Tag Archive | Food Addicts

Depression and Food Addiction

Nov19

Here we are closing in on the holidays which should be a happy time. Unfortunately, the holiday season can be one of the most depressing times of year, and is for many people.

Why? Loneliness. Isolation. Overindulgence in under-appreciation. Just plain sadness. I know there shouldn’t be periods after these words and phrases. They are not, after all, actual sentences.

And yet they feel like sentences, the kind a judge imposes on you for doing something wrong. Would there be depression without judgment?

For all our technological advances, we are more isolated than ever. And no matter what people say, virtual relationships are virtually impossible. People need to interact, not interface.

No wonder so many people turn to food when they need comforting. Food addicts are born every day out of isolation and neglect. Depression is so common today that many people accept it as a natural part of everyday life.

But depression is the result of long denied feelings, unaddressed emotions, and a chemical imbalance in the body that is often a result of deeply rooted emotional trauma. Once it moves in, depression is hard to evict.

Emotional eating when you are depressed is fuel on the fire. Eating and overeating can become an absent-minded activity. Before you know it, you’re 20, 30, or 40 pounds overweight.

Add panic to emotional eating and you are heading into the food addiction arena. You stuff down the feelings without evening thinking, because depression makes you numb.

What can you do to break the cycle? During the holidays, there are plenty of things to get you out of the house. First, think of someone other than yourself. Doing something for someone else gets your mind off you and your troubles.

As for activities, there’s ice skating, snowboarding, skiing, and football, hiking, visiting friends and family, football, going to Christmas and New Year’s parties, and football.

There are holiday celebrations, church services, Midnight Mass, caroling, winter festivals, and even the beach if you live here in Florida.

Don’t forget all the volunteering positions available, like feeding the homeless, or helping a community service organization deliver meals to people who otherwise would have a Thanksgiving or Christmas Dinner.

Don’t be absent from the joyful activities the holidays have to offer. Just worry about which ones you’re going to take advantage of, and make healthy eating part of the holiday.

The Holiday Diet

Nov17

I’m sure there must be a special holiday diet for food addicts and emotional eaters, or maybe for overeaters in general. There’s a diet for just about everything else.

It’s stressful to focus on losing a few pounds just because you know you will probably indulge in at least some overeating during the holidays. And what can stress lead to? Overeating, of course.

There are some simple things you can do to help your body survive the holiday food fare. Since many holiday foods are full of fats and sugar, not to mention all the additives and preservatives, try baking something from scratch.

It’s a daring venture but you’ll know exactly how much fat, sugar and salt are in the recipe. You get to choose the quality of the ingredients. Try raw sugar instead of the refined sugar in store bought cookies, candies, cakes and pastries.

One simple thing you can do that although you may not like to is to drink plenty of water.  Water flushes the fat out of the body and does a great job of it at that.

You can dance and other fun activities that burn sugar. If you can burn it off quickly, maybe it won’t end up as stored fat.

Does that mean you can give in to the whims of your food addiction or set aside the daily exercise regimen that keeps your emotional eating in check?

The obvious answer is no. There will be plenty of distractions as it is without adding some nutty new holiday diet to the list.

So instead of making a list of the things you want to avoid, make a shorter list of the things you can commit to during the holidays. Be sure “Have fun” is on the list somewhere.

By keeping your focus on what you can do rather than what you shouldn’t do, you can keep your stress levels in check and send your food addictions on their own holiday.

How the Food Industry Creates Food Addicts

Nov13

A few days ago, I wrote about a book by Dr. David Kessler titled The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite.

Here he is in a YouTube video that offers us a look into the ways the food industry manipulates us. Great information for everybody, not just food addicts and emotional eaters.

New Book for Food Addicts and Overeaters

Nov8

A new book by David Kessler, M.D. is being touted as one that will change forever the way we look at food.

Rodale Books publishes some of the finest books you will read in the field of health and well-being. I should know; I’ve read most of them.

Dr. Kessler’s new book, The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite is certainly worth taking the time to read.

Besides having some great information for emotional eaters, overeaters, people with food addictions, and those whose eating has led to obesity, there are insights in Dr. Kessler’s book that you may not have found elsewhere.

Being heavy, overweight, or obese is very uncomfortable at a number of levels. It isn’t the goal of people with food addictions or problems with emotional eating to be as skinny as a stick, nor should it be.

Learning to manage the discomfort or just making peace with your size at the present moment can make life more livable.  The information in this book can help.

One chapter in the book, Chapter 11  in Part One, particularly caught my attention. It is titled “Emotions Make Food Memorable”.  The title alone speaks volumes.

I got a kick out of its being Chapter 11, a concept and term most often associated with bankruptcy and reorganization. How appropriate to think of a food addiction as bankrupting your health and reorganization as a rescue remedy.

I encourage you to buy the book or get it at the Library. It’s just under $14 on Amazon and only about 250 pages without the acknowledgments, index, etc.

Like food, don’t try to digest it all at once. Read a little each day, or at night before you go to bed. Then write about what you learned in your journal.

As with any other resource, keep an open mind. Don’t accept or reject the ideas. Just use what you can and let the rest go, no judgments.  Maybe it will be meaningful to you later, maybe not. Who cares?

Find something–a phrase, a line, a paragraph–that will inspire you to action today. One action each day to take you in the direction of your goal. That’s 365 actions a year. One day at a time.

Let me know how it goes.