How To Stop Junk Food Addiction

Food Addiction And Eating Disorders

Food addiction may be related to;eating disorders;in some cases, Cohen says.

This may be the case because most food-related disorders are rooted in the binge-restrict cycle: Restriction, such as excessive fasting, inadequate calorie intake or removal of entire food groups, sends the body to believe it is in famine, and ends in episodes of overeating or bingeing.;

A post shared by Rihanna on Oct 7, 2019 at 12:30pm PDT

People make jokes about eating disorders and binge eating, like in the Instagram post above, but it can become a serious problem if the cycle persists.;

Cohen emphasizes that it’s completely natural to use food as a comfort in times of stress and to soothe yourself in moderation. It becomes a problem “when overeating is not connected to an emotional moment but rather is a frequent occurrence, happening time and time again.”;

A key sign of a problem that may point to an eating disorder: thoughts of guilt and shame that accompany overeating, especially after the fact. ;

An eating disorder specialist may say you can’t be addicted to food, Cohen says, explaining that “you can be fooled into thinking you are addicted to food, but that typically comes from a place of restriction and your body’s desire to be fueled.”;

How To Break Food Addiction

Impaired control is a common sight in people with a food addiction, as this study from 2019 indicates. That doesnt mean a food addiction will look the same as a binge eating disorder. It can also manifest in constant snacking or massive portions at mealtimes.;

What anyone with a food addiction should understand and take to heart is that it is not easy to overcome food addiction. It takes an incredible amount of drive and concentration, constantly and potentially for weeks or months at a time, to tackle food cravings and start eating real food instead of the nutritionally bankrupt addictive foods our brain chemistry causes us to fixate on.;

Since everyones brain chemistry is different, their food addictions are typically different too. Its hard to say how to break food addiction definitively for everybody, but here are some hints that should help you along the way:

Psychological Factors: Whats Your Mindset

When we ask clients, most of them say theyre more likely to overeat when theyre feeling stressed, tired, or sad.

Research supports this observation: Stress, depressed mood, anger, boredom, and irritability are common triggers of binge eating.16,24

Binge eating often further triggers feelings of guilt and shame, and these feelings may promote more addictive behaviors.25

Because binge eating and food addiction are associated with challenges regulating emotions,26,27 food can be used as a way to self-medicate and temporarily feel better.

Food addiction is also associated with a history of trauma and abuse, and is found alongside a number of other mental health disorders like depression, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder , psychosis,29 and post-traumatic stress disorder .30

Although many people think of addictive eating as a form of self-sabotage, heres a more compassionate, useful way to think about it:

For the person struggling, food is simply a safe place, a comfort to turn to when life feels overwhelming.

You May Like: How To Cure An Addictive Personality

Create A Safe Compassionate And Encouraging Environment

If a client comes to you with some deep stuff, dont feel like you have to figure out their childhood or fix their biology.

Instead, focus on understanding their current situation, helping them feel safe, and developing a trusting relationship.

The best ways to do that? Practice empathy and active listening.

Because people with food addiction and binge eating disorder may be more sensitive to reward,33,34,35 coaches can also help reward clients in more affirming ways.

Meaning: Give them lots of praise. Celebrate every win you see.

And if a client comes to you feeling shame over a certain behavior or feeling, reassure them that this isnt evidence of their inadequacy. Missteps and imperfections are human. Feeling sensitive to them is just a sign that they want to do better for themselves.

Push Through Withdrawal Symptoms

Withdrawal symptoms may include depression grief, anxiety, edginess, and antisocial behavior. Everything addictive food makes us feel will be gone, and if the dependency was prolonged it can feel like a literal hole in the center of your being. Powering through withdrawal symptoms is not easy, in fact, its probably the most difficult part. But having loved ones, friends, and professionals there to help you will make it easier. To truly push through the withdrawal symptoms, though, requires quitting addictive food completely, cold turkey, and maintaining an absolute resolve that it wont return.;

Also Check: Why Do You Get Addicted To Nicotine

How To Stop Junk Food Addiction

By Holly Klamer, RDResearched Based Article

For many people, a diet based on junk food is a way of life.; Whilst they are aware of the repercussions for their health, they often feel that they are incapable of changing their way of eating.

These people usually know what types of food they should be putting into their bodies, however, they are powerless to make these changes, relying instead on a constant fix of fat and sugar to get them through the day.; As with alcohol, or stronger drugs, addiction to junk food can be an incredibly dangerous situation for our health.

There Is A Spectrum Of Susceptibility To Junk Food And Refined Food

Telling yourself to just have a little bit of toxic trigger food is like telling a drug addict to have a little bit of heroin or telling an addicted smoker to smoke less, or telling an alcoholic to just drink one drink per day.

For some people, this would work to ration the amount of toxic food. If they have had a healthy diet most of their life and are genetically just not inclined to notice food very much some people can eat only one potato chip or just one cookie and be slim all their lives. But this is at the low end of the bell curve.

