Short instructional YouTube video by Sachin Patel explaining that cravings for sugar and fat are driven more by biology than willpower. He emphasizes dopamine as a key motivator/reward neurotransmitter and gives two practical, low-effort interventions—morning sunlight exposure and improved sleep—to increase dopamine, balance leptin and ghrelin, and thereby reduce overeating and addictive behaviors. The tone is motivational and pragmatic.
Chapters
Good morning. It's Achin. I trust you had an amazing night's rest, and your day is off to a great start. In today's short video, I want to talk about how you can reduce cravings for sugars and fats, in fact, without changing your diet. So one of the things I've learned over the years in studying functional medicine and studying physiology and studying the mind, and of course, how it all interacts with our environment, I realized that there's an important thing that is often overlooked. And this is one of the reasons that many people fail on their health journeys. And it's because they're fighting their biology, they're fighting their hormones, they're fighting their physiology. And as a result of that, they feel like they're an epic failure. They feel like they're weak, they feel like they lack willpower. And eventually many people will give up as a result of that. And that's quite unfortunate because all of us have the seeds of health within us. And in fact, many of us are living way below our potential, which excites me, because even I'm living below my potential. And that's why every day I try to get at least 1% better, if not more than that. So in this lesson, what I want to share with you is why willpower doesn't work. And of course, my friend Benjamin Hardy wrote a book about this in relationship to personal motivation and business growth. But I want to talk about why willpower doesn't work when it comes to your nutrition and your diet. So one of the things that happens is we oftentimes will crave foods, especially foods that are high in fat and sugar. When we lack dopamine, dopamine is our motivation. Neurotransmitter, it's our reward. Neurotransmitter, it's our focus. Neurotransmitter. So many times when we lack adequate amounts of dopamine production, we will then partake in dopamine increasing behaviors. Now, these are often addictive tendencies because we're lacking natural sources and environmental cues to increase dopamine. So this could lead to addictive behaviors such as smoking, pornography, obviously fats and sugars, because those will raise dopamine, certain drugs will raise dopamine, and of course, gambling and things like that raise dopamine as well. In fact, fun fact, one of the things that raises dopamine the most is donating money. So if you're one of those people like me who's addicted to donating money, it could be dopamine. That's Your problem. Now, each of us does have unique factors and variables when it comes to dopamine metabolism and how our dopamine binds to its receptor site. These are nuances that you can uncover through genetic testing. But what I'm going to talk about today is the basics and the foundations. Regardless of what your genetic status is, there are people genetically more inclined to addiction. And another form of addiction that I forgot to mention is being a workaholic. Right? So a workaholic is often addicted to working too much. Right? So that's, you know, that's me. I'm guilty of that. And oftentimes we have a hard time shutting it down because we get so much of a rush from the work that we do. So how do we increase dopamine? Well, I'm kind of doing it right now. One of the best ways to increase dopamine is to be outside in the beginning of the day. So spend at least 10 minutes outside whether it's sunny or whether it's cloudy. You know, being outside will raise your dopamine levels. And if it's sunny, it's going to raise it even more. If it's the beginning of the day, you can do something called sun gazing. And that's a whole different topic, but you can take a look at that, and that will very nicely enhance your mood. And my friend Majeed also does this every single morning. Not also. I don't do this every morning. He does. He watches the sunrise every single morning, and he eats the sun. Okay, so in the famous song and chant and prayer, the Hanuman Chalisa Hanuman, who's the breath of Ram. Actually, literally, there's a story, a tale that he eats the sun because he thought it was a fruit. And so that's actually a metaphor for us eating the sun, not with our mouth, but with our eyes every single day. So getting sunlight in the morning will raise dopamine, curb your cravings and addictive behaviors. Another thing that will curb your cravings and addictive behaviors is getting a good night's rest. So a good night's rest will also help you increase dopamine, and it will also help you balance two hormones, first one being leptin. Leptin is the hormone that tells us that we are satiated, that we feel full. When we don't get a good night's rest, our leptin levels will decrease. And so we will very rarely feel full or satiated, no matter how much we eat. So we'll keep snacking, we'll keep eating, we keep looking for something to satiate us because we are not making enough leptin to create that signal. The other hormone that becomes impacted is ghrelin. So when you think of ghrelin, think of gremlins. Ghrelin is what initiates our hunger signal. So when we do not get adequate sleep or when we don't get healthy sleep, we will increase our ghrelin production, which will cause us to crave more foods. And so we will be hungry all the time. And as a result of being hungry all the time and not having adequate amounts of satiating signaling taking place through leptin, we are going to be basically a gremlin all day, and our dopamine is not going to actually be satiated as well. So just in review, really simple things that you can do to increase dopamine production reduce addictive behaviors, especially cravings for fats, sugar, which light up the dopamine centers in our brain, is getting a good night's rest. Okay? Make that a priority. And also getting sunlight in the morning. So it's not willpower, it's biology. When you understand your biology, then there's less willpower required to be healthy. When we do not have healthy sleep, when we do not have healthy light exposure and we're exposed to artificial light all the time, or inadequate amounts of natural light, then this will create disruptions in our hormones, in our physiology, in our biology, and then that will result in behaviors that are not becoming of who we actually are and who we actually can become. So I hope that helps. Get a good night's rest. If you haven't done it already, go outside, get some sunlight, and you can thank me tomorrow morning. When your cravings disappear, when your hunger disappears, when you feel satiated after eating a healthy meal. Anyways, I got a busy day ahead of me. I'm actually speaking at Genius Network this week, so I've got to put together my presentation and submit it to my speaking coach so he can review it. I'm going to be talking about all this stuff with a bunch of millionaires and billionaires who are also interested in learning about their health. So I'm super excited to be sharing the foundational information for them and all of us to be marvelously healthy. So here's to your best life. I will talk to you soon. Bye for now. And if you found this helpful, then please share, please comment. Please let me know that you're valuing this information. I'm doing this for you. I know this already. I'm applying this already as best as I can. I'm teaching it to my clients, but I want to make sure you're valuing and benefiting from this as well. So help me spread the message far and wide. Please comment, please share so I know this hits home for you. Lots of love. I'll talk to you soon. Bye for now.
