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Addicted to food - what are you really hungry?
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| Image by (Joenomias) Menno de Jong from Pixabay |
When food becomes more about emotional hunger rather than physical hunger, you can risk to develop food addiction. Disfunctional relationships with food can involve overeating or hunger. In any situation, food is a weapon that lightens yourself in an unhealthy way and sometimes life threatens to an individual.
This is not a occasional situation such as overeating on the buffet vacation or joining a pizza party late at night. Excessive eating is situational and you can return to normal eating with small efforts.
Food addiction goes beyond those situations - is the desire that encourages someone to eat far beyond what is needed to satisfy the basic hunger gesture. With food addiction, the actual "hunger" is emotional, not physical.
Food addiction dynamics are similar to alcoholism or smoking. Each addiction involves desires for something that damages the body excessively.
You can go cold Turkey to give up smoking or alcohol as part of behavior change, but you can't release food. Refusing to eat leads to other types of eating disorders, so it has no improvement.
Unlike alcohol or smoking, food is not a dangerous - it's the way the food is used which causes problems. Food addicts are actually a little happy to eat. They are not pigs without discipline - they are people who are locked in negative relationships with food, often suffer from guilt after eating parties.
Food addicts often hide food and eat quietly so friends and family will not know how much they eat. They sometimes eat foods that are stale, cooked, cooked or half frozen.
Food addiction is never just about eating habits. This is as much as psychological problems because this is physiological. Not all food addicts are overweight, good! Many have normal weight. If food addiction becomes bulimia with beading and cleaning, then individuals may not add weight because of the induced vomiting or use of excessive laxatives.
Like drug addicts constantly looking for improvement, food addicts always think of food. This person will talk without stopping about food, finding a place for lunch, get a snack at rest or stop at a fast food place on the road home before dinner!
Food addicts need medical and psychological assistance to overcome this disorder. You need a complete physical to identify and treat problems such as diabetes, food allergies or thyroid.
You also need counseling with mental health professionals who specialize in eating disorders. Changing the way you deal with food begins with filling emotional vacuum that encourages your food addiction.
