The Dopamine Dilemma
It’s 9pm, you find yourself stood in-front of the open snack drawer telling yourself that one more wouldn’t hurt. You know it’s not hunger that’s driving you, you’ve already had dinner, and to be honest, you could do with an early night. But something deeper in your brain is nudging you towards another moment of fleeting pleasure.
We’ve all felt that irresistible pull towards something enjoyable, whether it’s a sweet treat in the evening, the buzz of a new notification on your phone, or possibly the satisfaction after a good workout. At the very heart of these desires lies dopamine, a tiny chemical messenger with a far-reaching influence on the behaviours we have and the choices we make.
One of my favourite analogies I’ve heard for dopamine is as the Postman inside your brain’s local neighbourhood, delivering messages between nerve cells. Not just your everyday Postman - they specialise in bringing you the post and packages that exclusively make you feel great. It’s the Amazon Prime deal you managed to secure at a huge discount, the eBay item you outbid in the last few suspenseful seconds, the surprise tax rebate that pays to the next trip away.
When we do something pleasurable or rewarding, dopamine is released, crossing the tiny gaps between neurons (called synapses), and binds to receptors in neighbouring cells. This process reinforces behaviours, strengthening the signalling between them, making us more likely to repeat behaviour in the future.
Imagine you’re playing a game of darts. Every time you hit a bullseye, a celebratory bell rings, and you receive £100. The bell ringing? That’s dopamine. It’s the signal you receive having done something positive or rewarding, encouraging you to maintain your aim on the bullseye.
Dopamine doesn’t just make the behaviours we perform feel good; it motivates us to continue to seek out those good feelings repeatedly. It’s a neurological learning process helping us to figure out those behaviours that have been rewarding and those that haven’t, by highlighting the difference between what we expect to be the outcome and what actually happens.
For an in-depth look at the role of Dopamine in our everyday lives consider reading Dopamine Nation by Dr. Anna Lembke. A very interesting read!
The Positive Side: Dopamine as a Health and Fitness Ally
When channeled correctly, dopamine can be a hugely powerful ally in all of our health and fitness journeys.
Take the motivation to exercise as a simple example. Physical activity is widely known not to just strengthen muscles and connective tissues, improve your cardiovascular health and bone density; it also greatly increases the availability of dopamine receptors in the brain. This means that over time with repeated exposure, exercising can actually make your feel happier and more motivated to keep it up. It’s a self-reinforcing loop.
Exercise more, enjoy it more, be rewarded by the improvement seen, and so we repeat…
Altering eating habits can also get a boost from dopamine. Eating a nutritionally balanced meal might not give you the same immediate rush as a sugary snack, takeaway or fast-food meal, but over time, your brain starts to associate those choices with feeling good. It’s a bit like developing a taste for Jazz or Classical music - it can be hard to appreciate at first the complexities involved, but with repeated exposure, you may begin to enjoy the nuances of different individuals pieces and playing styles.
Dopamine also helps in moving behaviours past the initial stages of motivation and into the territory of habit-building. Establishing a regular gym schedule can often be tough initially as you try to find a balance between previous, current, and new commitments. But each visit to the gym, run you undertake, or class you attend, reinforces those positive feelings associated with working out and physical exercise. Before you know it, missing out on a gym session or run leaves you feeling disappointed. These behaviours become second nature to you.
When we’re fully dialled in on a goal - like training for a 10k run, or reaching a specific body composition for better health outcomes - dopamine is what keeps us locked in and laser-focused. It enhances our ability to concentrate during challenging workouts and achieve new milestones.
The Downside: When Dopamine Leads Us Astray
But dopamine isn’t always the angel on our shoulder that we’d like it to be. Sometimes, its pull can lead us down less beneficial paths.
Consider the allure of high-sugar, high-fat foods, these items can cause a significant release of dopamine. They are quite literally designed to make use crave them even more.
Looking for the perfect example? Think McDonald’s French fries.
Chances are, you’ve stepped into a McDonald’s at some point in your life - on a road trip, grabbing a quick bite, or taking the kids in for a Happy Meal. And odds are, you’ve tasted their fries.
Famous for their taste, aroma, and texture, McDonald’s fries, whether you like it or not, are iconic. Even if fast food isn’t your thing, you can probably picure them right now.
