Wanting & high-risk times

WANTING is the non-conscious motivation to GO AND GET food — a drive that, for our ancestors, meant hunting and gathering. In our modern food environment, that same drive results in calorie intake above what we need.

You will be invited to discover that there are patterned settings and times at which you are subject to wanting, and therefore at greater risk of overeating. These are your high-risk times. You will be asked to consider characterizing wanting, mapping when and where it shows up in your day, and potentially riding it out when it does.

Wanting is one of three appetite-system characters. Watch the animation that introduces all three on the homepage.

We are all motivated to eat. This is a basic function of survival. Our brains are equipped with an ancient motivational system that ensures we are driven, subconsciously, to hunt and gather — to "go and get" — food, particularly calorie-dense food. This ancient system can lead to overeating and weight gain in our modern food environment.

Wanting — the motivation to GO AND GET calories

This section can be thought of as the beginning of treatment. You have already established that excessive calorie intake drives weight gain and confounds weight loss. But what drives excessive calorie intake? You might think the answer is complicated, but it isn't.

The answer lies in the middle layer of the appetite system. The appetite system has three layers, and the middle layer is best known as the motivation system. The human appetite system evolved from living in an environment where calories were often scarce and finding food involved work — hence the motivation to GO AND GET.

The prevailing understanding1 of how and why obesity happens is that this ancient system has collided with the modern food environment: ultra-processed, sugar-fat-salt added, big-portioned, everywhere, anytime, aggressively advertised, delivered-right-to-your-front-door food. It is also important to note that even the overabundance of healthy food in our current food environment can drive the overconsumption of calories and contribute to weight gain. The assumption that weight gain, overweight, and obesity are always the result of unhealthy or highly processed junk and fast food is both flawed and highly stigmatizing.

What this collision produces

Abundant and energy-dense foods ensured survival in our former environment. When we eat abundant or tasty food, it is sensed in our mouth and digestive tract, and a signal is sent to the brain that we are eating survival-imperative foods. As the food and signals collide with our motivation system, we learn2 to associate the environmental cues around us with these foods. This is called associative learning, or Pavlovian learning. After repeated associations, the environmental cues themselves gain the power to generate WANTING, and make us go and get.

What wanting is, and where it lives

Wanting is also known as desire, urge, impulse, craving, attention bias, or incentive motivation. It is often described as a wave, because of its property of rising, cresting, and falling. Wanting resides completely in the subconscious. It happens without conscious awareness and is the driver of overeating.

For example, if abundant or tasty food is paired enough times with the setting of night-time, couch, TV, dark windows, pre-bedtime, eventually that setting itself reflexively and subconsciously generates wanting and makes you go and get. If the setting of walking through the door to your home at the end of the day — the jacket off, bag down, walk into the kitchen — is repeatedly associated with pre-dinner tasty energy-dense food or drink, eventually the simple act of walking in your door at the end of the day gains the power to generate reflexive wanting for food or drink. In these scenarios, the times of day and the environments become established as high-risk times.

Wanting is different from hunger, but both are real and powerful physiological responses. Hunger from going too long without food also triggers wanting. But wanting commonly happens without hunger — and these are the times people take in more calories than they need, because wanting drives excessive calorie intake.

The genetics of wanting

Approximately seventy percent3 of the likelihood of struggling with weight in one's lifetime is inherited. Over a thousand genes have been associated with overweight and obesity, and a majority of them are expressed in the central nervous system4 — the brain — where weight, appetite, and metabolism are regulated. The strength of the motivational drive to go and get is itself highly heritable. Stronger wanting is considered a key heritable risk5 for weight struggles.

Wanting is a neurological reflexive brain event mediated by a chemical called dopamine. It can be clearly seen on functional MRI as this part of the brain lights up in response to food cues.

Mapping wanting and your high-risk times

Your wanting map contains the cues, places, times, and settings that have repeatedly been associated with abundant or tasty food or drink in the past — and where you now reflexively and subconsciously experience wanting. What are these cues?

Mapping determines your high-risk times. Consider the following exercise to help you identify yours.

Let's say this is the timeline of your day. At the beginning of the line is when you wake up; at the end is when you go to sleep. Is there anywhere along this line where you would consider yourself, with any regularity, more at risk of eating more food or drink, or less healthy food?

Urge surfing

One way to gain a better understanding of wanting is the exercise of urge surfing — riding the wave of wanting. This exercise can help you recognize and accept wanting as an experience that you cannot necessarily stop or control, but that just happens in a patterned way.

Understanding wanting and its significant impact on eating behaviours, calorie intake, and weight is an important first step. In the modules to come, you will learn behavioural and cognitive techniques to help you avoid wanting where possible, minimize its intensity, and manage it when it occurs. Understanding and managing wanting is significantly associated with improved weight loss outcomes.