What if the answer to ‘what next’ is what went before?

What did you love doing before you started asking whether you were any good at it?

Before a Saturday needed to be productive. Before movement became exercise. Before making something came with the question of what you might do with it afterwards.

I’ve been thinking about this since a conversation with Dr Michelle Gordon in January.

We’d invited her to host a masterclass because of something we were seeing increasingly in our community: women concerned about changes in their weight, often bewildered that the approaches they had relied on for years no longer seemed to work.

I wanted to explore the physiology. Our relationship with food. The changing landscape of weight-loss medication. And what her work in obesity medicine had taught her about sustainable change.

One insight in particular stayed with me.

Sometimes, part of the work involves going back to discover what used to bring us joy.

What food has learned to mean

In our conversation, Michelle explored how our relationship with food can become bound up with our experiences of comfort, safety and reward.

The things we reached for as children. The ways we celebrated. What happened after a difficult day. What was available when other kinds of support weren’t.

These associations can become so familiar that we barely notice them.

Food can be nourishment, pleasure, belonging and a moment to ourselves. Sometimes all within the same meal.

And then midlife arrives with its own questions.

Our bodies change. Our responsibilities shift. Maybe relationships too. Work may feel more demanding, or less meaningful. There can be a little more space in the day and surprisingly little certainty about what we want to put in it.

For some of us, that opens a Pandora’s box.

Including a fresh negotiation with food.

The dopamine rabbit hole

Michelle’s observation sent me off to understand more about dopamine.

We often call it the “pleasure chemical”. But its role is more interesting than that.

In the brain, dopamine acts as a chemical messenger involved in motivation, learning and reward. Researchers distinguish between liking something, the pleasure we experience, and wanting it: the pull that makes us seek it out. Dopamine is particularly involved in that wanting.¹

Which helps explain why being drawn towards something and enjoying it aren’t always quite the same experience.

Because, how often do we reach for something because we anticipate a particular feeling? And how often does the experience actually give us what we were looking for?

This is where I found Michelle’s insight so fascinating.

To consider what else we might be missing.

Interest. Absorption. Play. A sense of achievement. Company. Something to look forward to that belongs entirely to us.

Food can end up carrying a lot of that work.

Before everything needed a purpose

Michelle described encouraging clients to look back at the activities they enjoyed when they were younger. The things that offered excitement, satisfaction or the simple pleasure of being completely involved.

Perhaps it was drawing.

Perhaps netball. Running. Making things with your hands. Growing something. Dancing with your friends.

Somewhere along the way, we may have stopped.

Because we weren’t going to make a career of it. Because there were children to collect. Because being a beginner felt uncomfortable once we were supposed to be ‘grown up’.

Or maybe because we forgot that enjoying something was enough.

I wonder if this is what happened to me a little too. And it has made me think about how easily pleasure slips down the list when other people’s needs, or our own expectations, keep arriving at the top.

There is evidence for making room

Research offers some support for taking our interests seriously.

A study published in Nature Medicine followed patterns of hobby engagement and wellbeing in more than 93,000 adults aged 65 and over across 16 countries. Having a hobby was associated with greater happiness and life satisfaction, and fewer depressive symptoms.²

Michelle’s suggestion offers a personal way into that idea: start with something you already know mattered to you.

A small experiment in remembering

So, if you’ve space today, why not start with three simple questions:

1. What did I love doing when nobody needed me to be useful?
2. What have I stopped because I decided I wasn’t good enough?
3. Which part of that experience would I like to feel again?

That last question lets us think about life as it is now too.

The sport you loved might have been about belonging to a team. Drawing might have offered quiet. Running might have meant freedom rather than distance or speed.

You don’t have to recreate your childhood. You can follow the clue it gives you.

Another practice to explore

If this has prompted you to think about your own coping patterns, join us for our Rapid Tapping® masterclass on Tuesday 17 November at 7:30pm UK time.

An opportunity to discover the practice with the wonderful practitioner Tahira Herold and explore another way to respond to anxiety and overwhelm.

Sign up for the Rapid Tapping® masterclass

References

1. Berridge and Kringelbach. Pleasure systems in the brain. Neuron, 2015.
   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2015.02.018
2. Mak and colleagues. Hobby engagement and mental wellbeing among people aged 65 years and older in 16 countries. Nature Medicine, 2023.
   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-023-02506-1