How I convinced my brain Black Bean Burgers are better

Imagine my surprise when I was already four weeks out, if not a little bit longer, of my plant-based whole food experiment. Technically “allowed” to include meat in my diet again, even though it’s been minimal.

And even though, being the self-proclaimed and professed cheeseburger queen, as far as my eye can see, I made a batch of bean patties for black bean samburgers.

Now… I could take mince out the freezer, make patties, or do what I normally do, go and buy good quality chuck with some good quality fat and mince my own burgers, put them on the grill, which is normally what I’d do in batches.

However, without even thinking about it, I opted for a plant-based burger.

Why?

There are a few reasons, but let’s look at the reason most people don’t even think about. Neuroplasticity.

Big word, I know, but let me explain this to you.

Our brains have the amazing ability to rewire themselves. I remember first hearing about this concept about seven years ago and thinking it was rather far-fetched. But little did I even realize that it’s as far-fetched to the average person on the street as it is an absolutely normal process for anyone who studies neuroscience.

Our behaviours and our habits change often, and what drives that is our brain’s ability to break down neuroconnections that no longer serve us, recycle that into the system, and create new neuroconnections.

I’m sure you’ve maybe heard that term before, neurons that fire together wire together. So if you have neurons that fire together enough times, your brain is smart enough to just create the shortcut to this behaviour and wire these together through a process called synapses.

Now, the more you fire that new neuroconnection, the more your brain protects it by a process called myelination. This is literally putting fatty layers over that connection that solidifies that behaviour even more.

For the same reason, it’s what can make it difficult to break old habits.

But the only way we get there is by repeating the new habit over and over and over again. This is where the willpower flies out the window, and we can look at something like discipline and accountability to repeat those behaviours long enough until the brain thinks it’s a good idea, and it will happen.

There are only very few scenarios where it can’t happen, and that is when the body is in a significant amount of stress response, overly stimulated in sympathetic arousal, which makes learning new things difficult, or certain psychiatric medication that makes creating new synapses more difficult.

So, in a nutshell, this is what happened with me and my black bean burger.

I’ve had enough experiences to cognitively, without me even realizing it, prefer the black bean burger over the fatty beef burger for reasons like wanting to keep my dietary cholesterol intake low, because my liver overproduces enough of its own cholesterol as part of my own metabolic dysfunction, the extra calories from the fat, and the disruption it causes in my gut because of the amount of bile that I would need to break it down.

My brain has, through repetition, learned that the black bean burger does not affect my body in the same way.

That takes interoception.

Interoception is the ability to feel into your body and what it’s telling you, whether it’s intestinal pain from trapped wind or added discomfort an hour after a fatty meal.

I’ve had the same experience of a very tasty, if not tastier, black bean samburger enough times for my brain to have broken the neuroconnection that tells me that the beef burger is so much better.

Does that mean I will never eat another beef burger again? Probably not, we still have free choice.

But I can tell you, the chances are a lot lower.

And now you know how bad habits get broken!