How to get rid of food addiction step by step technology. Symptoms of food addiction and how to get rid of it? How to cure food addiction

is a mental state disorder in which a person eats food not to satisfy the feeling of hunger, but to cheer up and get pleasant emotions. For people with food addiction, food helps cope with anxiety, anxiety, and helps relieve stress.

There are two types of food addiction – bulimia (overeating) and anorexia (complete refusal of food).

With the help of food, a person seems to solve his problems - troubles at work, in the family, in communicating with people. Here are some examples of how this happens.

For example, a girl was going on a date, but for some reason the young man canceled it. She, upset, buys the most delicious cake and compensates for her failed evening.

Or, another example - you are tired and stressed at work. What, like a box of chocolates or cakes, can lift your spirits?

A quarrel with a loved one can turn into a real feast, after which comes misunderstanding and bewilderment as to why it was all done. Food gives a person a feeling of satisfaction, after which he calms down.

A person, “eating” his problems, concentrates his attention on taste sensations and his mood actually improves, and negative emotions disappear.

While eating food, a person calms down and forgets about troubles. Thus, food acts as the most accessible antidepressant. But if food helps to temporarily distract from problems, they do not go away and sooner or later they will need to be solved.

It happens that the opposite happens - addiction to food arises not from the presence of problems, but from their absence. At some point it may seem that life is boring or sometimes people say that “melancholy is attacking”, or maybe people lack bright impressions, or they simply suffer from idleness. In all these cases, the refrigerator will be “waiting for” him.

This whole process leads to even greater problems that affect a person and his self-esteem: obesity, lack of self-control, metabolic disorders, depression.

Signs of food addiction

Like other types of addictions, food addiction has a number of symptoms:

1. Constant and obsessive thoughts about food - what to eat, what to buy in the store, what to cook deliciously;

2. Impossibility of self-control in eating. For example, it is difficult for a person who has a full box of chocolates in front of him to limit himself to one or two sweets. The desire to eat the whole box will last until it is empty, and after that you will have trouble breathing;

3. Instant strong desire for any food. For example, despite the fact that a person has recently had lunch, if he sees cakes on the store counter, he breaks out - buys several pieces and eats them “bingely”;

4. If a person has experienced any stress, he has a desire to eat something as compensation for the trouble that happened;

5. Increasing frequency of a person’s promises to reward himself with “something tasty” after he fulfills some unpleasant need. For example, “I’ll clean the house and then buy myself a chocolate bar, because I deserve it”;

6. The lack of desired food leads a person to unpleasant physical sensations (similar to “withdrawal” in a drug addict).

How to determine food addiction?

It's hard for you to stop until you finish your favorite food (for example, a box of chocolates, a whole cake, etc.).

You often overeat because you don’t feel like moderating.

You like to eat alone.

You know and accept that you need to eat less and agree that you need to change your lifestyle. At the same time, you are not trying to change anything. Food controls you.

You feel guilty after eating.

You get annoyed when someone criticizes your eating habits.

You can eat at night or even eat food at night.

Non-therapeutic methods of dealing with food addiction

If your food addiction has not yet developed to an extremely severe state, and willpower is still at least a little present, then you can try to get rid of it yourself.

First you need to think about your life, understand your desires and needs. In many situations, food acts as a way of replacing other emotions. What's happening to you? Are you just bored?

Or are you lonely? Or maybe just sad?

Do you want new sensations? Not enough adrenaline in life?

You need to understand what exactly you are missing in life. If you understand yourself, it will be easier for you to solve these problems without resorting to mindless food consumption.

Causes of food dependence (addiction)

Today, at least a dozen forms of dependencies are defined. All of them are divided into two large groups:

1. Chemical - when a person depends on a substance that is no longer produced by his body - this is alcohol and drug addiction.

2. Emotional circle of addictions - when, with the help of certain behavior, type of activity, or occupation, a person makes up for emotional deficits.

Food addiction belongs to the emotional circle and differs from any other in only one way - we can live our whole lives without tobacco, drugs, alcohol, gambling. Even without a close relationship, you can try - to avoid love addiction. But it’s unlikely without food... We’ll last at most forty days. And this is where the main difficulty lies. How and when does the normal absorption of proteins, fats, carbohydrates, necessary for life, and the pleasure accompanying this process transform into cravings, addiction, slavery?

It all starts in very early childhood. If the child is in close physical and emotional contact with the mother beyond the moments when she feeds him - i.e. they lull him, take him in their arms, coo with him, and in a series of these strokes they also feed him according to his needs - food remains one of the elements of contact with a loving, protective world, the center of which (at least until the age of two) is the mother.

If the mother has postpartum depression or other circumstances that alienate her from the baby, an unconscious connection may arise: emotional attention and love can only be received through food - after all, any mother feeds her child, and feeding becomes the central figure in their communication. There is a feeling that only eating food guarantees physical and emotional intimacy with a loved object.

At the very beginning of life, “from the child’s point of view, there is nothing in the world except himself, and therefore, at the beginning, the mother is also part of the child. Primary support from the mother is an important factor in mental development and the formation of relationships in early childhood. She maintains the space surrounding the baby, making sure that the world does not “fall” on him too early or too hard.

Insecure, anxious or depressed mothers are not able to provide such support, and the child may carry his early sense of “shakyness” of the world around him and relationships with loved ones throughout his entire life.

A good enough mother, in the process of caring for and communicating with her baby, creates potential space for the development of her relationship with the world. She introduces the baby to new objects (food, toys, living beings), in accordance with his desires and capabilities.”

By the age of two, the child begins to develop the feeling that he is separate from his mother. He is still dependent on her for everything, but for normal development it is important for him to try his independence. To separate from the mother, to safely live the moments when she is not around, something appears in the child’s reality that “the baby appreciates and loves, because with the help of this - toys, pacifiers, bottles of milk - he copes with situations when the mother leaves and leaves him alone."

If the mother is not good enough and in the first year the connection has been formed that only eating will guarantee physical and emotional intimacy with the beloved object, food can become the main consolation here too, but now in a situation of separation from the mother. There are many prerequisites for this - food is always associated with pleasure, and receiving this pleasure - unlike many others - as you grow older is increasingly possible in an autonomous format, independent of others.

