Are you addicted to sugar/carbs? other foods? (#foodie friday)

I can tell you that food addictions can be overcome…it’s taken many years of paying attention to what I eat and learning what my body needs but I no longer crave foods, nor do I ever overeat…meaning I have no DESIRE to overeat…it’s pretty phenomenally wonderful.

Granted the psych meds were the most foundational problem with my insane weight gain. (see pics here) Also there is a page on Psych Meds and Fat here. That said, I eat better now and I certainly had issues with my body image and over-eating prior to psych meds even if I did have a normal weight. My relationship with food is really healthy now. It’s been a long but well-worth it process. I have eliminated all processed sugar and most grains. Really I’ve eliminated all grains. The “grains” I eat on occasion are more accurately termed “seeds.” The pseudo-grains, quinoa and buckwheat, are, again, seeds.

I’ve now lost 82 lbs of the 95 lbs I gained. It’s important I think to underscore the fact that I never set out to lose weight. I only set out to get healthy. With that being the motivation I can honestly say that the process of learning to eat well for my body has been an adventure. I have not generally ever felt deprived even while I cut out many foods because of the fact that it was a long learning process…one that involved coming to deeply love and respect my body. I became committed to becoming profoundly healthy. Most weight-loss diets do NOT have this in mind and that is why they don’t work most of the time. Eating low calorie fake foods just doesn’t cut it. It is not healthy!

Dr. Hyman recently shared an article about sugar addiction:

Are you addicted to sugar:

No one wants to be fat or become a drug addict. No one wants their life destroyed by disability and illness. We have policies and laws that protect people from alcohol, tobacco and illegal drugs of abuse. Sugar and flour (and too much starchy white potatoes and white rice) or products containing them appear to be no different. In fact, some animal studies show that sugar is eight times as addictive as cocaine.

It is time to stop blaming the fat person. Can we really blame our children if we freely give them drugs of abuse in the school lunch line or as after school snacks? Can we really blame the average overweight person? The nutritional landscape in America is a food carnival.

Kelly Brownell from Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity has created a validated food questionnaire to help you determine if you are a food addict. He recently also published a textbook, Food and Addiction, that lays out the science of how our hyper-processed, hyper-palatable, hyper-sweet industrial food has hijacked our brain chemistry and biology.

Here are five clues you may be addicted to sugar, flour and processed food:

You consume certain foods even if you are not hungry because of cravings.
You worry about cutting down on certain foods.
You feel sluggish or fatigued from overeating.
You have health or social problems (affecting school or work) because of food issues and yet keep eating the way you do despite negative consequences.
You need more and more of the foods you crave to experience any pleasure or reduce negative emotions. (read more of Hyman’s article)

Obesity is very complex. Diet is really only part of it for many people. I’ve posted a good video on this fact here: Why are we getting so fat? Obesity in the modern world

Because of it’s complexity I did underscore in the above article that obesity is not something to blame anyone about. Bigotry against fat people is a vile form of prejudice that tends to be widely accepted.

Here I’ve written about how I got my diet in check so that I could get healthy: Weight loss and diet after withdrawing from psychiatric medications

Healing with whole foods

And here I talk about it’s not just diet that matters when it comes to health and well-being. It’s EVERYTHING: Everything Matters: a Memoir From Before, During and After Psychiatric Drugs

Eating wholesome whole real food is important for body/mind/spirit health and well-being. I’ve written a lot about my adventure with diet and healing here: Nutrition and gut health, Mental health and diet

And you can find more Foodie Friday posts and recipes here.