How to Stop Food Addiction?

Are you addicted to food? Do you Binge Eat?

We all need to eat. But what if you plan your life around how you can secretly overeat?  Exercise and diet can help you shed the pounds, but you won’t be able to succeed if you don’t deal with the binge eating.

It’s normal to overeat once in a while, but when you find yourself binge eating several times a week you could have an eating disorder.

Research shows the disorder also known, as BED is more common then bulimia and anorexia combined.  It can lead to digestive issues and weight-related problems like diabetes, but scarily, a lot of doctors aren’t recognizing BED they just tell patients to lose weight.

But you don’t have to be overweight to have it. 

Here are four habits people with BED share:

Eating in Secret

It’s almost universal: Binge eaters feel ashamed of their food habits and take great pains to hide them from family and friends.   "I would go for a drive to a fast food restaurant and order as much food as possible, then eat it in secret because you don’t want anyone to see," Beth says.  And Katie admits: “Last week I bought a bunch of junk food from my office’s vending machines and took it all into a bathroom stall to eat it.  It was gross and humiliating.”

Craving “Bad” Foods

The guilt and excitement around starchy, sugary foods makes binge eaters crave those “bad” foods the most.  (Carbs make the brain release feel-good serotonin, so some researchers suspect there’s a chemical link, too.) Those binge concoctions are usually centered on sweets; like processed foods that contain high fructose corn syrup a chemical addictive that causes food addictive behavior. These chemically addictive foods make you crave food even more and the supermarkets are full of processed foods!

Putting Food First

For a binger, eating alone brings a (temporary) sense of comfort and release that being with people can’t.  “I used to wish my boyfriend would leave so I could eat everything in the fridge,” Rachael says. “Id rather stuff my face then have fun or make love.”

Lying about Food

Finally, binge eaters rarely tell the truth about what, or how much, they eat. “At fast-food restaurants I’d act like I was taking an order from a friend on my cell,” says Pat. “But really it was all for me.”  If any of these symptoms sound like you, it’s time to get better. 

Two tactics that has worked for Binge and Overeating:

Pause:  

It sounds simple, but anyone who has felt the compulsion to eat knows how hard restraining yourself is.  Still, if you can pause for five minutes to try to figure out the emotional need that’s driving you to eat, and a healthy way to fill it, you may avoid a binge.

Get Active. 

Try and make a conscious effort to not think about calories when you work out – instead, move your body because it improves your mood and clears your mind.

Your Food Addiction will not change overnight but if you make a conscious effort to think about why before binge eating, then you can start to recognize the triggers, and start dealing with solutions to those triggers like exercising and incorporating a hobby something you feel good about.   

Here are some Exercise Tools  and Programs to Boost your Exercise Workouts! 

• The Kettlebell Workout Program – it is fun!
• The Wave – A New Trend in Exercise
• Zumba – Dance Your way to Losing Weight.
• A customized workout Plan that targets your weight lose and fitness goals.