Thus, food addiction receives another reinforcement. While significant others may refuse to fulfill the child's wishes, as he grows older he increasingly gains access to self-satisfaction through food.

The ability to put up with the imperfection of the world, which sometimes accepts and sometimes rejects our desires and needs, is achieved through the formation of the so-called “object constancy.” “This is the child’s inner feeling that the mother - even angry and angry - still loves and accepts him with all his imperfections. In the absence of the beloved object - the mother - her permanent image formed inside serves as consolation and support. This internal object, combining desire and idea, provides a stable attitude towards people who are sometimes kind and loving, sometimes aggressive and angry.”

If the mother is unpredictable and often avoids contact with the child, he remains defenseless against attacks of negative emotions and fears - both his own and those from his environment. And food comes to the rescue again. After all, she is accessible and definitely has the quality of constancy in this child-changing world.

Thus, the main roots of food addiction are established in early childhood:

Replenishing deficits of love, recognition, and self-attention with food.

Replenishing your resistance to attacks of negative emotions and fears with food.

Acquiring stress resistance through food.

Receiving comfort and support through food.

Instilling the belief that food is the main and safest source of pleasure.

There can be many reasons why you are drawn to the refrigerator by a magnet. Strong emotions, boredom, and the desire to get distracted and change activities “get stuck”. Everyone has their own motives. The results are the same - heaviness in the stomach, lack of energy, dissatisfaction and a burning desire to take care of oneself.

Treatment of food addiction

The method of correcting food addiction includes complex therapy. An internationally recognized method of treating eating disorders is used: a combination of psychotherapy, body-oriented therapy and dietetics.

It should also be taken into account that much depends on the format of the disease and the readiness of the client seeking help to realize that excessive physicality is the tip of the iceberg. An analysis of parent-child relationships is often necessary, the scenario of which - especially if they are pathological - is reproduced again and again by the client in his adult life.

Typically, treatment of people with food addiction is carried out simultaneously by two specialists: a nutritionist and a psychotherapist. Frequent meetings with a doctor, or even better with a group of similar people, will constantly support and motivate you to stick to your diet. As a rule, at such sessions they teach you to reconsider your attitude towards food. Special programs are aimed at realizing that food is not a reward or a cure for troubles, but just a way to get the substances necessary for a full life.

It all starts with the client-therapist relationship, in which, if the client’s sense of basic security is violated, it takes time to build a safe and trusting contact. The therapist carries out “holding” in the manner of maternal care and support, is sensitive to the client’s needs, understands and accepts his desires and fears. In the holding relationship, the client’s sense of self is completed and modified, a sense of basic security is restored, and self-esteem is strengthened.

It should be noted that when trying to limit food intake, such people become irritable, aggressive or depressed. After all, food for people with food addiction is medicine, comfort, and doping. That is why such people continue to eat, although this amount of food contributes to the emergence of an increasing number of diseases in them: obesity, hypertension, diabetes, etc.

The main thing in the process of recovery from food addiction is awareness of the existence of a problem, understanding what the true need is: food or the joyful emotions that a person receives from it.

After this, you need to learn to get pleasure and joy from life in other ways. Joy hormones are produced not only from food, but also from many things that are present in our lives: playing sports, an interesting hobby, communicating with friends, dancing, etc.

If a “food addict” decides to deal with the problem himself, this means that he has realized its existence and is ready to change his life. Here it is imperative to analyze what is the cause of food addiction, a kind of “irritant” that pushes one to consume food in large quantities. Maybe it's dissatisfaction with yourself, troubles at work or failures in your personal life. Having found the reason, it is easier to counteract the next attacks of unmotivated hunger.

The next thing you need to learn is the ability to be distracted. If an irresistible desire arises to “eat up” any situation, then you should not run to the refrigerator, but take a book, turn on a movie, do your favorite activity, or go for a walk in the fresh air. Thus, a person gets rid of the psychological attitude “I feel bad - I need to eat.”

Family therapy is an important part of therapeutic treatment.

Eating disorders can arise as a protest.

For example, the husband does not pay the necessary attention to his wife, and perhaps (even worse) cheats on her. As a result, she is constantly in nervous tension and tries to “seize” her family problem.

Another example, a wife nags her husband for various reasons, especially financial ones - she reproaches him for not having enough money and needing to earn more. The spouse, experiencing constant stress in the family, begins to relieve it with the help of fast food and beer, and maybe even something stronger.

A family therapist can also help spouses get out of a difficult situation, talk it out and find a common way to solve problems.

Of course, failures are inevitable at first, but you need to be prepared for this and not give up your new life after the first failure.

Conclusion

Food addiction is generally curable, but it requires hard work and great desire, for this you need to have an “iron” character.

It is very difficult to catch the moment when a person crosses the line between simple pleasure and food addiction. This is difficult to do because most people do not admit that they have certain problems. Even if a person realizes that he is eating too much, he thinks that he can stop at any time and lose weight in no time. But this is just an illusion.

It is very difficult to take the very first step towards healing. But you need to understand that food is not the only source of pleasure. How many additional positive emotions does a person addicted to food deprive himself of? He cannot fully communicate with friends and loved ones, experiencing the full range of feelings, see the beauty of the world around him, enjoy amazing music, an interesting book, etc. Don't be afraid to ask for help. It is much harder for one person to cope with adversity than for anyone else.

GRADUATE WORK

Discipline: biology with basics of ecology

Topic: FOOD ADDICTION

Introduction

Chapter 1. Statement of the problem

Relevance

How do we eat?

Why do we eat?

Chapter 2. Food addiction

Chapter 3. Drug products

Chocolate addiction?

