food addiction - how do you manage?

Sarah_HA81

I have severe food addiction. If it's in my house, I eat it. I hide to eat because i'm embarassed If I eat 1 cookie, i'll eat the whole package. I think about junk food constantly. I even dream about food and wake up wanting whatever I was dreaming about. I really need help. I have found a bland, consistant diet that I eat like clockwork helps me, if i can stick to it. I just give in come night. If it were up to me, i would clear the house of everything but those foods, but I have family. Any suggestions/support are appreciated.

kittykat1994

I was rubbish at not eating everything until I started planning my meals a head of time, usually the night before.

Having sort of a food schedule and eating 4 times a day stops me hitting the cupboards and eating everything.

I never started losing weight until I did this and upped my calories to 1500 plus exercise.

RachelRuns9

Order some books from amazon or the library about eating disorders and food addiction and also consider a therapist. Just learn all you can about the topic so you can try to identify why you're doing it & how to stop. Good luck! You can do it

AllOutof_Bubblegum

You're not actually addicted. Addiction connotes a physical dependence on the abuse of a substance.

That said, it does sound like you have an unhealthy relationship with food that needs to be addressed before it develops into an eating disorder of some type or another. I recommend seeking professional counseling to get to root of why you feel the psychological need for food all the time, and work on fixing it.

Good luck.

Acg67

I have severe food addiction. If it's in my house, I eat it. I hide to eat because i'm embarassed If I eat 1 cookie, i'll eat the whole package. I think about junk food constantly. I even dream about food and wake up wanting whatever I was dreaming about. I really need help. I have found a bland, consistant diet that I eat like clockwork helps me, if i can stick to it. I just give in come night. If it were up to me, i would clear the house of everything but those foods, but I have family. Any suggestions/support are appreciated.

So you can eat some foods perfectly fine in moderation but seems to lack the ability to eat hyper palatable foods in moderation? Hmmm

Sarah_HA81

i weigh and measure my healthy food. I make myself eat it. It isn't something I crave. Although I have binged on the healthy stuff, it doesn't happen as often.

Branstin

If you truly have an eating disorder then you need to seek professional help. If you have bad eating habits then you need to decide if you truly want to change and become healthy.

craftywitch_63

I was rubbish at not eating everything until I started planning my meals a head of time, usually the night before.

Having sort of a food schedule and eating 4 times a day stops me hitting the cupboards and eating everything.

I never started losing weight until I did this and upped my calories to 1500 plus exercise.

^^^^ This. I don't use the TDEE method because I like to plan my daily meals ahead of time and I can't do that with the TDEE method, so I went to Scooby.com, got a hard-and-fast number of calories, then I plan my meals a day or two in advance. I eat 1655 calories/day, weigh/measure and log everything! Even if I go over. Even if I go WAY over! That makes me accountable. I eat six times a day at scheduled times, roughly every 3 hours whether I am hungry or not. Hunger is a trigger for me.

One of the things I use to break the food addiction cycle: When I do eat more/something that I'd not planned, I log it, then I shrug it off. For me, the cycle was:

Overeat -> guilt -> decreasing self-esteem, self-judgement as a "bad" person -> and repeat. I had to break the cycle somewhere so I decided to break the cycle at guilt. When I overeat I still want to judge myself, so I tell myself (sometimes out loud which is okay when I'm alone . . . :laugh: ) that it is what it is, I'm over it and I'm going to go back to my life. I don't try to "make up for it" at the gym or the next day or in any way acknowledge that I've done something "wrong" or "bad" because when I do - the cycle starts all over again.

craftywitch_63

You're not actually addicted. Addiction connotes a physical dependence on the abuse of a substance.

That said, it does sound like you have an unhealthy relationship with food that needs to be addressed before it develops into an eating disorder of some type or another. I recommend seeking professional counseling to get to root of why you feel the psychological need for food all the time, and work on fixing it.

Good luck.

Even physicians are beginning to see that overeating, especially fatty, sugary foods, can be addicting. The brain of those of us with an addiction actually has the same changes as those addicted to cocaine, gambling, sex and ETOH. This does not mean that we should shirk responsibility for overeating any more than a drug, ETOH, sex or gambling addict should, it simply gives us a new tool with which to fight the addiction.

http://www.timberlineknolls.com/eating-disorder/compulsive-over-eating/signs-effects

Peer-reviewed research articles:
http://nutrition.highwire.org/content/139/3/617.short
http://jn.nutrition.org/content/139/3/620.short

Recent findings: Recent work on food use disorders has demonstrated that the same neurobiological pathways that are implicated in drug abuse also modulate food consumption, and that the body's regulation of food intake involves a complex set of peripheral and central signaling networks. Moreover, new research indicates that rats can become addicted to certain foods, that men and women may respond differently to external food cues, and that the intrauterine environment may significantly impact a child's subsequent risk of developing obesity, diabetes, and hypercholesterolemia.

Summary: First, work presented in this review strongly supports the notion that food addiction is a real phenomenon. Second, although food and drugs of abuse act on the same central networks, food consumption is also regulated by peripheral signaling systems, which adds to the complexity of understanding how the body regulates eating, and of treating pathological eating habits. Third, neurobiological research reviewed here indicates that traditional pharmacological and behavioral interventions for other substance-use disorders may prove useful in treating obesity.
Retrieved from: http://journals.lww.com/co-clinicalnutrition/Abstract/2010/07000/Neurobiology_of_food_addiction.3.aspx

SJGVance

If you don't have support (from your family), it's more likely to fail. That is asking so much from them, I know, and it also makes you feel guilty. However, it would be good for them as well, as those foods are never good for you. I have just the opposite problem. I love dinner meals. I used to make too much food to have as leftover, so that I wouldn't have to cook. But all of us adults would get into the fridge overnight, and those leftovers would be pretty much gone. When my body is missing some sort of nutrient, I will eat and eat and eat, and even crave things. You could be doing that as well, and then turned it into something with your mind, making you feel like you have to eat those things. I am learning to discipline myself. I have a day or two a week where I cheat and eat whatever I want. I will weigh myself every day to make myself feel guilty so that maybe next cheat day, I won't do AS bad. I'm still loosing weight. I recently dropped 2-4 Java Monsters a day, and lost 2 pounds in 3 freaking days. I'm not going to keep myself entirely away from them, because that will make me feel like the end of the world lol.

virlomix

I would go to a doctor/psychiatrist, you could have binge eating disorder which is treatable with meds like Topamax. Seek professional help. No need to go at it alone.