Proven Ways To Cure Food Addiction
Looking for cures for food addiction is doubly challenging when noted scientists cant even agree on the proper nomenclature for this condition. Eating addiction, eating disorder – a rose by any other name…
Whats clear though is, the disorder does exist and experts in the field are just beginning to study the phenomenon to learn more about it. It is of special concern given that in developed countries like the UK and US, obesity is prevalent among adults and food addiction may be a contributing factor to it.
Throw Junk Food From The House
Can a heroin addict overcome his addiction if he keeps heroin in the house? Of course, he cant! Its the same thing with food addiction. You will overindulge if you keep junk food in the house.
Throw all the foods youre addicted to out of the house. Making junk food less accessible will reduce chances of overindulging. Chances are you wont drive to the supermarket in the middle of the night to buy a cookie or chocolate bar.
Food Addiction Treatment Programs
Food addiction is a serious medical condition. Similar to drug addiction, the symptoms of food addiction can include difficulty controlling behavior, cravings, tolerance, dependence, withdrawal symptoms, and relapse.
Unfortunately, many people who suffer from food addiction may hesitate to get help because the condition is often accompanied by feelings of shame, guilt, and low self-esteem.
This article answers the following questions about food addiction treatment:
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How Does Food Addiction Affect The Body
This can lead to several physical, emotional, and social consequences, such as digestive issues, heart disease, obesity, low-self esteem, depression, and isolation. A food addict will often re-engage in these destructive behaviors, even amidst undesired consequences, due to the need for induced feelings of pleasure.
Avoid Alcoholic Drinks And Caffeine
As much as you can, avoid alcoholic drinks and caffeinated beverages . Evidence shows that drinking alcoholic or caffeinated beverages triggers poor eating choices.
Coffee can cause the body to crave sugary drinks or sweet foods. In addition, too much caffeine can cause anxiety, and an anxious person may end up resorting to binge-eating comfort foods to feel better.
Drinking alcohol may also cause you to become hungry. After a night of drinking or bar-hopping with friends, eating whatever you see on the fridge, even junk food, seems like a good idea. Alcohol causes poor judgment in many people, so this can destroy your recovery.
Also, avoid soda because it has addictive substances and high sugar content. Dont make it a part of your everyday life to consume sugar because this can trigger addiction in your brain.
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Effects Of Being A Food Addict
If you or your loved one had been struggling with a food addiction, you may understand the implications this may have on the various aspects of your life. If food addiction is left ignored or untreated, it can rapidly begin consuming your life, creating damaging and chronic symptoms. Understanding how this may affect the different aspects of your life may encourage you to get the help you need and deserve. The following are some of the effects of an addiction to food:
Some Call It Emotional Overeating Or Stress Eating Others Call It Bingeing If You’re Obsessed With Food Or Dieting Or Your Eating Habits Seem Out Of Your Control You May Have A Food Addiction
Just one more little piece of this doughnut. Well, I can’t just leave a quarter of a doughnut, no one would want to eat that. Oh, there’s also a chocolate one in the box, too. That looks good. Maybe just a little piece.
Sometimes it feels like the doughnut in the box or the pint of vanilla chocolate chip ice cream in the freezer is actually calling to you. The beckoning gets louder and more emphatic until you can’t even focus on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. You have to hit pause, get up, and have one last scoop, one last piece, one more tiny sliver. Sound familiar?
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Mental Hack #: Leveraging Social
Your social networks can fuel your food addiction and contribute to being overweight.
A study done in the New England Journal of Medicine found that social networks can promote obesity people with friends, siblings and spouses who are obese are much more likely to be obese themselves.
Now, although this wasnt in reference to online social networks , there is evidence that shows that youre many times more likely to share the same interests as your friends.
This is just the long way of saying that people have a huge influence over your success or failure, and youre likely to end up like the people around you in more than one way.
You can leverage the internet social spheres in your favor too. There are a couple innovative sites to help you integrate a positive social environment with your own personal goals.
Fitocracy in a nutshell: Its health and fitness, gamified. You earn points for doing quests , and then you can level up and reach new levels.
It integrates with a social feed like facebook, and lets others motivate and help each other out.
Stickk in a nutshell: Stickk is another way to socially integrate betting with attaining your own goals.
Its based on the whole carrot and stick theory of motivation that to motivate people, you can offer them incentives , or punish them.
The key is to pick a charity you hate so much that youd rather die than see your money go there
It works!
Social betting gone digital.
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What Are The Causes Of Food Addiction
Food addiction is likely the culmination of several factors that interplay in the overall cause of this disorder. A man or woman may develop an addiction as a result of biological, psychological, or social reasons. Biological causes that may influence the progression of this eating disorder might include hormonal imbalances, abnormalities in various brain structures, side effects from the use of certain medications, or having family members with this type of addiction issues.