Sugar

Meat

Bulimia (Bulimia Nervosa)

Compulsive overeating

Chapter 6. Research

Eating Behavior Questionnaire

conclusions

Bibliography

Applications

Food addiction questionnaire

Introduction

The need for food is primary, natural, biological. According to Maslow's pyramid, natural needs occupy the minimum level of needs, that is, until they are satisfied, the needs of the next level cannot be satisfied. However, a person's daily diet contains more than just the amount of calories required for survival. Also, the time of eating, the amount eaten, the preference of some foods over others depends on the person. That is, eating behavior is determined not only by natural needs, but also by knowledge acquired in the past. Such biological needs - needs taking into account experience and knowledge - are classified as physiological needs. Physiological needs include habits. Eating habits are determined by the traditions of family, society, religion, advice from doctors, fashion, and any personal reasons. Eating habits also depend on a person’s mental and emotional state. Nutrition plays an important role in shaping a person’s emotional state at a very early age. The baby calms down when breastfeeding and remembers that nutrition gives a feeling of comfort and security. The fear of starvation is the basis of the feeling of insecurity, although death from starvation is quite rare in our time. That is, even in infancy we associate a feeling of security with satiety.

As a child, our compulsory program included borscht and cutlets. They were of no interest to us. But sweets and chocolate bars served as the embodiment of some kind of holiday. This is where the understanding came that sweets are joy, a rare joy. And if there is an opportunity to get something sweet, you need to use it.

If you drop sweet, sour, salty or bitter water on the tongue of an infant, he will show a positive reaction only to sweet water. The reason for this bias is that evolution has given us an instinctive understanding that sweet foods are a reliable source of energy, while bitter tastes are associated with unhealthy foods. Other scientists suggest that the love of sweets begins in the womb and is associated with the taste of amniotic fluid. Perhaps both points of view are correct, because they do not contradict each other.

In addition, the location was found to have an addictive effect. If you offer your child a large dose of sweets in the form of sweetened tea or juice from the very beginning, he will later be inclined to refuse drinks with less sugar.

Scientists have found that you can get used not only to sugar, but also to salty, fatty and glutamate-containing foods. Scientists at the University of Kiel fed laboratory rats the taste enhancer glutamate in different volumes. Result: the higher the dose of glutamate, the more gluttonous the animals became. In particular, the males developed a truly brutal appetite: they ate 2 times more and drank 3 times more often than usual. On the other hand, if the dosage of the said substance was reduced, they refused to eat food.

In a study at Princeton University in New Jersey, mice fed a high-sugar, high-fat diet responded to a significant reduction in diet like drug addicts: They became nervous, restless, and distracted. It was clear that sweet and fatty foods could be as addictive as morphine or nicotine. Psychologists explain this effect by saying that without fat and sugar, the production of endorphins - “happiness hormones” - is not stimulated, and in their absence, the body begins to experience “withdrawal.”

This conclusion is confirmed by neuroscientists from the Medical College of Wisconsin, who found in the brains of rats fed a diet rich in fat, salt and sugar, biochemical changes similar to those that occur when consuming morphine or other drugs. Rats prefer fatty foods and simply cannot stop until they have eaten everything. It is likely that this state of “obsession” also appears in humans, since the gene pool of rats and homo sapiens has much in common. Thus, it turns out that in food containing a lot of sugar and fat, and in the irresistible desire to constantly eat it, lies the real culprit of the current epidemic of excess weight.

Also, nutrition as a phenomenon has a social aspect. Eating style is associated with communication and company. The habits of a company are the habits of each member of that company. If a group often goes to McDonald's, then each member of this group gets used to this lifestyle. Ideas about beauty in society and fashion have a strong influence on eating behavior.

Eating to satisfy hunger is the simplest form of eating behavior. However, in humans, food need is also a means:

release of mental and emotional stress;

communication when food is associated with being in a group;

sensual pleasure;

maintaining certain rituals or habits (religious, national, family traditions);

compensation for unmet needs (need for communication, parental care, etc.);

rewards or encouragement due to the taste of food;

satisfying aesthetic needs.

So what is food addiction?

Food addiction is an eating disorder.

Food addiction is a mental disorder in which a person eats food not to satisfy the feeling of hunger, but to cheer up and get pleasant emotions. For people with food addiction, food helps cope with anxiety, anxiety, and helps relieve stress.

People talk about food addiction when a person attaches too much importance to food and their weight. Food addictions are characterized by a violation of the norm of nutrition, a person eats too much or too little.

Constant concern about food, their weight, and dissatisfaction with their body completely dominate their lives, affecting their emotional state and overall quality of life, causing tension and anxiety.

Food addiction is a psychological dependence on the one hand, and the satisfaction of hunger on the other. As food acquires more and more addictive potential, artificial stimulation of hunger appears. An overeating person's metabolic balance changes. The feeling of hunger appears immediately with a drop in blood glucose concentration after the next meal. Physiological mechanisms are inconsistent. A person eats too much and too often. At some stage, he begins to be ashamed of overeating and seeks to hide the fact of addiction. He begins to eat alone, in between any vigorous activity. All this leads to dangerous consequences for health: metabolic disorders and loss of control, weight gain, as a result of which a person consumes amounts of food that pose a danger to life.

Food addiction refers to those forms of behavior that do not outwardly contradict legal, moral, ethical and cultural norms, but at the same time violate the integrity of the individual, delay development, make it one-sided and seriously complicate interpersonal relationships. K. Leonhard (1997) believes that “with gluttony, a person’s thoughts are constantly directed towards satisfying his insatiable appetite, and his entire lifestyle is shaped accordingly.” A vicious circle arises, as a result of which obesity limits a person’s activity and, as a result, primitive bodily needs come to the fore.

food addiction behavior disorder

Chapter 1. Statement of the problem

Relevance

Do you often experience a sudden urge to snack? How often, when you see a chocolate bar, can you restrain yourself from grabbing the tasty morsel? Do you often imagine a delicious sandwich in your fantasies and want to eat it? You will not get up from the table until you have eaten everything that is on it, even if you are full in the process of eating? Do you feel guilty if you grab an “extra” piece? When passing by a fast food restaurant, you hear a pleasant smell and can’t help but stop by?

Recently, cases of obesity have become more frequent. The increase from the previous number of patients is 10% over 10 years. Experts have calculated that if this trend continues, then by the middle of the twenty-first century almost the entire population of economically developed countries will be obese. Obesity is a consequence of overeating.

Most often, overeating is the result of an eating disorder. Eating behavior should be understood as a value attitude towards food and its intake; taste preferences, diet, diet of an individual, nutrition in various life situations. In other words, eating behavior includes attitudes, behaviors, habits and emotions related to food that are individual to each person.

