Dopamine, impulsive shopping, and the myth of the quick exercise fix
Two months ago, I felt the urge to buy something pretty that somehow benefited a good cause. Some things you should know about me before we move on:
I am not a shopper, except for books and educational products, which in my world, don’t count.
It is an extremely rare event for me to buy myself jewelry, especially online (the exception is when I travel. I own both a wooden bracelet from Belize and a pair of silver earrings from Bali, both of which were purchased from independent artists).
I research everything. To death. Every coach I have considered working with I have perused the website, carefully read the CV/resume/biography section, and have a pretty good idea of what I’m getting into before I start. I do the same thing with businesses that I buy from and places that I consider working or living.
Anyway, Instagram was clearly spying on me and picked up on my desire to be as unselfishly indulgent as impulse buying can be and began inundating me with ads for this tree of life necklace, the proceeds of which benefitted animals in Australia who were displaced because of the wildfires.
Before I had time to fully think about what I was doing, I had left Instagram, was on the website (whose name I don’t remember) and I had purchased a necklace and bracelet while saving koala bears in my mind.
Except I wasn’t. My first clue was when the shipping notice came, letting me know my items would be arriving from China. I found my way back to the website, realized there was no “about” page telling me about the company’s origins, and, after a quick search on reviews of the products, I realized I had been duped by clever marketing.
Since emotional purchases are so out of character for me and Instagram’s targeted marketing was so accurate, I found myself pondering how many others are doing things that are more emotional in nature right now. Obviously, the current state of the world is leaving many of us craving a dopamine fix.
Dopamine, for those of you who aren’t inclined to memorize all of the neurotransmitters and their functions, is considered the “happy hormone.” It’s that surge of delight you get when something pleases you, whether that something is the fact you just held a handstand for the first time or the phone call you receive from HR of the company you really want to work for telling you you were chosen for the position.
Like all neurotransmitters, how much dopamine you need to maintain balance is dependent on a number of factors and lack of dopamine balance can wreak mental and physical havoc. Too much pleasure seeking can lead to addiction and too much dopamine in the system at the wrong time can lead to mania, hallucinations, and schizophrenia while too little dopamine in certain areas of the brain is linked to Parkinson’s disease.
Most of us get little hits of dopamine throughout the day. When your phone dings with a text message from a close friend, dopamine is released. While you are working towards the handstand, each time you feel yourself getting closer to balancing, dopamine is released. When someone “likes” a blog post on social media, dopamine is released. These small chemical rewards for your behavior are responsible for the motivation to learn new things and help you maintain motivation and consistency.
When things feel bleak or there aren’t as many opportunities during the day for dopamine to be released, we search for other ways to create hormonal balance. Because we are constantly changing and always in flux, never exactly the same as we were five minutes earlier, our behaviors are an opportunity to create the stable internal environment our mind and body craves. Our ability to respond to stressors and return to a balanced state can be thought of as allostasis, a term that is defined as achieving stability through change. The feelings of uncertainty and stress created by a global pandemic and shelter in place left me searching for a way to cheer myself up and find a more general sense of internal stability. My solution was a quick fix in the form of impulsively purchasing what ended up being cheap jewelry.
We like quick fixes to create stability. It’s the reason fad diets do so well—when you spend $200 on a fat loss supplement that promises to make you lean in thirty days, pulling the trigger and purchasing the supplement causes dopamine to be released. When the supplement (which is effectively a diuretic), dehydrates you and makes the number on the scale drop five pounds, you get another shot of dopamine.
But when the number stops budging and you no longer see any change, other than feeling a little jittery and a lot thirsty, you no longer feel the same degree of reward that you did initially. You feel deflated, frustrated, and as though you failed which, ironically, moves you further from the emotional and physical balance your system craves.
The same thing happens with exercise programs—six pack abs in thirty days is a myth, but when you begin any sort of exercise program after doing nothing for a long period of time, you will notice immediate changes in the way you feel. This initially is enough to keep you following the program, but when the program becomes boring or stops working because you have become more efficient and skilled in your movement patterns, you feel less motivated to exercise and maintain consistency.
Since maintaining consistency the only way to actually create long term habit change, it’s important to find ways to continue feeling a small sense of reward during your movement practice. One way to prevent exercise boredom and continue getting your dopamine fix is to try the same movement several ways. The “aha” moments created by learning to use your body in a different way are often more motivating over the long term than the quick fixes of short term diet and exercise programs or purchasing cheap jewelry.
An example of a familiar movement explored a new way can be found in the video below. I taught this in my first livestream bodyweight class a couple of weeks ago and it was well-received, so I re-filmed it with better audio quality (the audio for my first class left something to be desired. I think I fixed it, but I am holding one more free livestream class August 8th to be sure).
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