It also might also be the result of psychological factors. Factors included in this category might include emotional or sexual abuse, being a victim or survivor of a traumatic event, having an inability to healthily cope with negative situations, chronic low-self esteem, or experiencing grief or loss.
Psychological factors such as these can influence an individual to use food as a coping mechanism to relieve the painful emotions that may have resulted. Lastly, there are social implications that may be involved with food addiction, including factors such as disturbances in family function, pressure from peers or society, social isolation, child abuse, lack of social support, and stressful life events.
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Can You Be Addicted To Eating Food
Whether or not you believe food addiction is real, its reasonable to say that some foods cause addictive-like behaviour. However, its open to debate whether or not food causes neurochemical dependence the way drugs like caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, and cocaine do, as is how we define the line between a healthy relationship with food that is critical to survival and a full-blown dependence.
Before you decide you are addicted to food and give up on optimal health and abdicate any nutritional responsibility, its helpful to understand why some foods seem to drive an uncontrollable gorge instinct.
Pleasure Seeking/pain Shrinking Food Addict
If your food addiction is pleasure seeking and/or pain shrinking, you are likely low in endorphins. Pleasurable foods like pastas, cookies, chocolate, or your favorite dessert can give a boost of endorphins, but it wont last. And when that boost is gone, you will want more of that powerful pleasurable feeling.
The amino acid DLPA raises levels of endorphins for much longer than a piece of chocolate . As an added bonus, if you take in more than you use in a day, the amino acids will restore the brains levels of endorphins so it wont have to rely on pleasurable foods or supplements for very long.
Of course, there are more neurotransmitters than the two discussed, however, serotonin and endorphins/dopamine are the biggest culprits in Food Addiction.
Thanks to neuroscientist Kenneth Blum, Ph.D, we have research on amino acids, neurotransmitters, and addictions. Julia Ross, M.A. took Dr. Blums work and fine-tuned it through her work in addiction treatment centers and later, in her own clinic where she broadened her work to include many other issues. Read more about both of these pioneers in Rosss books The Mood Cureand The Diet Cure.
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Starting With The Foundation
In my work in the mental health field, I witness daily the great need for alternatives and additions to pharmaceuticals. Starting with a foundation of great nutrition and adding targeted supplements for brain balancing, I see the diminishing of anxiety, depression, eating disorders and addictions of all kinds.
If you believed that a pill was your only hope, you now know there is more that you can do for yourself. Balancing your brain and restoring it to health is the first goal.
This can be done through good nutrition and targeted supplements.
By restoring your neurotransmitters you can address your addictive behaviors from their root cause.
What Does Food Addiction Do To The Brain
Modern, processed, hyper-palatable foods that combine carbs and fat year-round effectively send our subconscious instincts a message to binge NOW because winter is coming.
Despite our conscious brains best efforts, our strong-willed self-deprivation is no match for our reptilian survival instincts. So, resisting when your Lizard Brain takes over is almost impossible!
It is not a failure of your willpower but rather your innate biology working to ensure you survive.
The tension between our conscious brain trying to restrict and our subconscious mind telling us to EAT IT ALL NOW eventually drives us crazy. We feel addicted and cant live without modern, hyper-palatable, engineered foods.
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Food And Its Potential For Addiction
Eating is a normal function necessary to maintain life in many life-forms, including our own. We require sustenance to maintain our energy levels and basic biological functions, such as growth and cell renewal. However, food doesn’t just affect the body consuming it also has physiological effects on our brains.
“When we eat, the feel-good hormone dopamine, which controls the pleasure and reward centers of the brain, is released,” says Dr. Susan Albers, a clinical psychologist. It turns out this is similar to what happens when drugs or alcohol are introduced into our system it feels awesome, and we like it.
For some people, however, the pleasure centers in the brain are more active than in others, which means they experience far more food-related pleasure when eating. This can lead to overeating and binge-eating, which can then result in physical distress and overwhelming guilt, which is paired with an inability to discontinue these habits and feel better .
Dr. Keith Kantor, a nutritionist with a Ph.D. in nutrition science and CEO of the Nutritional Addiction Mitigation Eating and Drinking program, explains that certain foods seem to be more addicting than others for example, those that contain potent amounts of sugar, sodium and processed fats.
Seek Professional Treatment Programmes
Professional treatment facilities for alcohol or drug rehab also manage individuals with food addiction. Options for treatment are inpatient and outpatient programs.
As with other forms of substance abuse, the inpatient treatment has better recovery rates for the person. The outpatient program is suited for milder addictions and people who have to continue with their routines in daily life, like going to work.
