Have you ever heard someone say this, or said it yourself? “I’m addicted to sugar. I can’t keep sweet foods like cookies or ice cream in the house. Once I take a bite, I have to finish the whole thing.” But do food addictions truly exist? This question and how to help people who believe they are addicted to certain foods, is getting more attention from researchers and practitioners alike.
About our expert:
Marsha Hudnall, MS, RD, CD, is a registered dietitian and owner of Green Mountain at Fox Run (Vermont, USA), a pioneering non-diet healthy weight loss spa exclusively for women. Over the last four decades, women have come to Green Mountain from all over the world to learn how to take care of themselves, free of worries about weight. Marsha’s mission there has been to help them give up restrictive notions about healthy eating so that they can more easily accomplish it. A prolific writer, she has written extensively in this area. She has also been active in professional organizations, currently serving on the board of directors for the Binge Eating Disorder Association. You can become a fan of Green Mountain on Facebook and follow Marsha and Green Mountain on Twitter at @MarshaHudnall and @GreenMtnFoxRun.
What’s in a name?
Technically, there’s no formal definition for food addiction. It doesn’t meet the criteria used to define an addiction to substances like drugs. When someone says they have a food addiction, however, it implies that they can’t eat a certain food or type of food in moderation, even when eating it produces undesirable effects such as weight gain. And if you ask the average person, they really don’t care if a formal definition exists. They want help now because they seem to lose control around certain types of food.
But nutrition and health experts worry that labeling these types of behaviors around food as addictive could create more problems than it solves, setting the stage for “learned helplessness.” Meaning that when we say we’re addicted to something, we feel powerless about our ability to change our reaction to it.
Yet when it comes to eating sweets and other foods that people believe are addicting, we see women change their reaction to them all the time at Green Mountain at Fox Run. After immersing themselves in healthy living, which includes regularly eating healthy, well-balanced meals and learning to give themselves permission to eat what they want, they find they can eat sweets and the like without going overboard.
Tips to put you in charge of your eating
Before labeling any food or ingredient as addictive, ask yourself these two questions:
1. Do I believe a food or ingredient will cause me to gain weight?
This question addresses two important issues: deprivation and size acceptance. In terms of deprivation, it seems to be human nature to want what we can’t have. So it follows that labeling foods as forbidden, or worrying that eating them will lead to unwanted weight gain, is a sure set-up for starting to crave them. Then when we eat them, we often adopt a “go for it” attitude, thinking we might as well finish it all because “tomorrow, I’ll start my diet again.”
When it comes to size acceptance, unrealistic images of ideal bodies set the stage for eating and weight struggles. It’s important to understand that healthy and beautiful bodies come in all sizes, and that to best take care of ourselves, we need to eat and live in a way that makes us feel well. Eating for well-being includes getting pleasure from food as well as good nutrition, and every food we eat doesn’t have to provide the ultimate in nutrition. Also, because we’re individuals, eating well may not take us to the societal ideal for body size, but it can help us live fruitful, fulfilling lives focused on what’s important to us.
2. Do I eat well-balanced meals at regular times?
One of the biggest triggers for overeating is getting too hungry. Our hunger is like a rubber band that’s been stretched too far. It shoots across the room when we let go. At Green Mountain, we encourage participants to eat every 3-5 hours according to their hunger as they re-learn how to listen to and respond intelligently to hunger and appetite signals. It’s also important to eat meals that contain a balance of protein foods, fruits and/or veggies, and grains/starchy foods, as pictured in the Plate Model for Healthy Eating. That helps us get the nutrients we need in the right proportions to keep our bodies functioning well and giving us accurate signals about what, when and how much we need to eat.
If you give yourself permission to eat what you want while regularly feeding yourself well-balanced meals and snacks, and still experience strong cravings for certain foods, you may find that minimizing how often you eat these foods can help. Research does suggest that people may react differently to high-sugar, high-fat foods when those foods have made up a majority of what they eat, as we see with westernized diets today and particularly among people who frequently go on and off weight-loss diets. They may have experienced actual changes in brain response that drives eating more of such foods.
To overcome the problem, however, it’s not a matter of saying you can’t eat the foods, such as is recommended when you take an abstinence approach. Instead, it’s about controlling how often you do eat such foods, to allow your brain to respond positively to healthier eating. Healthy eating, in a sense, helps “heal” the brain, to normalize our responses to food.
One strategy that helps many people learn to eat such foods in moderation is to enjoy them outside them home, keeping the home as a “safe” place. And to do it in the company of a supportive friend or family member, who can help you think positively about the experience and your ability to stop at “just one.”
Read more about Green Mountain’s approach to managing food addiction.
Editor’s comment:
Thank you Marsha. It’s so great to have one of my first Twitter friends guest post on Scoop. And it was even better meeting you in person last year. Green Mountain has a very special set up and we have nothing close in Australia to my knowledge. I bet my readers have a question or comment for you below?
