What is Food Addiction

 Food addiction is a disorder characterized by preoccupation with food, the availability of food and the anticipation of pleasure from the ingestion of food.
Food addiction involves the repetitive consumption of food against the individuals better judgment resulting in loss of control and preoccupation or the restriction of food and preoccupation with body weight and image.

Anorexia Nervosa is characterized by intense fear of gaining weight.
Behavior includes excessive weighing, excessive measuring of body parts, and persistently using a mirror to check body size. Self-esteem is dependent upon body shape and weight. Weight loss is viewed as an impressive achievement and an example of extraordinary self discipline.

Physical implications may include disruption of the menstrual cycle, signs of starvation, thinning of hair or hair loss, bloated feeling, yellowish palms/soles of feet, dry, pasty skin.

Bulimia Nervosa is described as binge eating and compensatory behavior to prevent weight gain. Individuals become ashamed of their eating behavior and attempt to conceal symptoms through rapid consumption of food. They will eat until painfully full and stop if intruded upon.
80-90% of bulimics will induce vomiting. Other behaviors include, misuse of laxatives, fasting and excessive exercise.

Physical implications include, loss of dental enamel, increase of cavities, swollen saliva glands, calluses, scars on hands, irregular menstrual cycle, dependency on laxatives for bowel movements, fluid and electrolyte disturbance.

compulsive Overeaters use food inappropriately and eventually become addicted to it and lose control over the amount of food they eat. Overeaters demonstrate uncontrollable binge eating without extreme weight control and see that behavior as normal.
Overeaters present with moderate to severe obesity, with an average binge eater being 60% overweight. Bingeing episodes consist of carbohydrates and junk food with most binges done in scheduled secrecy.

Every newborn child is a born scientist continually making discoveries. Nursing mothers also discover more about themselves as they care for their wonderful little bundle of trouble and joy. Your power to suck and swallow made you at one with mother. Her heartbeat was music to you. Psycho-sexual pleasure flowed, as a mother¡¯s reward for guiding you from hunger pain, and dependence, to ¡®oneness¡¯ and a feeling of contentment and satisfaction and sleep.

Very soon you discover play ¨C play with mother that was all clean and wonderful until you discovered potato, gravy, peas and spoons that were a mystery until the first one found a hungry mouth. A new connection was made Food-Addiction. New connections were being made in your brain as it developed new cells at the rate of 250,000 per minute. Your adult brain would be four times larger.

Food and mother¡¯s caring guidance balanced your pain and pleasure. You play and sleep in peace and contentment. With growing maturity you demanded more of your own space. Parents and family discovered that a crying child could not cry ¨C ¡®holler¡¯ or ¡®swaller¡¯ ¨C swallow food at the same time. Food was pushed onto you as a pacifier. Someone wanted to control you and your behavior.

Your emotions were quickly connected with food and control issues and your willingness to eat, or your defiance not to eat. As a born scientist, wanting to enquire about taste and feeling and power, you began to do as adults and others were doing. You discovered substances such as caffeine, beverage alcohol, all symptoms of food addiction.

Your emotional desire for independence, new relationships, significance and meaning for your life was often attached to food. Mother¡¯s care was now a restricting power. Food and emotions and you may be an unmanageable mix.

How can you balance pain and pleasure, dis-satisfaction and contentment, frustration and fulfillment, emptiness and serenity? ¡°Only by caring for myself and over coming food addiction¡±.

God grant that I accept with serenity those foods and that are good and wholesome, eat them with relish and have courage to seek fellowship and exercise, while accepting the wisdom that knows when enough is enough.
Free from Food-Addiction

Rev. John Tully OAM has been a re-educator, helping people to overcome problems of attachment, dependency or addiction, for over 40 years. C Rev.John Tully OAM, Newlife Care INC