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Why Eating Makes Me Happy
I Feel Good
Dopamine is our reward center within our brain. It’s the chemical that is released when we do something that makes us feel good. It is also the neurotransmitter that is responsible for hunger and sensation cues.
When we overeat, dopamine works to reward us by releasing feelings of pleasure and euphoria when overeating. When restricting in an eating disorder, it can be released when they are fasting or restricting, and when eating may experience a negative food response .
The result is that the person with anorexia may feel good or rewarded by the starving state.
The more a person restricts within the early stages of anorexia, the more dopamine is released, and the more a person feels rewarded, and the restricting behavior is rewarded.
When anorexics begin to diet, restrict, and lose weight, it is partly because their brain is not responding in a way that drives eating. It is responding to normal signals around food in our brain.
Within the insula, which is responsible for appetite regulation and interception awareness, there is distortion which leaves a person unaware of signals from their body. Researchers believe that there dysfunction within the insula.
