The
Dopamine
Diet Plan

Excerpt from 
EATING IN FREEDOM

The Apostle Paul was filled with contentment, peace, love and joy. He was a slave to righteousness. He was addicted to the joy of doing the right things and serving God with all his heart. Even in jail, he sang songs of joy. God intended for us to feel good about doing what is right. That's why He made dopamine.

The pleasure of dopamine has the power to form both healthy and unhealthy behaviors. The dopamine diet plan will help you to become addicted to eating healthy. You will form good behaviors by making what is good for you as enjoyable as possible. Eating spinach because it is healthy when you hate it will not work. When you make healthy eating an enjoyable, taste-filled experience, you will want to do it again and again. Neurons and synapses will form new patterns. Red lights will trigger the desire for juicy watermelon. Hunger will shout, cantaloupes! The cravings for unhealthy foods will fade like a bad dream. No more cravings for fat, salt, sugar and chemicals, the body's biochemistry is rebalanced to a clean bloodstream filled with vitamins, minerals, enzymes and natural fruit sugars.

Creating Healthy Triggers
We associate events and images with food. These associations become triggers for that food. Hot summer days can trigger the urge for icecream. Campfires can trigger the urge for marshmallows. Baseball games trigger urges for hot dogs. Seeing a donut store can trigger an urge for coffee. The golden arches of McDonalds can trigger an urge for a hamburger. Food triggers are worth millions. A marketer's dream: consumers like rats in a cage, pushing levers for another fix, programmed by pleasure and willing to pay cash.

Create triggers for the foods you want to eat. Here is how to do it. Imagine a bright orange cantaloupe, glistening with beta-carotene and enzymes, ready to nourish every cell, as good for you as it is low in calories. Imagine enjoying a plate of chilled cantaloupe slices, sensing peace and comfort coming over your body. See yourself relishing every bite and being joyful of God's blessing. See your body being flooded with nutrients and making you feel so good, so alive. Feel the warmest, most comforting feeling and connect it with the taste of cantaloupe. See yourself after eating a plate of chilled cantaloupe slices. Savor the feeling of contentment. Now when you eat a cantaloupe, enjoy it to the fullest, relishing every moment. If you do, dopamine will help you to form healthy triggers.

Be careful, some people have overused this trigger-creating technique and developed a serious cantaloupe addiction. We are thankful for the 12-step program, Cantaloupe Eaters Anonymous.

Contentment
Do you feel good about what you have accomplished? If you are like most of us, the flaws seem gigantic and the accomplishments seem tiny. After a success we think, That's no big deal, anyone could have done it. We never stop to allow ourselves to feel good about our accomplishments. Even in success, we choose to look at the flaws and beat ourselves up because we are not meeting some impossible standard. But self-criticism destroys motivation. Self-criticism destroys the desire to achieve. We feel hurt and become resentful toward ourselves.

When we don't feel good about what we are doing, we get discouraged and frustrated. On the other hand, feeling good about what we are doing gets us enthused, excited and motivated.

Feel good about the tiniest of accomplishments. Take the time to enjoy the feeling of completing a task, sticking to a diet by making a healthy meal, exercising or just waking up early. Let the emotion of accomplishment build and be thankful to God. Sense the peace. Sense the feeling of well-being. Allow yourself to feel good about doing the right thing. Do not tear down your accomplishments or compare yourself to others. Take the time in each day to consider your accomplishments. Instead of looking at the flaws, dwell on the feeling of satisfaction. You deserve to feel really good. You have done well.

Very few people care about your accomplishments, but God does. God cares about everything you do. He wants you to be healthy, happy and full of joy. He wants you to feel good about yourself and your accomplishments. Feeling good about what you have done is the reward for your hard work, so enjoy it. It is not being selfish.

Each one should test his own actions. Then he can take pride in himself, without comparing himself to somebody else.

Galatians 6:4

Being Filled with Joy and Peace
Even in the midst of misery and unhappiness you can create the emotion of joy. You can choose to be happy. Make a decision to enjoy the moment. Stop reading for a moment and create the emotion of joy. Loosen up, wave your hands around, dance, smile, shout, "yeah!" Sing a happy song. "I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart." See yourself dancing, laughing swirling in the sun, you're so happy. Let the emotion build within you, happiness and thankfulness bursting from your heart. Become flooded with a warm feeling of peace. Take a deep breath. As you breathe out, all the tension is going. You feel nothing but peace and joy.

Scripture ~ Rejoice, again I say rejoice.

Being Content with Eating Less
Here's a way to stop overeating. At the point where you feel that you should stop eating, stop and feel content. Become aware of how full you are. Let the feeling of contentment build while being aware of feeling full. Ask yourself, do you really want to eat more? Now start to clean up or brush your teeth.

If you are still struggling with wanting to eat more, create the feeling of revulsion to eating more, then return to creating the feeling of contentment. It is rare that you will have to do this more than once. It is easy, simple and fast. Once the compulsive desire is gone, get active to keep your mind busy.

Being at Peace
Worry builds fear by imagining the worst. Yet worry changes nothing. It destroys our peace and makes us feel powerless. Worriers have the most problems and the hardest time solving them. Problem solvers refuse to worry; they get down to what they can do, and then do it. Everything seems to work out for them. They have tolerance, motivation and are generally happy.

If you examine your state of mind during a refrigerator hunt, you will realize that fear and worry are often the motivation to eat. We eat to feel good about life. Worry and fear make us feel out of control, and eating gives us a sense of being in control. Eating becomes an escape from the dark world of our thoughts. However, using food as an escape abuses our body and leaves us feeling powerless.

Refuse to worry. Get the problem down on paper. Examine the worst possible situation and what you can do about it. Once you have made your decision, stop worrying and start thinking healthy, encouraging thoughts. If the desire to worry surfaces, you can make a stand against it because you have made a decision.

The Flavor of Hunger
Did you notice that the first four cookies at the top of the package taste really good, but the ones at the bottom, 24 cookies later, are sickening? Taste is deadened by overeating and is stimulated by hunger. The hungrier you are the better food tastes. The more stuffed you become, the worse food tastes.

Most people quit on a diet program because they feel deprived. You need to enjoy eating healthily. Hunger greatly increases enjoyment. Take a chance. Face the ugly giant of hunger. You will be well rewarded. When the flavor and enjoyment of food is enhanced by hunger, your brain is getting the dopamine high and forming attachments to healthy foods. 

Dopamine Reduction Guide
Many who follow this program have felt guilty because of the intense pleasure and health that they are experiencing. They felt that it wasn't fair to be living in such an exuberant state while the rest of the world suffered. If you want to decrease the amount of pleasure you are receiving from food, we have laid out a 12-step process to return you safely to the normal world of eating. It is designed to reduce dopamine levels to almost nonexistence.

If you can eat this way, you will receive no satisfaction from eating. There are two small problems associated with our Dopamine Reduction Guide: the problems with dieting and its poor health return. The end result is an obese, diseased, unmotivated individual. The good part is that you have lots of company.

Being miserable and unhealthy is not what God intended. When God created Adam, he wasn't just practicing. The human body is the most amazing creation on earth. Nothing on earth can compare in its complexity. Yet, we treat our bodies like used cars. After years of abuse, it finally breaks down. God intended us to experience health, joy and peace. He wants our heart to burst with thankfulness, not high blood pressure. He wants us to live in freedom. He wants us to enjoy all the good things He has created. Wholesome pleasure is His gift to us.