But here’s the kicker: every aspect of those fires are engineered to maximise your dopamine response. The flavour, the scent, the crispiness, the consistency worldwide, the golden colour (boosted with dextrose), the portion size, the signature red box - all aspects meticulously designed to create a multi-sensory experience that heightens the enjoyment at a subconscious level. All that from a seemingly simple French fry.
In much the same way, every summer there will be a catchy pop song released that gets stuck in your head on an uncontrollable loop, inevitably leading it to be overplayed on the radio - like our fast food analogy, you know it’s not the best, but you can’t get it out of your head.
It’s easy to see how there can be the risks of becoming overly reliant on this dopamine response leading to net-negative outcomes for our health and fitness decisions. While pushing our limits in a workout can be rewarding as we lay on the floor panting for breath and sweating profusely from a chaotic workout, constantly chasing that high for larger dopamine hits can lead to periods of overtraining, physical strain, and even acute and chronic injury. It’s akin to revving a car engine in the red repeatedly - it might be thrilling to some extent, but it’s certainly not sustainable over time.
It’s not only the positive aspects of behaviour that dopamine can influence. Dopamine is neutral; it can reinforce both healthy and unhealthy behaviours. Sedentary behaviours can just as easily be reinforced in the right circumstances too. Activities like binge-watching TV series or excessive computer gaming can likewise create a dopamine release, making it more appealing to repeat the behaviour, stay longer on the sofa and spend less time actually getting up and moving about. It’s a modern day equivalent of the mermaids siren song, tempting all of us into inactivity with easy rewards (Hello, Uber Eats!!….).
Likewise, low levels of dopamine can have their pitfalls. They can often leave us feeling unmotivated or excessively fatigued, making even the thought of exercise or taking the time to prepare a healthy meal like an impossible mountain to climb.
Sometimes, the quest for an increasingly higher dopamine hit can push individuals towards riskier and riskier behaviour choices. The allure of extreme dieting for quick time horizon results, or the potential that may exist on the other side of performance-enhancing drugs might offer short-term rewards with fly in the face of delayed gratification, but they are also associated with longer-term significant health risks.
It’s like cutting corners on a construction project - it may seem efficient initially and you’ll get to the end result quicker, but the foundation isn’t solid and you’ve got no guarantee it’ll pass the test of time.
So how do we balance the dopamine scales?
Awareness is the first step. Recognising that dopamine is driving certain cravings we may have or behaviours we undertake allows us to make more informed choices. Instead of reaching for that biscuit out of habit, we can pause, recognise that this isn’t a need or necessity, but is just signals being sent from one neuron to another. We have greater control than many of us think in certain circumstances.
Creating positive habits can help to steer dopamine’s influence in our favour. Setting achievable health and fitness goals, finding activities we truly find enjoyable, and celebrating small victories can reinforce healthy behaviours. In much the same way as you’d train a puppy with small treats - you reward the good actions to encourage them. If you haven’t already read it, James Clears’ book Atomic Habits is a worldwide bestseller in this area.
Mindfulness and moderation can both be important factors to consider. Enjoying the occasional indulgence without letting it derail our overall progress maintains a healthy relationship between nutrition, exercise, and daily movement. Think of it as following a budget - you can splurge now and then if you’re generally managing your finances wisely. Apps such as Headspace, Calm, and Waking Up are all great places to start to develop a meditation practice within minimal time and financial commitment.
Lastly, seeking a balance between all things ensures you’re not overloading any one singular system. Having a mixture of workouts, incorporating rest days whether preplanned or reactively, and trying to develop a diverse range of hobbies can all prevent us from becoming too dependent on any singular source of dopamine.
In the end, dopamine is neither a foe or a friend; it’s a messenger. It signals pleasure and reward, guiding us towards certain behaviours. This can work in our favour or against us depending on the context. By understanding how it works, we can navigate our health and fitness journeys more effectively.
Just like a Captain uses the wind to propel a ship while avoiding storms, we can harness dopamine to motivate and reward ourselves, all the whole being cautious of the things that may potentially lead us off course.
So much of life is about finding a balance - searching for joy in the process, being mindful of the choices we make, and appreciating the small victories we accumulate along the way. After all, the journey to better health, fitness, and longevity, is never going to be a sprint fuelled by fleeting highs, but a marathon event paced by the sustainable habits and self-awareness that we accumulate across a lifetime.