The relevance of my work lies in the fact that food addiction is not considered by many doctors to be a problem that needs to be studied. But the problem is becoming more and more pressing. Many of us don't even realize how addicted we are to food.

Food addiction is considered not only overeating, but also bulimia and anorexia...

How do we eat?

There is a pleasure center in the human brain that is essential for human survival. It is he who forces us to continue the race and not interrupt our genetic line, and he who forces us to eat food. If we did not enjoy food when we feel hungry, then we would not take care of the vital needs of the body. This pleasure center seems to force a person to want to eat, communicate, move and have offspring. Every time an action brings more pleasure than expected, the brain releases a hormone that stimulates a feeling of satisfaction - dopamine. Dopamine is associated with all pleasures: from unexpected treats to romantic flirting. Anything that the brain perceives as pleasant causes dopamine to act on all brain cells and delays the memory of the source of pleasure. So, the memory of delicious chocolate lives in our heads, and we strive to experience this feeling again and again.

It turns out that when the pleasure center in the brain attracts us to nourishing food (what is necessary for survival), then it fulfills its function. In ancient times, the choice of food was limited. What about today? There is so much sweet and fatty stuff around!

Why do we eat?

Nutrition is one of the most important physiological needs of the body.

Nutrition is necessary for the constant renewal and construction of cells and tissues, to replenish the body’s energy expenditure and substances that form hormones, enzymes, and other regulators of metabolic processes and vital functions.

Metabolism, function and structure of cells, tissues and organs depend on human nutrition.

Nutrition is a complex process of intake, digestion, absorption and assimilation of nutrients in the body.

So, once again: what does nutrition give us?

Construction material, energy, influence on the psyche.

Two nutrition strategies

Let us define two nutrition strategies that conflict with each other: the appetite strategy and the hunger strategy. One of them leads us to overeating, and the other maintains the necessary balance in the body. They have different goals. The appetite strategy is associated with the goal of obtaining pleasure through food and obtaining positive emotions. This strategy is often used to relieve stress.

"Appetite" strategy:

I see the product (maybe in my imagination).

I imagine its taste, smell (or feel),

Desire (appetite) appears.

I eat until I feel full.

Hunger is a signal of the need to replenish the reserves of a substance in the body, which subsides after the introduction of the required portion of food. Of course, it is important that the food looks pleasant and edible, and that the smell and taste are pleasant. However, the main goal is that food should be healthy. Not just abstractly useful, but useful at the moment of its use. The feeling of hunger is a hint that the body needs to take a very specific food. And it is important to correctly determine what exactly the food should be in composition.

Strategy "Hunger":

A feeling appears in the mouth, larynx, stomach (hunger).

An image of a specific product appears in your head.

There is a desire to eat this product.

I eat only as much as I feel hungry.

It is important to distinguish between true and false hunger.

True hunger is a relatively small amount of food for a person, which helps satisfy the body's need for food. False hunger is a constant desire to eat or enjoy some taste. False hunger may appear very soon after lunch, when real hunger is impossible because the digestive process has not yet ended. It can also occur in response to certain emotions (boredom, anxiety, resentment). Food addiction is characterized by the fact that a person is satisfied not with physiological hunger, but with psychological one - people try to get positive emotions with the help of food.

With food addiction, a person constantly eats too much - much more than the body needs. Such constant overeating causes unpleasant health consequences: excess weight, hypertension, diabetes, edema, problems with the stomach and cardiovascular system - a list of possible consequences of food addiction.

There are two reasons for false hunger:

) Increased stomach acidity.

Low stomach acidity is often experienced as physical hunger. It is often very painful and it is quite difficult for a person to resist eating something to let the pain subside.

) Reduced blood glucose levels.

The second reason for false hunger is a sudden increase and then a sharp decrease in blood glucose levels. The reason for this is carbohydrates in the diet, which cause insulin and glucose levels to rise too quickly. This relationship between carbohydrates and blood glucose/insulin levels is measured by the carbohydrate glycemic index (GI).

High GI foods will cause too much insulin response. Low GI foods allow insulin and blood glucose to rise slowly, which feels like an even level of physical energy and mental clarity.

Chapter 2. Food addiction

How to recognize a food addict?

It is worth noting that food addiction is more common in women than in men.

So what is typical for a person with food addiction?

The first is the fear of being overweight. Part of it is due to fashion. The skinny boom began a long time ago, in the 60s of the last century. Previously, this thinness was achieved with the help of clothing, for example, with a corset. Diet is in fashion now. Many women are unhappy with their weight, their figure, and limit themselves in food. This is expressed differently in different social groups. For example, in the USA this phenomenon is common among white women of the middle and upper classes. We can talk about an eating disorder when worries about one’s own weight are stronger than those of a normal woman from the same social environment. The emergence of an eating disorder can be facilitated by a person’s personal qualities, such as perfectionism (pathological desire for perfection), narcissism, and excessive sensitivity to the opinions of others.

The second is self-restraint in food. This is a consequence of the first - fear of completeness. This is most pronounced in anorexia. A person develops various nutritional rules for himself, which are often unfounded. They primarily reject those foods that, in their opinion, can make them fat. With bulimia and compulsive overeating disorder, periods of self-restraint alternate with bouts of binge eating.

Third - bouts of gluttony. These are episodes of loss of control over eating, during which a person cannot overcome the desire to eat a certain food or eat continuously. These attacks are short-lived, but can last the whole day, and then the person eats often, but little by little. Moreover, preference is given to food that is easy to chew, that is, cookies, crackers, chips, candies, ice cream, etc. Scientists believe that bouts of gluttony are usually preceded by attempts at food restriction.

Fourth - the desire to unload. A person performs any actions that lead to attempts to eliminate the results of an attack of gluttony. There are many ways to unload: sharply limiting calorie intake, intense exercise, inducing vomiting, taking laxatives. Typically, self-restriction in calories and physical exercise are not aimed at unloading, but, in principle, at combating excess weight. Then we cannot always consider them as a way of unloading.

So, the characteristic signs of food addiction:

Feelings of fear around eating

Use of countermeasures (fasting, vomiting, excessive exercise)

The reason for eating is not internal signals of the body (hunger), but external ones

Excessive control and uncompromising attitude towards food (crash dieting)

Chaotic diet (periods of fasting and overeating)

. "Stress Eating"

Fear of weight gain

Constant thoughts about food

Distorted attitude towards one's own body.

