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Sleep Deprivation Plays a Role in Food Addiction

Feb12

Why is it so hard for women to lose weight, and so easy to gain “emotional weight”? Well, it has a lot to do with hormones. And sleep.

If you don’t get enough sleep, you will have a problem with two very important hormores: Leptin and Ghrelin.

Leptin makes you feel satisfied. It’s the shutoff valve that tells your brain you’re not hungry anymore. Ghrelin, on the other hand, stimulates hunger.

Our physical bodies live on energy. When the body is hungry, it needs food. Food gives energy. When the body is tired, it needs sleep. Sleep gives energy, too.

Sleep allows the body to recuperate from the stress of the day. When you go for days without sufficient sleep, hormones become imbalanced and brain signals get mixed up.

The body needs energy, plain and simple. Sleep deprivation, the prolonged absence of deep healing sleep, puts an incredible amount of strain on the body.

Energy is in motion all the time, inflow and outflow. If the body can’t get the energy it needs from one source, it will get it from another.

When you have too much Ghrelin in your system due to a consistent lack of sleep, you will feel real hunger and crave food, while not being able to satisfy your appetite, no matter how much you eat.

That’s because the body doesn’t want food. It wants sleep.

There are hormones in your body you probably have never heard of. When our hormones are all in balance, there are no blood sugar problems, no hunger, no stress, no food addictions, and no destructive emotions.

Nothing takes the place of sleep. No anxiety drug will do the trick, and it doesn’t matter if “it’s not your fault”. It’s not anybody’s fault, It’s just how things work.

You need the energy you get from sleep, and lowering your Ghrelin levels will help you lose fat and maintain a healthier lifestyle.

Recently, I have begun to stop evaluating my day at night. Instead, I evaluate it the following morning when I am much clearer and more prepared to take action, rather than allowing the process to disturb my sleep.

I practice recognizing when I am tired. As bedtime nears, the moment I feel tired, I close up whatever I am doing, run a hot bath and prepare for bed.

This small ritual has allowed me to sleep for five and sometimes even six uninterrupted hours on some nights–not every night, but more often than before.

My health is improving and the fat is gradually disappearing. It kind of gives the phrase, “sleeping it off” a whole new meaning.

It’s Never Too Late to Be Great!

Stress is a Food Addict’s Worst Nightmare

Feb11

Stress is what gets a food addict going. Plain and simple. That’s what emotional eating is all about. That’s how you get hooked. That’s how you get fat.

Getting fat makes you more stressed and so you eat as a coping mechanism. The stress gets worse as you lie to yourself about how much better you feel and tell yourself that things will be better now that you are calm.

But they aren’t. And they never will be until you learn to let go. Learn to let things be what they are, no matter what that may be. And learn that you don’t need to control everything to make your life work.

Food addictions aren’t like drug addictions and other types of addictions. You get second chances and third chances. In fact, you get chances all the time to get over your addiction. You can make friends with food. You can never make friends with drugs or alcohol, or sex if you allow it to control your life.

That’s what an addiction does. It controls your life. With a food addiction, you can take back control. You don’t need pills. You may need therapy.

You definitely need love , especially self-love, and support from people who accept you for who you are but allow you to change and are willing to be uncomfortable while you do it.

Food addictions and emotional eating–they are coping mechanisms, that’s all. When you learn to cope in other ways, you won’t need to stuff down your feelings with junk food.

You will respect your body because it is where the Authentic You lives, and you when respect yourself, you take care of You. Only then will others respect you.

What do you want the outcome of your life to be? For today? For this week? For this month? For this year?

Who do you want you to be? That’s all you have to think about. Not what others think you should do. Not what they approve of or don’t. Your life is about you. You are the star of your life.

Stress will always be present in good forms and not so good forms. Change is uncomfortable but it moves us forward.

Whatever you need to reach your goal or achieve the outcome you desire, be it short term or long term, the Universe will give you the resources to get there.

Your best life is one big leap of faith. Sometimes we make it to the other side and sometimes we don’t. But it’s nothing to be afraid of. Things have a way of working out.

Take the leap. Follow your heart. You’ll find that your stress will fall away and joy will creep back into your heart.

And you won’t crave food. You’ll crave life.

It’s never too late to be great.

One Day Fast Can Calm Your Stress

Feb9

One of the things I have found to be a great help in curbing my food addictions and lowering my stress levels is fasting.

I don’t go overboard with it but there are times when things get so stressful that digesting food is just one more chore for my weary body to perform. So I give it a break.

On Fridays I drink Welch’s Grape Juice in any quantity I desire while consuming my usual 64 ounces to one gallon of water throughout the day.

At first, there might be a twinge of hunger, but usually not. If there is, the hunger soon passes as the grape juice and water fast calm my nerves and settle my stomach.

I have hypoglycemia so there are medical arguments why grape juice, which has a high sugar content, should not be consumed. However, Welch’s Grape Juice is a very pure food and perfect for a one-day fast.

For the past thirty years, I have practiced this stress-buster with great success and without incident.

Most significantly, my energy level throughout the day is remarkable. I feel great.

I do not crave foods because I do not get emotionally out of balance. Being able to free myself of preparing meals, digesting meals, and making food-related decisions allows me to relax and enjoy the day.

I may choose to have a light dinner around 6:00 p.m. as I usually get hungry by then, not having eaten any solid food since the night before.

In any case, I get to enjoy a calm day. I don’t worry about exercising, doing a lot of errands, getting involved in emotional situations, and self-stressing. I don’t think about food addictions. I just enjoy the day.

It’s a simple thing, and it works for me. Maybe it will work for you, too.

Food Addiction and Exercise

Apr8

Today I joined a gym. I’m tired of being overweight so I signed up for a 16-week program at a gym that is only a couple of miles from my home. Then I went home and binged, but only slightly.

My life has been particularly stressful the last two years and the binge eating isn’t helping anymore. At first there is some feeling of relief, and that may last for some people, but it isn’t working for me anymore.

Being overweight makes part of you fade away. Even though you take up more space, you feel invisible. It’s a very emotional experience that gets more stressful as you gain more weight.

Some people can go on an emotional eating binge now and then, put on a few pounds and then take them off. But for a person with a food addiction, those emotional upsets always seem out of proportion as do the binges that follow.

I walked on my treadmill almost every day for the past three or four years. Recently I was injured and missed almost six months, then it was the flu for two weeks, and now the tread has started slipping.

There are diets, exercises, weight loss programs, and pills that promise a flat tummy or toned backside in some short period of time. Then you see the women in bikinis, sleeveless dresses, all  smiles.

If they can do it, why can’t you, you ask yourself. And so you give it a half-hearted try and lose a few pounds.

Then something unpleasant happens and the food addict will likely give in to a binge because that’s what we do when the stress of imagining oneself in good shape, happy, enjoying ourselves in a social situation is too intimidating, too overwhelming.

So let’s see how the gym experience goes. Perhaps the exercise will prove a good substitute for overeating in times of stress.

We shall see.