A Food Addiction Can Happen Suddenly and Quickly
Food addictions are one of the 6 most dangerous addictions in modern society and need to be treated seriously before you endanger your health. A food addiction starts out with some harmless food binges and that can turn into rampant obesity very quickly. You would be surprised of the stories people have about how quickly things can go wrong.
Food Addiction Warning Signs
1. Cravings
You can’t get enough of certain kinds of food, which is okay unless you act on those desires. Food is only enjoyable when consumed in moderation.
2. Food Tolerance
You’ve eaten so much food that you’ve gained a tolerance to it. You now eat for the endorphin rush, rather than for fuel and enjoyment.
3. Hoarding Food
There’s plenty of food for everyone. The impulse to hoard as much food as you can indicates a serious food addiction.
4. Getting Stuffed
You should eat to the point where you are satisfied but not to the point where you feel guilty afterward. Before you get to that “full” feeling is the point where you stop.
5. No Self-Control
Part of conquering an addiction is showing restraint, and food is no different. Be pickier with the types of foods you eat, and track how much calories you consume.
6. Processed Foods
Processed foods have a lot of extra sugar and artificially enhanced ingredients. They are especially addiction-causing and should be eaten sparingly.
7. Always Planning to Eat
Eat to live; don’t live to eat. Food serves a specific purpose, and that purpose doesn’t include comforting yourself and fulfilling your impulses.
8. Regular Buffet Trips
Regular trips to the buffet can take a toll on your weight. It’s also blocking your self-control from over-indulging. You never know when to stop eating at a buffet.
Food is one of the best parts of living, in my opinion. But there is a fine line between indulging your urges and abusing a plentiful resource. Here in America, there is plenty of food for everyone; we are lucky. But it can also be a curse, as seen with the obesity epidemic stemming from the country’s poor eating habits. There are becoming more food addicts, and this is causing people to gain acceptance for overeating.
So What Can I Do About my Food Addiction? Is There a Food Addiction Recovery Plan for People Who Can’t Stop Binge Eating?
The key to overcoming food addiction is to understand the 8 warning signs of a developing food addiction. The best cure is prevention. The more you eat, the harder it gets.
1. Cravings Immediately After Just Eating
The hallmark of an eating addiction is where someone loses track of the last time they ate and already feels hungry again after stuffing themselves very recently. There are either two possibilities: you have an intestinal tapeworm, or you have a food addiction. The right eating schedule is one where meals are spaced apart every 4 or 5 hours at the very least. Constant snacking and forgetting the times when you ate prior are a sign of bad things to come.
2. Food Doesn’t Taste as Good Anymore
An addiction to food can be predicted in advance from your taste-buds. Have you noticed that delicious foods always taste the best the very first time you have them? Then if you keep having the same thing, it tastes less good. Yet you want more. That is a food addiction: where you gain a tolerance to a certain food. People who are obese often complain about foods not tasting the same way they used to when they didn’t have a food addiction. Their taste-buds have degraded to the point where foods are tasteless and unsatisfying. Their addiction has caused them to seek the pleasure of the very first time they tried a hamburger by having more of them more often, as an example.
3. Hoarding Food
Part of food addiction recovery is eliminating the behaviors that caused the addiction in the first place. Hoarding food is a habit of many, and reaches unhealthy levels when someone hoards all foods within their reach. They have a fridge, freezer, and cabinets filled to the brim with food. They have all this food available to them and easy to access. When they are in a bad mood, they will eat. When they are in a good mood, they will eat. They will eat when they are bored. A food addiction recovery involves making food a reward. You cannot make food a right, you should make it a privilege to be thankful for. Some people are hoarding food while others are starving.
4. Eating to Fullness Rather than Enjoyment
That feeling of being ‘stuffed’ is never a good feeling when we did nothing to earn it. We feel guilty about it. Yet, the next time we eat we do it again. Why? Because the endorphins we get from the rush of our addiction is causing us to overeat. Dealing with food addiction isn’t rocket science. Eat slowly, enjoy the food, and finish your meal. Don’t ask for seconds and don’t bite off more than you can chew. Small portions and eating to the point before fullness is how to tame your food addiction.
5. Lack of Self-Restraint
Perhaps you love chocolate and you can’t resist at each and every opportunity you have to have some. This shows a lack of control and could steer you towards addiction. Especially foods high in sugar. You must be careful and practice self-restraint before developing an eating problem. As a suggestion: try fasting for a day. Don’t eat until dinner, and see what happens. You won’t die, I promise. But you will have shown some self-restraint. And that is how to avoid food addiction.
6. The Majority of Your Diet Consists of Processed Foods
Junk foods are cheap and abundant, which is a problem for food addicts. Sometimes the food we buy at supermarkets is not as healthy as you think, either. Processed foods made with cheap corn ingredients and enriched flour are not only bad for our health, but have many addictive properties. Those sugars and empty carbs spike our blood insulin and give us an artificial rush. We are then left wanting more. They make us full for a little while, but provide no real nutrition. As a result, we eat more than we need to. Avoid processed foods at all costs as part of a food addiction recovery plan.
7. You are Always Making Plans to Eat
Breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, late night snack. People make plans to eat, when really you should fit eating around your life. If you skip a meal every here and there, it’s not a bad thing. It means you have a busy lifestyle and eating is an important but not always necessary part of your life. You are also wasting a lot of time trying to decide where to eat and what to eat hours before it’s even lunchtime.
8. Too Many Buffets
You might need food addiction help if you go to a buffet every day. Buffets allow easy access to unlimited amounts of food; usually foods with high calorie-counts. These places are not meant to eat at regularly. Buffets are a dangerous place for people with food addictions. I recommend buffets once every 1-2 months, that’s it. And show self-restraint in the kinds of foods you eat. The salad bars at buffets are usually neglected.
