Tag Archive | Food Addict

Food Addiction Never Takes a Holiday

Dec28

So if you have a binge eating disorder or a food addiction, pay close attention to this important message. Okay, just having some fun. I’ve been Christmasing in blizzardy, rural Kansas without wireless service for the past 8 days. It was fantastic!!

The truth is, I love the Christmas holidays because they are so festive and happy. I love the spiritual high, the music and I love the food.

I’m not much of a party girl,  so I don’t have to contend with some of the most tempting holiday fare. I do remember those days, though, and how hard it was to turn down the many offers of food and drink.

Now when I’m celebrating at someone else’s house or party,  I take a few precautions that I’ll share with you.

Beware of friends, family, and anyone with a tray of food who try to bully you into eating when you are not hungry. Be nice but beware.

Food addiction and emotional eating run rampant during the holidays because holidays are packed full of feelings. Some of those feelings will bring you happiness and peace. Others will trigger an uncontrollable urge to eat.

Since there’s still another week to go before New Year’s resolutions promise to undo all the “bad stuff” from the holidays, my advice is to have fun. Truly enjoy yourself. You can do that without stuffing your face–at least some of the time.

When you eat in order to gain the approval of someone you love, you both get hurt. You get angry with yourself and build resentment for the food bully. If you want the food and ask for it, that’s another story, and that’s perfectly fine.

Walk your own path. Walk the path that takes you in the direction of your goal. If what you are doing or planning to do will keep you from achieving your goal,  then you are going the wrong way.

If you have a food addiction, treat that with respect. Food addiction is hard enough without feeling that you are required to sabotage yourself and your valiant efforts in order to please someone.

People do things because of who they are, not because of what someone else does. There is no reason you can’t eat, drink, and be merry like anyone else. Unless you are a food addict.

So keep that in mind all through the holidays and the whole year. Enjoy the food and festivities. Eat something “sinful” and enjoy it. Stuff, stuff, stuff with happiness.

Just because food addiction never takes a holiday doesn’t mean you can’t.

Fewer Additives Reduce Food Addictions

Dec16

You’ve probably heard that processed foods contain additives that are believed to have addictive properties. Both nutrition experts and scientists have expressed concern over this, giving food addicts one more thing to worry about.

One way to tackle the situation is to reduce additives in food. How can you control additives in food? Easy. Cook it yourself from scratch so you know exactly what’s in the food you’re eating.

There is plenty of time to prepare a meal for yourself or your family. The problem is that we’ve gotten lazy with so many modern conveniences and a home-cooked meal seems like too much work now.

Why cook when you can pick up something at Wal-Mart for a few bucks, pop it in the microwave, and then have time to talk on your cell phone for two hours?

Sorry if that sounds rough, but if you can remember how great a fresh, healthy meal tastes, you know I’m right.

It’s still a good idea to read labels, but you don’t have to give up the flavor of the foods you enjoy. Getting past your food addiction does require some lifestyle changes.  Make your food user-friendly so you can enjoy it more.

Let me share with you one of my secret formulas for creating healthy, great tasting food.  Vigo Balsalmic Vinegar. That’s it. Here’s how it works.

Meats are acid foods. Spaghetti sauce and anything with a tomato base is acidic. They’re not the only acid foods but let’s start with them because so many people eat them.

Acid-forming foods create mucus in the body and slime up your system. It sounds gross because it is. They form gas and cause bloating.

When you fry meats or fish in grease or oil, the fat changes composition at very high temperatures. Is it any wonder you have heartburn after you eat?

So here is how I use my secret remedy. When I cook spaghetti sauce, I add a quarter of a cup of balsamic vinegar to the sauce.

Instead of frying peppers, I bake them at 350 degrees soaked in balsamic vinegar.  Did you know that there is an acidic oil in peppers? I found out only recently from the Poison Control Center.

When you pour balsamic vinegar over peppers and pop them into the oven, they get a sweet taste as if they’ve been cooked in a sauce. You can eat every one of them without developing heartburn.

Baking chicken, pot roast, pork roast, or fish drenched in balsamic vinegar and adding Mrs. Dash or herb salt, fresh ground pepper or your favorite seasoning gives it that “special sauce” taste. Add some fresh lemon juice to the fish while it’s baking and the sauce it creates is incredible.

