How to hack your behaviour with dopamine resetting
Lean With Plants
Chelsea Mae Cullen
4.9 • 952 Ratings
🗓️ 5 November 2025
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
If you’ve ever found yourself reaching for snacks even when you’re not hungry, or wondering why you can’t just stay consistent, this episode is going to be a game changer.
This weeks episode is a live reply from a Lean with Plants community talk all about dopamine — the brain chemical that teaches you what’s rewarding and how it influences everything from your cravings to your habits. The crazy thing is, dopamine isn’t just about pleasure… it’s about motivation. It’s what drives you to repeat certain behaviors, even the ones that don’t serve you.
In this episode, you’ll learn how to understand dopamine so you can start working with your brain instead of constantly battling against it. We’ll talk about why processed food feels so hard to give up, how to make consistency easier, and what it really takes to build habits that last.
If you’ve been struggling with motivation, or feeling like you “fall off” every time life gets stressful, this one’s for you.
If you’re ready to do whatever is required to succeed for your health goals, then book a free consult with our team to talk about making that a reality.
https://fitwithplants.com/schedule-your-call-6
✅ Want to learn the 5 step formula for successful fat loss for less than $1 a day?
https://www.skool.com/leancommunity/about
🎉 Join my FREE Lean Kickstarter Challenge 👇https://www.chelseamae.com/kickstarter-about
🤙 Find me on:
My Website ➔ https://www.chelseamae.com
Instagram ➔ https://www.instagram.com/chelseamaecullen/
Youtube ➔ https://www.youtube.com/ChelseaMae
Subscribe and see you next week.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello, welcome to the Lean of Plants podcast. My name is Chelsea and if you are struggling to lose weight on a plant-based diet, then this podcast is for you. While there are thousands of books, podcasts and resources about the benefits of a plant-based diet, the reality is that being vegan does not |
| 0:21.9 | guarantee losing weight. If you are feeling frustrated and confused about where to start, |
| 0:28.6 | or you know exactly what you should be doing, but you just can't seem to rustle up enough |
| 0:34.1 | willpower to do it, then keep listening. In this podcast, you'll learn the |
| 0:38.7 | truth about plant-based weight loss, but just as importantly, how to use proven methods of |
| 0:44.1 | behavioural change to turn what you know into lifelong habits that lead to getting and staying |
| 0:49.9 | lean. Can't wait to get started. Let's do this. |
| 1:22.6 | What we're going to talk about is we're going to talk about dopamine and we're going to talk about how to think about dopamine and how to change our behavior in terms of interacting with high dopamine food stimuli so that we can get more consistent. Because if we can get more consistent in that what we're doing is going to be more of the |
| 1:29.9 | behaviours that get us into a calorie deficit and we actually like doing it, then by default, |
| 1:36.3 | you're going to lose more way and you're going to find it easier to keep it off. |
| 1:39.7 | And one of the things that's going to make this hardest, as you've probably already experienced, |
| 1:43.2 | is that we get cravings. |
| 1:45.0 | And when we're not motivated, we want to go back to eating processed food. |
| 1:50.0 | Has anyone experienced this? |
| 1:51.0 | Amazing. I just like seeing hands up, like I know you have. |
| 1:55.0 | So understanding this is going to be one of the first steps. |
| 1:58.0 | What dopamine does and the way that it acts in our brains is that it teaches |
| 2:02.1 | us what kind of behaviors are rewarded, right? It teaches us what kind of behaviors we should continue |
| 2:08.6 | to do in order for us to like see success. But the thing is, we get dopamine by our brain's |
| 2:15.6 | judgment of success. It's like little chemicals firing in our brains. It's not |
| 2:19.3 | actually necessarily what we want and it's not actually necessarily from something positive. |
| 2:24.2 | And so if you think about the way that habit works, so James Clear talks about habit formation. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Chelsea Mae Cullen, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Chelsea Mae Cullen and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.