Category: Motivation

The Hidden Force Behind Your Food Cravings: It’s Not About Willpower

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If you’ve ever battled with food cravings and told yourself it’s just a lack of willpower, it’s time to rewrite that story. Cravings aren’t about weakness or self-control—they’re the result of complex signals from your body, including messages from the tiny but powerful microbes living in your gut. Understanding this connection can replace shame with self-compassion and empower you to make meaningful, lasting changes to your health.

The Gut-Brain Connection: Why Your Cravings Aren’t Just in Your Head

Your gut is home to trillions of microbes that thrive on the food you eat. These microbes aren’t passive bystanders—they actively communicate with your brain through a system called the gut-brain axis, influencing how you feel, what you crave, and even your mood.

Here’s where it gets fascinating: different types of gut microbes prefer different kinds of food. If your diet is high in sugary or processed foods, you’re feeding the sugar-loving microbes. These microbes produce chemical signals that amplify your cravings for sweets, ensuring they get more of their preferred energy source. It’s not a lack of willpower—it’s biology!

On the other hand, if you eat more fibre-rich foods, like fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, you’ll nurture fibre-loving microbes. These microbes produce substances like short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs), which help regulate appetite, promote satiety, and reduce cravings for unhealthy foods.

A Microbial Tug-of-War in Your Gut

Imagine your gut as a kitchen, full of busy chefs. Each chef likes to work with their own preferred ingredients.

  • If most of the chefs in your kitchen are sugar enthusiasts, they’ll keep requesting sugar to cook up their favourite dishes. These demands show up as cravings and can feel impossible to resist. It’s not willpower; it’s your sugar-loving chefs making sure their orders are heard loud and clear!
  • But if your kitchen has fibre-loving chefs, they’ll be requesting fruits, veggies, and whole grains for their recipes. As you cater to their demands over time, the number of fibre-loving chefs in your kitchen increase, while the sugar-loving chefs reduce their numbers. As a result, you start to find wholefoods more appealing and the cravings for sugary foods slowly start to fade.

The beauty of this system is its adaptability. By slowly changing your diet, you can shift the balance of chefs in your gut, making healthier choices feel more natural and less like a battle.

How Long Does It Take to Shift Your Microbiome?

Here’s the encouraging part: your gut microbiome is incredibly dynamic. Research shows that microbial populations can begin to shift in as little as four days when you make dietary changes. However, for more sustained and significant changes, a few weeks to months of consistent effort are often needed. The key is patience and persistence—this is a journey, not a quick fix.

Practical Steps to Support a Balanced Microbiome

  1. Start Small
    Begin by adding more fibre-rich foods like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and nuts to your meals. Even small changes, like swapping sugary snacks for a handful of berries or adding a side of roasted veggies, can help.
  2. Diversify Your Diet
    Different gut microbes thrive on different types of fibre. Eating a wide variety of plant-based foods supports a more diverse and resilient microbiome.
  3. Reduce Processed Foods
    While it’s not about perfection, cutting back on sugary and highly processed foods can help shift the balance away from sugar-loving microbes over time.
  4. Stay Consistent
    Remember, your microbiome responds to what you eat most often, not occasionally. Consistency is key to nurturing long-term changes.

Leave Shame Behind

It’s time to stop blaming yourself for cravings. Instead, see them as signals from your gut microbiome—a system that’s been shaped by your past food choices but is entirely capable of transformation. By making gradual, realistic changes to your diet, you can shift the balance in your gut, reduce cravings, and feel more in control of your food choices.

This isn’t about willpower—it’s about working with your body. Every small, consistent step supports your health, and over time, you’ll notice the difference. Replace self-criticism with curiosity and compassion, and watch as your cravings and overall well-being begin to change.

source: freepik AI

Guiding the Stars of Tomorrow: Empowering Your Year 12 Student for Success and Beyond

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Navigating the journey of guiding a young individual through their educational years is no small feat, especially as they stand on the cusp of adulthood. This brings us to the pivotal juncture known as year 12 – a phase fraught with uncertainty. Amidst identity exploration, cognitive growth, external influences, and a myriad of other variables, both the young person and those who support them find themselves entwined in a bewildering experience. A review article completed in 2019 highlighted the possible impacts of academic stress in end of schooling students, suggesting negative impacts in sleep, mental health, academic outcomes, and substance use outcomes (Pascoe et al., 2019).

In the forthcoming blog, our aim is clear: equipping you with valuable resources to effectively bolster the young people in your life, all the while ensuring your own well-being. Irrespective of the path they’re inclined to pursue—be it the academic route of ATAR, hands-on apprenticeships, early entry into the workforce, or even the intriguing realm of influencers—remember, it’s the strength of their support system that shapes their present and potentially forms their future.