Marinate hamburgers in balsamic vinegar before grilling them and you can add mustard, catsup, and onions and enjoy them without gas or a bloated feeling.

Here’s the best part. Even though you are using the same base formula for these dishes, each of them will have its own unique taste. And because you are using your own healthful seasonings, you won’t have to worry about artificial ingredients, dyes, MSG and other additives.

It’s a win-win situation all around. Using balsamic vinegar in this way is a simple, inexpensive way to create delicious meals and start stepping back from your food addictions.

Food Addiction and Emotions

Dec10

Emotional eating has a number of patterns. The most basic one is a reaction pattern of stuffing down feelings of temporary emotional anguish such as sadness or rejection.

Food addiction adds a wrinkle to the emotional eating pattern. Since every food addict has specific foods that are addictive and specific emotions that trigger the overeating, it is important to understand the underlying causes of the addiction.

The emotional triggers can surface at any time so until the underlying cause is identified and healed, steps must be taken to minimize the risk of overeating at the time of these emotional flareups.

One thing you can do is to make sure these foods are not readily available when the overwhelming hunger strikes. If they are, it may take days to break the overeating cycle.

Emotional eaters tend to eat until the feelings are soothed. A person with a food addiction just keeps eating, beyond discomfort and even to the point of pain. There is no emotion to soothe, just a bottomless pit filled with unidentifiable shame.

Shame is a debilitating emotion, powerfully negative and capable of sending anyone on the verge over the edge. The trigger snaps and we eat until we stop eating.

Of course, the best solution is to work with a therapist as well as participating in self-help programs that help you identify the emotional trauma that “started it all”.

The trouble with shame is that it is both the tormentor and protector. Shame and blame are dark twins who rarely travel alone. Learn how to recognize them.

While sorting it all out, try to keep the “danger foods” out of the house. Make it harder to get to them. No stashes in the pantry or the car, and no eating in the bathroom stall.

Set some ground rules, even if only for one week at a time. If you can follow them for one week, then you can set another time goal.

The important thing is to take some kind of action every day that will move you one step closer to a healthier life for yourself.

Emotional Eating When Stress is High

Dec8

There are all kinds of stress, and everyone experiences some stress every day. However, there are certain kinds of stress that can send an emotional eater or a food addict over the edge.

One of those stressors is missing meals, not skipping meals but missing meals. The body needs nourishment at certain intervals. This varies from one person to another because everyone’s body is different.

Hormone levels are different, metabolism is different, and food requirements are different. People feel hungry at different times. Men’s bodies and metabolism are different from women’s.

One thing is constant, the need to eat when your body calls for food. The perfect time to eat is when you first feel the hunger pangs.

Where emotional eating and food addiction are concerned, the importance of eating when you are hungry is critical. If you miss your chance to eat because the meeting  or phone call lasted too long, or you couldn’t get out of some stupid conversation, you’re in for trouble.

Your body will give you a 15 to 30-minute pass and when that’s gone, panic sets in. If the body engaged in self-talk perhaps it would ask, “Am I going to get anything to eat? I’m hungry. How will I survive? Did they forget about me?”

And then the talkback. “Oh, I have an idea. Let’s store some fat just in case they never feed me again. Yeah, that’s the ticket, we’ll pack it on the gut and thighs and rear”.

Then, by the time you do eat,  you feel like you’re starving and your hormones are going nuts, so you eat but the hunger isn’t satisfied, so you keep eating and overeating. Eventually, your blood sugar balances out and you don’t feel hungry any more.

Instead, you feel stuffed and bloated, and very uncomfortable. If this pattern is repeated often enough, you will lose touch with your body’s nutritional needs and eat just to be eating.

It is precisely at times like these that we eat fatty fried foods, cheeses, breads, and high-sugar desserts and snacks. The resulting discomfort is stressful, and the tendency toward emotional eating is greater.

The best remedy in this case is to eat when you’re hungry. Take some food with you so you’ll be prepared. An apple with peanut butter, a tuna fish, turkey, chicken or egg salad sandwich with some pickle and lettuce works well and tastes great.

With so many other things to stress us out, this is one thing that can make it all better. And just wait until you see how much more energy you have.