Tracking fasting duration may lead individuals to attach dopamine release to the deprivation itself, not just the food reward.

“One straightforward example of learning to attach dopamine to effort and strain as opposed to a process or a reward that naturally evokes dopamine release is so-called intermittent fasting.”

“They are starting to attach dopamine release or create dopamine release from the deprivation, not from the food reward itself.”

“And it does seem that the fasted state can start to take on its own rewarding properties, where people get dopamine release not from eating, as most everyone does, but from abstaining from food.”