Is Cheap Dopamine Silently Killing Your Fitness Progress?
We have all heard about this “pleasure molecule” called dopamine. It’s a brain chemical that drives your motivation, regulates your mood, and triggers feelings of pleasure and reward. When I hear the word “dopamine”, I think of excitement, desire, and pursuit. If you see something you like, you will seek more of it.
Dopamine is actually one of the single biggest drivers of human behavior. It plays a massive role in your health and fitness decisions. It can help you reach your goals, but it can also send you down a slippery slope.
Cheap vs. Earned/Quality Domaine
Historically, humans had to work hard to earn a dopamine release. For example, the hard physical work of tracking and hunting was rewarded with a feast. Building an elaborate shelter provided weather protection and safety. Creating a fire and maintaining it led to warmth and cooked food. These rewards took time to earn. As a result, dopamine would rise slowly, peak softly, and come back down gently. We would be left feeling accomplished and motivated. This is EARNED DOPAMINE.
Technological, agricultural, and economic advances in the USA have created a whole new world. Some of our biological functions are still learning to adjust to this new world; that includes dopamine. We have access to rewards that require little to no effort. These low input rewards are called CHEAP DOPAMINE. Here are some examples:
Junk food: We love the taste of that perfectly engineered combination of salt, sugar, and fat. We love it so much that we want more and more. Since we feel terrible after eating it, we will search for more junk food to make us feel better. We get caught in a vicious cycle.
Social media scrolling: We search for videos that make us feel good. We find one video, then another and another. Before you know it, 30 minutes have passed.
Social media notifications: We constantly check our phone for the likes and comments that give us a sense of reward.
Online gambling: When you win, you think it will happen again. When it doesn’t happen, you keep trying to search for that reward. The worst part is that online gambling is easily accessible through smartphones.
In summary, cheap dopamine relates to low effort and instant, short-lived reward, while earned dopamine is high effort and delayed, long-lasting reward. If that’s the case, why would anyone want to put in high effort to get a reward? Let’s discuss more below.
The Effect of Cheap Dopamine On Your Fitness
The main reason you want to avoid cheap dopamine is because its effect on your baseline motivation. When you experience a massive, effortless spike of cheap dopamine, your brain immediately tries to bring you back down to balance things out. This rapid crash pushes your dopamine levels below baseline. Your body was just experiencing a “high” and now it’s experiencing the “low.” Everything will feel more difficult because your dopamine levels are low. There is no excitement, desire, and pursuit. It’s as if you are depressed.
I’m sure you can see how the cheap dopamine crash can impact your health and fitness. Here are four immediate things that come to my mind.
Distorted Perception of Effort and Pain
The cheap dopamine crash can make every task feel difficult and more sensitive to pain. There is little motivation to seek rewards. This would make it very difficult to get to the gym or outdoors for exercise. At that point, exercise would feel like climbing Mount Everest.
If you find yourself in this position, start small. Perform only one exercise or 5 minutes of cardio. You can also pair exercise with something that gets you excited, such as a TV show, music, or meeting a friend.
Distorted Perception of Effort-to-Reward Ratio
After making an effort to perform a task, you may realize that the reward was not worth the massive effort. The effort and pain of running 5 minutes only burned less than 100 calories. It’s pointless! You realize that exercise is not worth it.
This one can be tough to deal with. It’s important to step back and get the bigger picture. For example, the 5 minutes of cardio may have only burned less than 100 calories, but it also did a lot more. You got fresh air, direct sunlight, and smiles from strangers. It worked out your heart and legs. It forced you to take a nice rewarding shower after. Shift your focus to the positives.
Wasted Time
When you engage in low effort, high reward activities, your brain gets stuck in a cycle that consumes hours of your day without you even realizing it. Cheap dopamine activities, such as online gambling, social media scrolling, and short online games can use up hours of your day. All that time can be better spent in earned dopamine activities such as hiking, weightlifting, tennis, swimming, and so much more!
If you find yourself performing some sort of cheap dopamine activity (which most of us do to some extent), just make sure you give yourself time limits.
Wasted Calories
Cheap dopamine can trick your brain into consuming large amounts of calorie-dense, low-nutrient, tasty junk food. You are not actually hungry; you are just seeking that easy reward. This can lead to excess calories that make you feel sluggish and forces you to gain weight. Between low workouts and high calorie intake, you are digging yourself into a deep hole.
While there are many recommendations I can make for snacking, the most important one is to replace your go-to snack with something slightly healthier. I would also make sure that any unhealthy snacks are out of the house and out of sight.
Conclusion
You don’t need to eliminate cheap dopamine, but you should be mindful of how much you rely on it. Spend more time pursuing rewards that require effort, such as exercise, time outdoors, and accomplishing challenging goals. These earned rewards may take more work, but they can provide more lasting satisfaction and support your long-term health and fitness.
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