Why You’re Addicted To Donuts

Some of us are on a first-name basis with weed, coke, booze, and other substances. They have a hold on us and won’t let go!

But not you.

Nope, not you!!!

You’ve been grinding hard on your diet for a month, a week, a day, and temptation is calling you…

…in the form of a donut.

Yes, you’re a donut junkie!

In fact, you’re a donut junkie who, if need be, is willing to whore out their orifices to get their mouth on what’s often the pastry equivalent of one.¹

The problem with giving into your donut whoredom when a craving strikes is that one donut often turns into an entire dozen and then — BOOM!!! — you’re suddenly fat again. That sure would be a waste of grinding hard on your diet for a month, a week, a day.

So what are you to do?

Well, after recognizing that you have a problem and admitting it, one of the important steps to solving the problem is figuring out why it exists.

So let’s do that!

The reason why donuts — in addition to French fries, potato chips, chocolate candy bars, and other similar treats — are such a challenge to you is because they’re a rich combination of fat and carbs.

The role of that combination of fat and carbs in foods that are among the most irresistible can be found by looking at the findings of a study by researchers at Yale University who scanned people’s brains as they were shown pics of foods high in fat (e.g. cheese), high in carbs (e.g. candy), or high in both (e.g. pastries) while also tasked with participating in an auction and bidding real money on the food they wanted to eat most, of which they were told they’d be allowed to eat if their bid won.

The results found that people were not only willing to pay more for foods that were rich in both fat and carbs but that the combination lit up the areas of the brain that are associated with cravings, addiction, and reward more than those areas lit up in response to foods that are high in fat or carbs alone.

More specifically, the area of the brain that was activated by just the image of certain combinations of food was the striatum, which consists of the caudate and putamen and is where dopamine gets released.²

Now, because humans have spent a majority of their existence encountering foods that are either mainly carbs or fat and never both because carbs and fat aren’t found together in nature, we’ve developed separate systems in the brain to assess those nutrients.³

As a result of this evolution, it’s theorized that modern junk foods that are high in carbs and fat activate both systems at once and thus produce stronger stimuli than foods that are mainly one or the other, which not only drives you to want to eat them but also continue once you’ve begun.

As we’ve seen from the above, hyperpalatable foods are high in starch, sugar, or fat, as well as sodium, and affect the same area of the brain as drugs, alcohol, and behaviors such as shopping or gambling, which is why they’re so hard to resist. Our neural circuitry is essentially hardwired to love the fat-carb combo, something the processed food industry has apparently long been aware of intuitively and has preyed upon through their marketing and creation of product after product with that mix.

So what’s a donut-loving motherfucker such as yourself to do when the ones in the box sitting on the table at the usual spot start calling your name in hopes of getting you to peek under the lid and reach for a few so your mouth can do all kinds of nasty things to them?, you ask.

While your neural wiring is largely out of your control, in addition to many of the other things at play for why you may crave something you know you shouldn’t eat or go back for a second, third, or thousandth helping once you’ve given in, it’s still possible not to inhale a box of donuts, or bag of Doritos, or sleeve of cookies, or whatever else you’re a whore for.

One of the most effective methods is completely removing the temptation.

So free donuts at work?

Then stay far away from where they are.

Or work from home.

Or, better yet, get a new job.

Fuck, aren’t you the one who’s always bitchin’ and moanin’ about how much you hate your coworkers and boob of a boss? Because you’re by no means one of the 64 percent of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck, you can certainly quit your job for donut-avoiding reasons and take all the time you need to look for work at a place where the company doesn’t provide employee catering or asshole coworkers don’t bring snacks to share with everyone.

So yeah, just quit your job!

Glossary: diet, dietary fat, fat

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Monster Longe

Monster Longe is a personal trainer in San Diego. He has been lifting weights for +25 years and training clients in the gym and online for about half of that time. When not working with clients or making content that's easy to read, understand, and apply to everyday life, he enjoys long walks and leaving buildings crushed and entire city blocks decimated in his wake.

Why You’re Addicted To Donuts

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