Most people fall somewhere in the middle. Medium to high susceptibility. When you look at who is still slender, it is either young people who are not fat yet or a few rare individuals who are not sensitive.

If you are not an alcoholic, for instance, you can have one drink a day, and it is no big deal. If you are not sensitive to refined foods, you might be able to have refined foods once in a while.

There are a few people who are not that interested in food, and they stay thin eating a mostly healthy diet with little bits of junk food thrown in.

Moderation doesnt work for many people

If you look around any place there are humans, you will see many fat people who cannot use restraint when it comes to junk food and just a few thin people who may be on diets, or they may still be young enough and active enough that it hasnt caught up with them yet.

Also Check: How To Cope With Addiction

Eat Your Food Dont Drink It

Chewing your food helps get rid of junk food cravings because you experience your food more slowly. It also helps supply the natural enzymes from your saliva for digestion by chewing thoroughly. Try going without smoothies, protein powders, and juicing for a couple of weeks and see how you feel.

Eating whole food causes your metabolism to increase in order to digest the high-fiber plant material.

Studies have been done on smoothies and juicing as opposed to eating tons of high fiber whole plants. They found that a whole plant-based diet caused neurogenesis in adults by stimulating the hippocampus and the olfactory bulb, which is new brain cells growing!

Interestingly, food texture also has an impact on AHN ; rats fed with a soft diet, as opposed to a solid/hard diet, exhibit decreased hippocampal progenitor cell proliferation. The authors hypothesize that chewing resulting in cell proliferation is related to corticosterone levels. Interestingly, independent studies have shown impairment in learning and memory abilities with similar soft diets.

Darn it! It was so easy and efficient to blend and juice everything.

Is Junk Food Bad For You

Saturated fats

Eating foods rich in saturated fats can increase your cholesterol levels and the amount of plaque in your blood vessels. If you have blood vessels that are stiffening and not moving blood effectively, you have a higher risk for heart disease, including heart attacks and strokes, says Czerwony.

Sugars

Too much sugar in your diet can lead to weight gain, a risk factor for diabetes. Some animal studies also suggest that artificial sweeteners make our bodies resist insulin. This may also increase the likelihood of developing prediabetes, diabetes and heart disease.

Most Americans are walking around with prediabetes, putting them at risk for developing Type 2 diabetes, Czerwony adds. Once you have diabetes, doctors treat you as if youve already had a heart attack because the rate of heart disease is so much higher. All of these health issues affect all the organs, so its important to get a handle on them.

Also Check: How To Get Over Phone Addiction

Mood Anxiety & Depression

Short term

Eating too much sugar may increase your risk of mood disorders, including depression, & high intakes of unhealthy, processed carbohydrates, such as white bread, pizza, pasta, and pastries, cause blood sugars to rise and fall rapidly causing violent mood swings, stress, and anger.

Long term

This increased the risk of mood disorders such as depression and anger.

Practice Mindful And Intuitive Eating

Becoming aware of the thoughts and feelings we have is half the battle of shifting to a more beneficial mindset.

Consciousness or awareness is a powerful tool, simply put it’s the act of being conscious of something or an action.

With less and less time to take a moment to check-in with ourselves and how we are feeling, developing mindful practices will help us understand when we are feeling satisfied and connect with our internal hunger cues to prevent over eating.;

Eating consciously means adopting more mindful or intuitive practices in your life and getting curious about how you feel when you are craving a particular food.;

Research suggests that mindful and intuitive eating may help you learn to trust your body by slowing down and checking in with yourself, your environment, and your food .

Building conscious awareness around your relationship with food also means checking in with other areas that affect your wellness.;

This is one of the reasons mindful eating and intuitive eating practices are being used as tools in eating disorder recovery, as they help increase self-awareness .;

Read Also: What Makes You An Addict

How To Know If You Are Craving Junk Food And Mindless Eating

Look at the statements below and check off any that apply to you:;

• I often zone out when I am eating and graze on food, especially eating late at night.
• I ignore my hunger until I am ‘hangry’ or famished and try to skip meals.
• I often do other things when I eat and multitask.
• I eat in front of the TV and usually ignore the taste of the food.
• I go for a lot of convenient foods, and fast-foods; nothing else seems to satisfy.
• When I’m emotional I tend to eat or skip meals.;

If any of the statements above resonated with you then you probably understand what its like to crave junk food or eat mindlessly; if none of them resonated but you still feel like you struggle what you eat thats 100% valid as well, we all have unwanted habits we want to change.;

There is no universal right way to eat; we all metabolize food differently and have individualized lifestyles. We can explore what works well for our bodies and build a meal plan to suite our personal health and wellness goals.;

Cravings;can often be the result of food restriction or from not eating enough in general; poor nutrition intake, emotions, and stress can also impact your cravings .;

If we are not consciously connected to how we feel, our motivation, and our strengths then our actions and choices become mindless; cravings can be a manifestation of mindless eating.;

First Steps In Overcoming Food Addiction

A few things can help prepare for giving up junk foods and make the transition easier:

• Trigger foods. Write down a list of the foods that cause cravings and/or binges. These are the trigger foods to avoid completely.
• Fast food places. Make a list of fast food places that serve healthy foods and note their healthy options. This may prevent a relapse when hungry and not in the mood to cook.
• What to eat. Think about what foods to eat preferably healthy foods that are liked and already eaten regularly.
• Pros and cons. Consider making several copies of the pro-and-con list. Keep a copy in the kitchen, glove compartment, and purse or wallet.