Causes of food addiction

The first reason we can call is the joy that a person receives from food, from the process of eating. An addict consoles himself with food from stress, from resentment, from a bad mood. It’s not for nothing that the saying “delight yourself with food” appeared.

The second reason can be identified as the so-called conflict of personalities, that is, the conflict of what you can eat with pleasure and tasty, and at the same time not overeat. It’s as if two opposing personalities are fighting within a person, one of which wants to eat for pleasure, the other wants to be slim. Such a split is often established in childhood and only grows over time. This is where a “swing” occurs: people first successfully diet, and then at one point they break down and gain even more weight.

The third reason is "parental programming". Our parents and grandparents remember wartime and the terrible famine well. At that time, fattening children was considered a good thing. Times have changed, but habits have not.

Psychological trauma may be another reason. Maybe something happened to a person that the psyche was unable to “digest.” And now the defensive reaction is to stock up on food “just in case.”

The fifth reason is self-conviction. Many have heard the phrase “there must be many good people” more than once. A food addict could “program” himself by repeating this phrase.

The sixth reason is likening to idols and standards. It often happens that if a person likes someone, he tries to be like him.

The seventh reason is self-punishment. The most common expressions of self-punishment are bulimia and anorexia. A person feels guilty, he didn’t have time to do something, he offended someone... And he begins to destroy his body...

The eighth reason is genetics. The results of studies of the nutritional characteristics of children of parents with increased weight and children of parents with normal weight indicate that not only constitutional and metabolic characteristics are inherited, but also the nature of food intake. Children of overweight parents usually prefer fatty foods, do not like vegetables, and are more likely to overeat.

Why does a person lose control while eating?

Glutton Trap No. 1: Colorful foods stimulate appetite

It has been proven that the richer the color of a product, the higher the likelihood that it will be eaten or drunk.

Scientists at the University of Illinois conducted an experiment: study participants were asked to choose a package of candies - either multi-colored or sorted by color. As a result, 69% chose a box with colorful candies. “The subjects felt great and chose a box of colorful candies, which they associated with pleasure, joy, a sense of satisfaction and a pleasant taste,” explains study leader Barbara Kahn. In the next experiment, participants were given two boxes of chocolate balls: one containing seven colored balls, the other ten. From the second, 43% more candies were eaten. “The more flowers we see, the more we eat,” says Kahn.

Trap #2: blues

Blues and stress lead to an irresistible desire to eat something fatty or sweet. From a physiological point of view, this is explained by the production of the hormone cortisol. During physical activity, as well as during stress, adrenal gland output increases significantly - to trigger the mechanism of healing possible damage. In addition, the hormone affects fat and sugar metabolism, which increases our appetite.

A scientist at the University of Helsinki found that in men the occurrence of stressful conditions that arouse hunger is associated primarily with work, while in women, on the contrary, it is with their personal life. “He” is attacked by a ravenous appetite when something goes wrong at work, and “her” is attacked when dark clouds hang over the family or family relationships. Men always experience professional successes or failures more deeply, and women - the problems of their personal lives.

Trap #3: fast, fast!

Nowadays, food culture has changed significantly. Nowadays, grandmothers and mothers don’t stand at the stove for a long time; people prefer “faster” food: be it frozen pizza or a sandwich.

There is one significant problem with fast food: when we eat quickly, we do not notice the feeling of fullness.

Nutrition professor Kathleen Melanson of the University of Rhode Island twice sat thirty subjects in front of a mountain of pasta with tomato sauce and asked them to eat until they felt full. The first time the women had to eat as quickly as possible, the second time they had to put the spoon down for a couple of moments after each bite. The results are undeniable:

when eating food slowly, they ate 579 kilocalories in 29 minutes;

When eating quickly, women ate an average of 646 kilocalories in 9 minutes.

“In less than a third of the time, they ate 67 kilocalories more than in 29 minutes,” Melancon concluded. “If you calculate the total amount for three meals, you get an impressive figure” - namely, more than 200 kilocalories per day and more than 6,000 kilocalories per month. This roughly corresponds to three days' energy expenditure. That is, those who eat quickly consume three more daily rations each month than people who eat slowly.

Trap #4: Give me everything!

American marketing and applied economics expert Brian Wonsink found evidence that a person eats more, the larger the container in which the food is placed. During the experiment, the scientist treated visitors to popcorn, which was in cups of different sizes. The trick was that the popcorn was already five days old, therefore stale, hard and tasteless. But the participants in the experiment who received the large cups were not hindered: they ate 53%, or 173 kilocalories, more than those who received the small cups. When they were then asked if they could imagine themselves eating so much just because of the large size of the cups, most responded: “No.” Some even said, "Impossible. This can't happen to me." Other experiments showed that those who bought especially large packages of food on sale or at good discounts ate everything.

If you treat a person to a bowl of soup, into which you secretly keep adding more, he will slurp it until, in the end, he eats a double or even triple portion. The desire to leave the plate empty is so great.

Chapter 3. Drug products

Have you ever wondered if the tobacco industry and the food industry are related? And if connected, then how?

Two scientists - Miki Chopra, a clinical sociologist at the University of South Africa's Western Cape, and Ian Darnton-Heal, a nutritionist at Columbia University in New York - compared the two types of industry and found no significant difference. They concluded that "the global obesity epidemic and the global smoking epidemic are remarkably similar."

Food manufacturers make more money from sugar and animal fats than from vitamins and minerals. And these animal fats and sugars can be addictive. Darnton-Hill and Chopra warn: "People fail to respond to satiety signals when they consume large amounts of sugar and fat." The predominance of these substances in food products is already reminiscent of the cigarette industry's strategy of mixing various chemicals into tobacco to enhance the addictive effect of nicotine.

