15 Symptoms Of A Food Addiction (and what to do about it)
P.S.: if you are on a diet or just “eating healthy”, this is for you
The sun is streaming in through the window. You roll over and blearily open your eyes.
Immediately, a mild stomach ache hits you.
“Not again!”, you groan internally. You remember the compulsive overeating episode from last night. Damn the people who said a night’s sleep makes everything better!
It clearly didn’t —
You still remember gorging on the pack of cookies and not able to put them down despite manically willing yourself to. It’s like your hands had a mind of their own. “Chomp, chomp, chomp,” went your mouth in response and even before you knew it, the pack was empty.
All the while, you were just watching, hating yourself, feeling out of control and helpless.
You don’t really have that much time to wallow in self-pity so you wake up to get ready for work.
As you walk to the bathroom, you sneak in a sideways look into the mirror and audibly sigh at the size of your tummy. Being the eternal optimist that you are, you tell yourself that today is a new day and a new chance to give the diet another shot. That today, you will have the discipline and willpower to stay the course.
Oh boy! I can so relate to this! I was here barely 18 months ago, stuck in a hole so deep I almost stopped seeing the light. My relationship with food had grown so dysfunctional from years of dieting and poor body image but I didn’t even know it!
Acknowledging it was the first step to healing.
Are You Addicted To Food?
If you resonate with most of these, then food is occupying too much of your mind space.
- You are anal about “eating healthy”. You justify it to yourself by thinking that it’s not a diet. Who diets in 2018, right?
- You’ve tried many different diet approaches over the years — low carb, paleo, keto, elimination — everything works for a while but nothing seems to stick.
- You think about food all the time — what you can and cannot eat, what you want to eat but shouldn’t eat, what you wish you could eat but won’t since it doesn’t fit into your healthy eating plan.
- You look at skinny people around you eating far more and wonder if you are missing a magic trick, or if it’s just genetics.
- You refuse to accept that genes play a big role — for if they did, you have no chance do you?
- You try to pick restaurants with healthy menu options so you can continue eating healthy. But you can’t resist the dessert or the fries if someone else at the table orders it. What starts with one bite, one taste ends up as finishing half the portion.
- You eat too fast! Most of the time you’re done eating before you know it — you can finish your lunch in 7 minutes tops. Try to chew for a minute before you swallow and tell me if that’s hard for you!
- You need to keep eating when you’re at a bar or a restaurant. You can’t just still and chat. Even when you are at home, unless you’re completely engrossed, you find yourself walking into the kitchen.
- You get cravings where you so desperately, right at this moment need that food (chocolate anyone?!?) and you’ll holler at anyone who gets in your way of getting it.
- You have foods that you can’t seem to avoid eating no matter how much you decide otherwise — chips, cookies, ice cream. Ugh! They’ll be the death of me.
- You manage to stick to your healthy eating plan all day but the moment you get home, all willpower seems to go out of the window. You eat a big dinner and snack all the way to midnight until you sleep, sick that you have no self-control.
- You workout to crazy exhaustion because it helps you feel like you’ve done something to burn off all those excess calories
- You consume tons of information about the next new diet or superfood. Your Instagram feed is filled with picture perfect Buddha bowls and avocados. You know what’s good for you and you eat it, but the weight just doesn’t want to drop off.
- You need a sugar pick me up every few hours or you get brain fog and can’t work — maybe a banana on a good day, and damn Brianna’s birthday ‘cos you couldn’t say no to cake the next day.
- You look at the “before” and “after” weight loss pictures on Instagram and wonder that if all these people could do it, why aren’t you being able to?
How To Start Quitting Your Addiction?
If you resonated with these statements, then you are addicted to food.
It’s this addiction that is causing your weight to stick and the midnight cravings.
You don’t need to change your diet or exercise to see progress, you don’t need more discipline or will-power — you need to wean yourself away from the addictive power of food.
Get started with these 3 simple steps:
1. Accept that you’re addicted to food.
For some people this is difficult because we perceive addiction as being something negative.
In this case, it doesn’t mean that you have an eating disorder or that you’re a binge eater. It just means that you’ve dieted for so long that you physically and mentally cannot dissociate food from yourself.
To fix a dysfunctional relationship, you’ve gotta make it functional first don’t you?
2. Acknowledge that you need to do something different.
If the same diet or healthy eating approach wasn’t working for so long, what makes you think it’s going to work now? Your willpower? Your optimism?
C’mon!
Once you accept that status quo is not working, only then can you start looking for a solution that does work. I promise there is one.
3. Educate yourself about the new solution
Food in your life is not just about what you eat, it occupies a much more prominent space in everything you do.
- Biologically, there are cravings that you cannot resist — we need to tackle that.
- Mentally, you are thinking about dieting and food all the time — that needs to change too.
- Physically, we are exposed to food porn, advertising all the damn time! We seek more information to learn but it’s just a sensory overload for us.
- Emotionally, food is comfort, solace and peace. Food doesn’t judge, food is emotion and food is love. How then can we be rational around food without losing our love for it? We need to learn this too.
Start by learning how to tackle these — there are some free resources here to get you started.
It’s not going to be easy, but you already know that.
You’re prepared to work hard if only it’ll take you to the light.
So what are you waiting for? Let’s begin!
