghrelin. The hypothalamus, a key brain region involved in regulating hunger, stress, and pleasure, is activated when you eat, influencing the release of hormones like ghrelin (which signals hunger) and leptin (which signals fullness). Eating hyperpalatable foods too often can interfere with how your brain processes these hormonal signals so that you may feel continued cravings despite having eaten enough food.
• Hyperpalatable foods can also stimulate the release of insulin, cortisol, and other metabolic and stress-related hormones, contributing to cravings and potentially interfering with your body’s natural satiety signals. 
• These foods activate your brain’s opioid receptors (in addition to dopamine), leading to an unnatural and highly rewarding eating experience that can promote problematic overeating and addictive-like behaviors.

Health Risks Of Eating Hyper Palatable Foods

The consequences of frequently eating hyper palatable foods are devastating: unsafely high glucose and insulin (which are associated with diseases like Type 2 and 3 Diabetes, blood vessel disorders, obesity, etc), overworked digestive system and digestive disorders (constipation, diarrhea, gas, bloating, IBS), imbalanced gut flora, and disordered thinking/behaving when it comes to food.
 
If I asked someone if they wanted to experience any of these problems, they would surely answer no…but the choices we say yes to are paving the way to them. We have to learn to navigate foods that hijack our bodies or else the time will come when we have to manage the inevitable diseases caused by them.

How do you support your brain and body to feel satisfied by what you eat?
There are a lot of strategies, but they all boil down to eating whole foods with plenty of protein, fiber, and nutrients that are chewed well and eaten within a 12 hr or shorter window of time and not eaten late at night.
 

5 Tools For Preventing or Reversing Problematic Hyper Palatable Eating & Improving Satiety

1. Start your meal or snack with fiber and protein rather than starch (for breakfast if you are having eggs, sautéed veggies and potatoes, you would eat the potatoes mostly toward the end of the meal.
2. If you’re going to have high starch, don’t also have high fat and vice versa. If you eat high fat with high starch, it leads to higher insulin.
3. Avoid sugary drinks – Even if it’s a “diet” version, it’s still loaded with processed ingredients. So try switching any sugary drink such as soda with natural fruit juice, vegetable juice, water with a slice of citrus or cucumber, herbal tea, unsweetened coffee or tea, etc.
4. Untangle food from feelings. Knowing is one thing and doing is quite another! Everyone “knows” that they should avoid refined carbs and sugar…but many of you still struggle to follow through with making healthier choices. What reasons (aka excuses) do you personally use to justify eating foods/drinks that are refined, sugary & hyper palatable? The first step in creating change is noticing what is going on with yourself emotionally and how food is often used as a temporary method for calming feelings of stress, overwhelm, frustration, etc. or to create a temporary feeling of pleasure or reward.
   Reducing your intake of these harmful foods/drinks takes a combination of choosing different and healthier foods most of the time and finding actual solutions to help manage your emotional state. 
   Mindful breathing, going outside, listening or playing music, moving your body, journaling, talking with someone who listens to you, acupuncture, bodywork, therapy or coaching are several examples of upgraded methods for managing difficult feelings rather than unhealthy coping mechanisms.
5. Stop eating 2-3 hours before bed.

I hope that this information helps you to have a healthier relationship with food and understand that hyper palatable foods aren’t good for ANY of us and they are designed to make you eat more than is healthy for you. Focus on these healthy foundations that I’ve shared with you: your body and brain will thank you!

If you’re ready to discover where your best health has been hiding, I’d love to connect with you!

Apply for a complimentary Unstoppable Health Discovery Session. http://bit.ly/schedulinghealth (subject to availability).

Until next time, I’m wishing you unstoppable health!
~Rebecca

P.S. Know someone who could use my help? Please invite them to apply for a complimentary Unstoppable Health Discovery Session. http://bit.ly/schedulinghealth (subject to availability).