An addiction to a food, drug, or anything else implies a strong motivation to consume the item of one's addiction. This strong obsessive desire, which underlies addiction, differs from physical dependence at least in that the latter is characterized by a withdrawal syndrome. Many addictive substances tend to both create an obsessive desire and create a withdrawal syndrome (for example, nervousness in a smoker, shaking hands in an alcoholic, convulsions in a drug addict when refusing a dose). These symptoms of withdrawal are associated with different brain centers than those responsible for cravings. At the same time, withdrawal syndrome may be absent. The point is that even if a person doesn't wake up with shaky hands and a cold sweat from missing a dose, they may be addicted to sugar, chocolate or cheese.

Chocolate addiction?

The craving for chocolate is not due to its delicate taste and texture.

Scientists at the University of Michigan decided to conduct an experiment. The goal was to reveal the secret of chocolate. 26 people took part in the experiment. They were given the drug Naloxone (an opioid receptor antagonist, used as an antidote for opioid overdoses). Next, the volunteers were offered a basket of sweets: chocolate chip cookies, Snickers bars, M&M candies s", biscuits dipped in chocolate. On any other day, the sweets would have disappeared in an instant. But naloxone suppressed their effect. And they became unsightly for the volunteers. By blocking the opiate effect of chocolate in the subjects with naloxone, scientists found that "M&M s" and "Snickers" were eaten two times less, and chocolate chip "Oreo" cookies - 90 percent less.

Chocolate stimulates opiate receptors in the brain, and blocking these receptors turns off a major part of chocolate's appeal.

Factors that provoke chocolate addiction

The first factor that causes chocolate addiction is psychological. During chocolate commercials, which are often broadcast on television, many people have a strong desire to snack on chocolate. Moreover, if chocolate is in a person’s home and the thought of this delicacy haunts him. However, psychological addiction is just the tip of the iceberg, and the true reasons for chocolate addiction lie much deeper.

The thing is that the main component of any chocolate is cocoa, which contains substances that stimulate the production of dopamine, a hormone that causes a feeling of happiness. As a result of research conducted by the famous British psychologist D. Benton, it was revealed that chocolate is an excellent antidepressant and helps stop and prevent the development of depressive conditions.

Another factor contributing to chocolate addiction is the high sugar content in this product. At those moments when we feel tired and lack of energy, blood sugar levels drop, and our body sends signals in the form of a need for chocolate to replenish the missing amount of sugar and restore vitality.

Chocolate also contains phenylethylamine, or PEA, an amphetamine-like substance, although ten times less than cheddar cheese or salami. In very small quantities, chocolate contains substances related to tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active component of marijuana. What do chocolate and marijuana have in common? Here's what scientists discovered. Brain cells normally produce the chemical anandamide, which is related to THC. Some substances contained in chocolate delay the breakdown of anandamide in the brain, so the pleasant effect of this substance on the brain lasts longer than the natural norm.

Thus, chocolate is not just one drug-like substance, it is a pharmaceutical warehouse: a little light opiates, caffeine, amphetamine-like substances, the equivalent of marijuana haze - all packaged in a delicate sweet taste

Is it true that chocolate makes us happier? Partially yes. As a result of studying a group of people who admitted to being “chocoholics”, it turned out that after eating chocolate, they definitely feel a sense of satisfaction. At the same time, their pleasure was overshadowed by a feeling of guilt, which is not typical for those who indulge in chocolate occasionally.

Sugar

When people are depressed, they are especially drawn to sweets. Once in the body, sugar immediately passes into the blood, and the person feels calm and bliss. But after a short period of time, the level of sugar in the bloodstream decreases: insulin, produced to cleanse the body of consumed sugar, begins to get rid of glycogen stores (sugar already contained in the blood), and the liver begins to send a signal to the brain asking for help - and the person again feels tired and sad.

A vicious circle arises: the more sugar a person consumes, the lower the blood sugar level, and the greater the need for a new dose of sugar-containing products.

It's like a drug effect. Taking sugar is accompanied by a short euphoria, which is quickly replaced by apathy and irritability, which makes a person want more and more of the same sugar.

A study was conducted in which rats were kept on a diet containing 25% sugar. When sugar was removed from the rodents' diet, withdrawal symptoms appeared. such as trembling and teeth grinding.

It is important to note that if a woman consumes sugar during pregnancy, her baby becomes sugar dependent even before birth.

If a baby drops sweet, sour, salty or bitter water on his tongue, he will only show a positive reaction to sweet water. The reason for this craving is that evolution has given us an instinctive understanding that sweet foods are a reliable source of energy, while bitter tastes are associated with unhealthy foods. Other scientists suggest that the love of sweets begins in the womb and is associated with the taste of amniotic fluid. Perhaps both points of view are correct, since they do not contradict each other.

In addition, it was found that there is a habituation effect. If you offer your child a large dose of sweets in the form of sweetened tea or juice from the very beginning, he will later be inclined to refuse drinks with less sugar.

Thus, if a person initially gets used to a high dosage of sweets, it will be difficult for him to reduce it in the future. It does not matter whether the product contains sugar or agave juice, honey or aspartame - a sugar substitute. During puberty, a person discovers other flavors for himself, but the degree of his passion for sweets remains the same as it was instilled in him in infancy and supported during childhood by constant “training”.

Women are primarily drawn to sweet comfort. There are many reasons for this. For example, as a rule, women have a weak sense of self-esteem, which, as we learned above, increases the desire to enjoy tasty things. In addition, in childhood they are often consoled with sweets more than men. They regularly receive chocolates or sweets when they cry or are simply sad. This is in contrast to boys, who receive sweets primarily as a reward for doing something good, such as getting an A in math or for washing their plate. Girls, therefore, remember that sweets are what help overcome a bad mood, and therefore in adult life, when they become sad, they resort to the right remedy. It’s not for nothing that crises in personal relationships on the female side result in a “holiday” of chocolate, cakes and puddings.

But that is not all. A research team from the University of Glasgow found that women, after consuming large amounts of sugar, did not refuse a full meal or reduce their portions. A sweet and fatty cake for an afternoon snack does not in any way affect the need to eat another hearty meal in the evening.

This fact shows that their natural appetite control is probably already out of control.

Sweets offer little comfort to men. The stronger sex prefers meat and fatty foods. They rarely have a great desire to eat chocolate or other sweets; they like a pork leg or a large piece of cheese.

According to statistics, men consume meat on average 20% more than women. Considering their mental health, their "comfort with meat" is similar to women's consumption of sweets.

