Our day starts with making a decision, and that decision determines our choice of food, exercise, work, leisure, collaboration with others, or altruistic behavior. Decisiveness is influenced by culture, age, gender, previous life experiences and also by diet.
At the same time, people have their own individual core, their personality. Decisions made by outside influences can cause serious personal conflict and be armful.
Eating and drinking determine us also, instead of the other way around. It is no longer hunger or thirst that prompts us to eat, but earning a sense of reward, the reward stimulus. Our emotional part of the brain has a stronger blood supply and prompts us to make more impulsive decisions. Because of the endorphins that are released, we experience a pleasant feeling of reward for a while. At the same time, it leads to dependence and an activated immune system.
Associated symptoms: fear of change, compulsive eating and/or drinking behavior, inaction, lack of discipline and consistent action in daily life, impulsive or aggressive behavior, addictive behavior to food, drink or material things, self-destructive behavior. Associated syndromes: Alzheimer’s, arteriosclerosis, dementia, depression, drug addiction, chronic illness.
In order to regain free will and to become decisive, it is necessary to optimally distribute the blood flow in the brain, so that the solution-oriented brain areas are supplied with sufficient energy in all situations.
Better control of the emotional areas and ultimately better decision-making skills can be achieved through optimal nutrition, sufficient exercise and behavioral change, so that the cognitive part of the brain is better supplied with blood and is stimulated more intensively by messenger substances and hormones.
Tips to make it easier to make a decision:
– The benefits of a decision should be at least twice as great as the drawbacks/costs.
– A confidential counselor / health consultant can often provide insight into your repetition pattern of “wrong” choices through a helicopter view.
– Give yourself short-term rewards less often.
– Say goodbye to responses that don’t work and look for new opportunities that lead to solutions to known problems.
– Become aware of your own personality.
– A smaller number of meals clearly supports making good decisions. Great personalities fasted before making great decisions.
– Foods such as eggs (choline), fish (fatty acids EPA, DHA), avocado (Omega 3) and green vegetables (magnesium), can increase blood flow in the solution-oriented parts of the brain and improve both cognition and memory.
To read the full piece, see Chapter 12 in “Werde wieder mensch” by Dr. Leo Pruimboom.
Do you need a health consultant to find out what suits your personality in order to come to the right decisions and which behavioral changes regarding nutrition, exercise, sleep rhythm, stress management you have to make for this, then ask me for a personally focused approach.