The advantages of doing substance rehab in a professional rehabilitation and recovery centre are manifold. They include:
- Focused and round the clock supervision and monitoring
- Scheduled and measured healthy meals to reduce the need for binge eating
- Medical specialists and trained counsellors for one on one and group sessions
- Medically assisted management of withdrawal symptoms
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What Does The Research Show
In 2015 a meta analysis on the temperament in eating disorders showed high harm avoidance in all eating disorder types as compared to controls . In bulimic patients, high novelty seeking temperaments were notices and higher persistence in both anorexic and bulimic participants. In another 2010 study, lab rats were given high-fat, high-sugar foods and changes in their brain activity were seen . Changes in brain activity were similar to those caused by drug abuse.
Food addiction can be defined as a constant obsession with what to eat, when to eat, and how to obtain more food overeating behaviors hiding or hoarding foods, secretive behaviors, and inability to stop overeating or continued eating . Food addiction is a psychological and emotional addiction to specific foods and substances . Even though not directly the same as a substance addiction, food activates the taste-reward and pleasurable regions of the brain.
How To Overcome Food Addiction
The effects of certain foods on the brain make it hard for some people to avoid them.
Food addiction operates similarly to other addictions, which explains why some people cant control themselves around certain foods no matter how hard they try.
Despite not wanting to, they may repeatedly find themselves eating large amounts of unhealthy foods knowing that doing so may cause harm.
This article examines food addiction and provides tips to overcome it.
Food addiction is an addiction to junk food and comparable to drug addiction.
Its a relatively new and controversial term, and high quality statistics on its prevalence are lacking .
Food addiction is similar to several other disorders, including binge eating disorder, bulimia, compulsive overeating, and other feeding and eating disorders.
SUMMARY
Food addiction is a highly controversial concept, though most studies suggest it exists. It works similarly to drug addiction.
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Processed junk foods have a powerful effect on the reward centers of the brain. These effects are caused by brain neurotransmitters like dopamine .
The most problematic foods include typical junk foods like candy, sugary soda, and high fat fried foods.
Food addiction is not caused by a lack of willpower but believed to be caused by a dopamine signal that affects the biochemistry of the brain .
SUMMARY
Food addiction is thought to involve the same neurotransmitters and areas of the brain as drug addiction.
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Yes Food Addiction Is A Real Thing Here’s How To Treat It
- Eating releases the feel-good hormone dopamine, just as drugs and alcohol do.
- Some people have more active pleasure centers than others which can lead to overeating and binge eating.
- Sugar, sodium, and processed fats are the most addicting foods.
- If you feel you could have this problem, replace your unhealthy food choices with healthy options.
Addiction is a health issue that can take many forms. We’re familiar with alcoholism or drug addiction, but can people really be addicted to food? After all, food is a basic need of human beings, so how is that even possible? For those who experience it, it’s a very real issue. Here’s why.
Getting To Know More About Food Addiction
Food addiction is marked by an uncontrollable impulsive and compulsive desire to eat regardless of its adverse effects. Like other addictions, there is intense and incessant craving for certain foods, a withdrawal phase together with a negative affect, and the development of tolerance.
It is believed that the disorder has both behavioural and neurobiological basis. In an individual prone to addiction, eating certain foods trigger the release of dopamine, the feel-good brain chemical. A change in the brains reward circuit occurs in these people and they get the compulsive need to seek and eat the foods they have in mind.
The eating goes over and beyond the bodys energy requirement, which is why most people addicted to food are obese. The individual may be aware of the harmful consequences, such as considerable weight gain and increased risk for certain diseases as well as reduced aesthetics.
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Food Addiction Help And Treatment
If you or a loved one has found yourself stuck in the vicious cycle of an addiction to food, you have likely experienced a roller coaster of emotions, including despair, frustration, and hopelessness. Living with an addiction to food may be preventing you from enjoying a life you once lived, though the possibility for healing always exists.
There is also a myriad of support groups that you can become involved with, such as Food Addicts Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, and Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous. These groups are 12 step-based programs that effectively address this on the physical, emotional, and spiritual aspects, offering much-needed support to individuals seeking to heal from their addiction to food.
Attempting to deal with your addiction to food alone can possibly further draw you into fear or isolation. Having guidance, help and support from an eating disorder center that treats food addiction, specialist, or support group can provide you or your loved one with the tools and resources you need to recover and heal from an addiction to food.
References
What Is Food Addiction
Food addiction is defined as unhealthy habits or addiction to junk foods . Evidence shows it is similar to other eating disorders like compulsive overeating and binge eating disorder. This explains why many people with food addiction find it hard to adhere to healthier diets. They may develop obesity for this reason.
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