“Those who don’t really like to eat sweets can achieve mental harmony with the help of fat,” says neuroscientist Güter.

What are the dangers of consuming sugar?

First of all, sugar reduces the reserves of vitamin B1 in the body, since it is required for its absorption. Lack of B1 leads to neurasthenia, depression, fatigue, and muscle weakness.

In addition to B1, sugar removes calcium and other minerals from the body and depletes protein reserves.

Sugar weakens the immune system because it inhibits the ability of white blood cells to kill germs.

Consumption of sugar leads to dental disease because it creates an ideal environment for the proliferation of microorganisms that destroy teeth, and also because it reduces the internal circulation of fluid in the teeth.

Sugar exacerbates heart disease, shortens life expectancy, and contributes to the development of obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, and duodenal ulcers.

Cheese

American scientist Dr. Neal Barnard claims that cheese addiction can be caused due to the fact that in the process of digesting cheese protein and casein, a substance called casomorphine is produced, which in its composition is very similar to morphine. And just as in the case of opium, this substance, when exposed to the brain, triggers mechanisms in it that allow you to experience increased pleasure. With frequent consumption of cheese, the brain gets used to these signals, clearly associates them with the product - and now the person cannot do without a piece of cheese.

In addition, other narcotic substances can be found in cheese, for example, phenylethylamine, which produces a psychedelic effect (it is also contained and can cause addiction to chocolate and sausages).

Meat

Most doctors urge people to limit or eliminate their meat consumption. There are good reasons for this. A huge number of fatal diseases are associated with a predominantly meat diet. Cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, kidney disease, obesity, food poisoning and many other ailments are many times more common among meat eaters than among those who do not eat meat.

The nutritional value of meat is determined by the complete proteins it contains, containing essential amino acids (valine, leucine, isoleucine, lysine, methionine, threonine, tryptophan, phenylalanine), and lipids, which include essential polyunsaturated fatty acids. In human nutrition, meat is one of the main sources of phosphorus; Microelements and vitamins enter the human body with meat. Extractive substances in meat improve the taste of food, stimulate appetite, and enhance the secretion of digestive glands.

The appeal of fatty foods is completely justified from a biological point of view. Fat is the highest calorie part of any food (one gram of fat contains nine calories, for comparison: a gram of carbohydrate or protein contains only four calories). It is assumed that as our species developed, those people who knew where there were more calories, i.e. were drawn to fattier foods and had a greater chance of survival in conditions of food shortage. Little did nature know that in the future, the desire for fatty foods would lead us into the arms of hamburgers, fried chicken and other dangerously fatty and cholesterol-laden foods. Approximately 20-70% of the calories in meat come from pure fat. The love for meat, and at the same time for fried potatoes, onion rings and any other food high in fat, is due to the hardships of humanity’s evolutionary path, which forced us to prefer high-calorie foods. The banal force of habit also plays an important role. Scientists believe that as soon as we get used to fatty foods, seeing them on our plate day after day, we begin to love and crave them.

Interestingly, there may be another side to the meat habit. Experimental results indicate that, like sugar and chocolate, meat may also have drug-like properties. When researchers blocked opiate receptors in volunteers using naloxone, meat products lost some of their appeal. Thus, a group of scientists from Scotland found that when the opiate effect of meat was neutralized, the attractiveness of ham for participants decreased by 10%, cravings for salami decreased by 25%, and purely gastronomic interest in tuna fell by 50%. What appears to be happening is that when meat is on the tongue, opiates are released in the brain, rewarding the person - rightly or wrongly - for high-calorie food choices and therefore encouraging the person to make it a habit.

Scientists are looking for another clue to the addiction to meat. It turns out that meat provokes an unexpectedly strong release of insulin, like cookies or bread. This fact surprised nutrition experts. In turn, insulin is associated with a surge of dopamine in the brain. Dopamine is released under the influence of any drug: opiates, nicotine, cocaine, alcohol, amphetamines, etc. Dopamine activates the pleasure center in the brain.

It is known that carbohydrates - sweet and starchy foods - are broken down into natural sugar molecules during the digestion process. As these molecules enter the bloodstream, they stimulate the release of insulin, the hormone that transports sugar into cells. Protein also provokes a surge in insulin. During scientific research, volunteers were offered a wide variety of food, and over the next two hours, their blood was taken for analysis every fifteen minutes. Meat causes a noticeable rise in insulin levels. At the same time, beef and cheese cause a greater release of insulin than pasta, and fish - a greater release than popcorn.

Lyrical digression: soon there will be meat from test tubes!

In 2008, an animal rights group offered $1 million to anyone who could come up with a way to produce test-tube meat indistinguishable from the real thing by 2012. However, it does not have to be expensive to be successful in the market. In theory, the idea is good, but so far no one has been able to complete the task.

Scientists began to develop this idea a long time ago, about ten years ago. The technology was originally invented to produce food for astronauts.

How it's done? Stem cells are obtained from a biopsy of a living animal (or a piece of flesh from a killed animal) and placed in a three-dimensional growth medium - a kind of scaffolding made of proteins. Flooded with a nutrient mixture of glucose, amino acids and minerals, the stem cells multiply and differentiate into muscle cells, which eventually form muscle fibers. These fibers are then collected as a minced meat product.

It's possible, but not now. More time is needed for research to confirm that such meat is suitable for humans.

Chapter 4. Types of eating behaviors

Currently, there are three types of eating behaviors:

restrictive eating behavior

emotional eating behavior

external eating behavior

Restrictive eating behavior

This behavior is characterized by chaotic, inconsistent dietary restrictions (to reduce the number of calories to achieve or maintain a desired weight) that are not tolerated by patients, leading to the development of “diet depression.” People who restrict food ignore internal cues of hunger (or thirst) and adhere to a low-calorie diet that is expected to lead to weight loss.

“Diet depression” is emotional instability that occurs against the background of strict diets. A person constantly experiences a feeling of fatigue, increased fatigue, irritability, anxiety, aggression, a feeling of internal tension, dejection, etc. “Diet depression” leads to a refusal to continue dieting and to a relapse of painful overeating. This may lead to feelings of guilt, decreased self-esteem, and lack of faith in the possibility of recovery.