With the increased pressure, uncertainty, and stress of this period; the following recommendations can be crucial in supporting the young people in our life:

  1. Open Communication: Maintaining an open and non-judgmental space. Let them know you want to listen and support them, both academically and emotionally. Ask them about their feelings, goals, and current concerns.
  2. Foster a Positive Environment: Create a supportive and positive atmosphere at home. Encourage healthy lifestyle routines through balanced meals, regular exercise, and sufficient sleep. This contributes to improved focus, memory, and overall well-being.
  3. Manage Expectations: Help your young person set realistic goals. Acknowledge their strengths and areas of improvement, showing that their worth is not purely determined by academic performance. Encourage them to do their best while accepting setbacks are a part of life and can also be opportunities.
  4. Time Management: Support your young person to develop effective time management skills. Help them create a schedule that balances any academic responsibilities (or other goal related responsibilities) with social and relaxation activities. Problem solve with them to break down large tasks to more manageable pieces to reduce the chance they become overwhelmed.
  5. Stress Management: Teach your young person stress-reduction methods such as deep-breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, meditation, or mindfulness exercises. Practice and utilise these methods yourself. If your person sees you practicing stress-reduction methods and the results, they may be more prepared to try them!
  6. Encourage Self-Care: Encourage your young person to pursue their interests outside of academia/work, such as activities relating to their hobbies, spending time with friends to serve as a healthy outlet of stress.
  7. Seek Professional Help: If you are concerned about your young person struggling significantly with anxiety, depression, or other mental health concerns, consider visiting your local GP for recommendations for a therapist or counsellor. Our psychologists can provide specialist and individualised support for a variety of mental health concerns.
  8. Celebrate Achievements: Take the time to acknowledge and openly celebrate your young person’s achievements, no matter what it is. Openly recognising these efforts can improve their self-esteem and provide motivation to continue to do their best.
  9. Support Decision Making: Help your young person to explore their possibilities after school, without imposing your own preferences. Keep an open mind while exploring their strengths, interests, and potential career paths.
  10. Perspective Taking: Provide your young person the perspective that the final year of schooling is but one chapter in their life. Assure them that challenges and successes are part of personal growth and build resilience, and this growth will follow them throughout their whole life.

Every young person is unique, so modify the supports you provide based on their individual needs and personality. The key notes I would like people to think on is to prioritise maintaining a safe, nurturing environment, while encouraging independence and coping skills for the young people in our lives.

Interested in further individual support?

We invite you to contact us on 07 4637 9097 or thriveadmin@thrivewellness.com.au to discuss our professional services and how we can assist you and/or the young people in your life to achieve your/their goals.

When contacting us to book your appointment to support your young person, we recommend you request a 50min appointment with Psychologist Christopher Wright. Service provided and costs associated with these appointments are listed in the ‘Fees’ section of our website. You may also wish to discuss your concerns with your GP and ask about your referral options and eligibility for Medicare’s Better Access Initiative, which provides partially funded Psychology appointments through Medicare. A valid GP Mental Health Care Plan referral is required for this.

Motivation part 2 – Rewards and Punishment

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In my previous post on motivation – Motivation and the Secrets to Getting Things Done – I introduced the distinction between intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. In today’s post I will try to briefly summarise some of what we know about extrinsic motivation. As a reminder:

Extrinsic motivation refers to external forces that influence our behaviour. Praise, financial rewards and punishment are all examples of extrinsic motivation. If I say I drove to the beach because my friend paid me $300 to give him a lift, I am referring to an extrinsic motivation.

Operant conditioning

Operant conditioning is the technical term used in the behavioural sciences for learning from consequences. If you repeatedly experience static electric shocks when you touch a particular door handle and this causes you to insulate your hand with your sleeve whenever you go through that door, or to use a different door, this is an example of operant conditioning: You have learned to alter your behaviour to avoid experiencing the unpleasantness of a static electric shock.
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Motivation and the secrets to getting things done – part 1 – Intrinsic and Extrinsic motivation

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What makes you get out of bed in the morning? What makes you go to work? What makes you read a book, or sit down to watch tv?

All of these actions in our daily lives are driven by motivation. But what does that really mean?

Motivation is something I have been thinking about – and researching – a lot recently. Motivation has been on my mind because one of the biggest challenges in providing effective psychological treatment for depression seems to be overcoming motivational barriers that are a symptom of depression. For example, exercise is known to be an effective treatment for depression – but how can a depressed person exercise consistently enough to experience improvement in mood when two of the DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for Major Depressive Disorder suggest significant problems of motivation?
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