Taming the Dog Brain

I believe that folks shouldn’t feel so guilty for eating poorly or overeating on occasion. It’s in our nature to do so and my dog, Jasper, reminds me of that every day. He will eat almost anything he sees–garbage, dirty socks, tissues–and will beg for more dogfood whenever he isn’t busy doing something else.

Jasper reminds us that animal are biologically designed to eat whenever possible, regardless of hunger. Evolutionarily this makes sense, since food scarcity was the biggest danger until the last few hundred years–too recent for our bodies to adjust to the new problem of overabundance .

Humans have big powerful brains that give us will-power, good judgement and self-control and we don’t give ourselves enough credit for using these skills to overcome the dog brain underneath. Unfortunatly our big brains also give us guilt when the primitive dog brain underneath succeeds in making us overeat.