Additionally, dont go on a diet. Put weight loss on hold for at least 13 months.

Overcoming food addiction is difficult enough. Adding hunger and restrictions to the mix is likely to make things harder.

After taking these preparatory steps, set a date in the near future like the coming weekend from which point onward the addictive trigger foods wont be touched again.

SUMMARY

To overcome food addiction, its important to plan. Make a list of trigger foods and know what is going to be eaten instead.

Recommended Reading: What Is The Most Addictive Illegal Drug

The Most Addictive Foods

The foods that people are most likely to compulsively overeat tend to have something in common: A powerful combination of carbohydrates and fat.

You wont find many examples of this irresistible combo in nature. For example, rice is high in carbohydrates but low in fat, while nuts are high in fat but have minimal carbs. But processed food companies can mix ingredients and chemically exaggerate flavors to create taste sensations so appealing that you keep wanting more.

In a study where researchers asked people what foods they were most likely to overeat, some of the most common responses were:

• Chocolate.
• Cheeseburgers.

Ways To Stop Cravings For Unhealthy Foods And Sugar

Food cravings are the dieters worst enemy.

These are intense or uncontrollable desires for specific foods, stronger than normal hunger.

The types of foods that people crave are highly variable, but these are often processed junk foods that are high in sugar.

Cravings are one of the biggest reasons why people have problems losing weight and keeping it off.

Here are 11 simple ways to prevent or stop unhealthy food and sugar cravings.

Also Check: What Makes People Addicted To Drugs

How To Beat It

Theres no quick fix or magic pill ;to make you stop wanting sugar or foods that you crave. Ultimately, you crave;what you regularly feed yourself. So the only way to reduce your cravings is to take a break. If you regularly have something sweet to eat after dinner, its very natural for you to always feel like eating something sweet after dinner. Youre in a bad habit, thats all. Research has shown that fasting particular foods doesnt increase the cravings like it does with true drug addiction, it actually reduces them.

Changing your habits and behaviour is hard work. So you need to get prepared. Here are are few tips to help you beat the sugar high and get in control of your eating.

Create A Meal Plan You Enjoy

Making a change to your diet is also making a change to your mindset and is ultimately self-care; take it a step further and plan to start a meal prep routine or pre-planning some meals ahead of time.;

Free yourself from junk food by creating habits that are sustainable and fuel your lifestyle . Most people make poor food choices when they find themselves out in the world, hungry without a plan and being so hungry that you’re ‘hangry’ is a real thing.;

There are a ton of diets out there, paleo, keto, vegan, whole-foods, flexitarian; whatever you choose remember it’s not about what you call your diet. Plan your nourishment around your health and wellness goals.

Partner with a registered dietician, health-coach and/or nutritionist to increase your knowledge and awareness, and tailor your nutrition to meet your individual needs.

Try meal prep for easy weekly planning.

Also Check: How To Stop Addictive Behavior

Isnt It Down To Willpower

We often beat ourselves up for giving in to our junk food cravings, but its no accident that these foods are so hard to resist. The food industry engineer foods to taste the best they possibly can with the goal of overriding our internal stop signals and encouraging us to buy more.

So whats the winning formula? If theres one man to thank for figuring out what makes us reach for another slice, its Howard Moskowitz, an American market researcher known for creating addictive flavour combinations that fly off the shelves.

The story of how food giants refuse to listen to concerns about obesity, and how junk food is engineered by individuals like Moskowitz to evoke maximum pleasure, is set out in this New York Times article.

Key points:

• Resisting junk food cravings is not a case of willpower.

Overcome Addiction To Junk Foods

Edited by Nerissa Avisado, Jonathan, Lynn, Eng and 3 others

5 Parts:

Eating snacks during a football game or a movie is considered normal junk food consumption. That bag of delicious chips paired with the perfect dip, topped off with a thirst quenching soda sounds like the perfect combo for these scenarios, however, where does one draw the line between healthy or normal junk food consumption and junk food addiction?

This article focuses on identifying junk foods, determining the different signs of junk food addiction and how to overcome addiction to junk foods.

Ingesting snacks like chips, pizza, french fries, donuts and such, has become a regular part of life for a lot of individuals. Experts are firm believers in the saying “Everything is good in moderation”. Eating a slice of pizza or some ice cream once in a while is okay; however, when this is done regularly and when combined with other junk foods, it can be a problem.

Also Check: How Does Rehab Help Drug Addicts