Many studies show that with distress (a type of stress characterized by the highest degree of severity, which has a significant negative effect on the body, a disorganizing effect on a person’s activity and behavior), those who follow a diet increase the amount of food they eat, and those who do not, on the contrary, it decreases. There are a number of hypotheses explaining this phenomenon.

)Avoidance theory. People who follow a diet want to be treated favorably. They believe that other people are critical of them and pay close attention to their behavior. This in turn leads to negative self-esteem and depression. The intensity of such negative experiences decreases during episodes of overeating, during which the focus of attention is narrowed to simple actions and sensations. It has been experimentally found that physical threat significantly reduces food intake in non-dieters and slightly increases it in dieters, while ego threat slightly suppresses appetite in non-dieters and strongly disinhibits eating behavior in restricted eaters. .

2)The boundary model has been proposed to explain the process of food regulation. According to this model, between the states of hunger and satiety, which control food intake and have a physiological basis, there is a space that is influenced by cognitive rather than biological factors. The limit of hunger and satiety is determined by the individual characteristics of a person. People who are on a diet will have a lower hunger limit and a higher satiety limit than people who do not diet. It turns out that people who are on a diet, trying to control their weight, “impose” on themselves another upper limit, located much lower than the biological limit of saturation and having a purely cognitive origin. When a person who strives to diet fails, he is left alone with only a biological limit of satiety, which is higher for him than for a person who is not on a diet. This phenomenon has been called “counterregulation,” meaning that dieters actually consciously regulate their food intake and tend to overeat when self-control is weakened due to stress.

)The camouflage hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, a dieter uses overeating to mask distress in other areas of life. That is, he attributes this distress to overeating. As a result, the real problem is masked by the problem of overeating.

)Distraction Hypothesis: Dieters become so distracted by food that it distracts them from their worries and problems.

)Comfort hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, food consumption induces a state of comfort. Food is for comfort.

Restrictive eating behavior and dieting are not entirely similar concepts. Dietary restrictions can be classified according to their degree of flexibility and on this basis the risk of relapse (overeating episode) and the success of the diet can be judged. Restrictive eating behavior is characterized by such features as strict calorie counting, strict rules for excluding certain foods from the diet, and frequent dieting. This inflexible and uncompromising approach to dieting increases the likelihood of overeating. And flexible control includes broader behavioral options, such as planning meals ahead, limiting portion sizes, slowing down the process of eating, while limiting consumption is not rigid. People with a more flexible approach to dieting tend to recognize that they are likely to experience episodes of overeating, and take this fact into account by compensating for episodes of overeating.

Emotional eating behavior

Emotional eating behavior is characterized by eating against the background of emotional discomfort. People typically respond to stress by losing their appetite. But there are those who react on the contrary, by excessive food consumption. Such people seem to “eat up” stress. Emotional eating behavior is a unique pathological form of protection against stressful conditions for highly socially oriented, mentally immature individuals prone to anxiety-depressive reactions. The biochemical basis of emotiogenic eating behavior was studied, which, as research has shown, is associated with a deficiency of monoamines, primarily serotonin, in the central nervous system. Patients with emotional eating behavior prefer high-calorie, carbohydrate-rich foods. An increased intake of carbohydrates leads sequentially to the occurrence of hyperglycemia and hyperinsulinemia. High insulin levels increase the permeability of the blood-brain barrier to tryptophan. Tryptophan is a precursor to serotonin, so the level of the latter in the central nervous system is normalized as a result, and patients experience emotional comfort. It must be borne in mind that serotonin deficiency leads not only to the development of emotiogenic eating behavior, it also causes a number of disorders comorbid with obesity: depression, phobias, aggression, obsessive-compulsive manifestations, insomnia, psychovegetative disorders, prementral tension syndrome, seasonal affective disorder, algic syndromes. Moreover, consuming carbohydrate foods using the same mechanism can reduce the severity of these disorders. And vice versa, the sudden elimination of such food leads to a maximum increase not only in appetite, but also in the indicated disorders; the patient develops the above-mentioned “dietary depression”.

Within the framework of emotiogenic eating behavior, the following are distinguished:

paroxysmal form (compulsive eating disorder)

night eating syndrome

seasonal affective disorder

Distinctive feature paroxysmal formis the spasmodic nature of eating. Episodes of binge eating occur in limited periods of time (no more than two hours), during which the patient eats a definitely larger amount of food than at usual times. During attacks, the patient loses control over food intake, eats faster than usual, without feeling hungry, and stops only after an unpleasant feeling of fullness appears in the stomach. Episodes of overeating occur alone due to the fact that the patient feels the inadequacy of his behavior and is embarrassed by it; against the background of an attack of overeating, he experiences a feeling of self-loathing, depression or guilt. Attacks recur at least twice a week for six months. Such patients do not have the inadequate compensatory behavior typical of bulimia nervosa (vomiting, large doses of laxatives and diuretics after attacks), so they tend to gain weight. The frequency of overeating attacks is closely related to the emotional sphere; negative experiences provoke new attacks. Moreover, if for people with permanent emotiogenic eating behavior food serves as a source of only positive emotions, then patients with the paroxysmal form experience their attacks extremely painfully, are embarrassed by them, experience shame and guilt, which aggravates depressive tendencies and forms a vicious circle.

Night eating syndromewas first described in 1953. Diagnostic criteria for this syndrome:

evening and/or nocturnal hyperphagia

morning anorexia

sleep disturbance

The main clinical feature of these patients is the inability to fall asleep without eating; the intake is usually very dense. Patients prefer high-calorie foods. Deterioration of sleep and increased episodes of night eating occur against a background of negative emotions. Their sleep is superficial. Appetite in the morning is significantly reduced or absent, the sight of food can cause disgust. In the afternoon, appetite increases significantly. A pronounced feeling of hunger leads to overeating at night. Saturation develops extremely slowly. Eating in the first half of the day can cause drowsiness, lethargy, and decreased performance, and limiting evening food intake leads to difficulty falling asleep. It has been noted that the vast majority of people suffering from night eating syndrome (80-90%) are women.

Patients are characterized by pronounced infantilism, the greatest pathological changes in the motivational-behavioral sphere with hypertrophy of primary biological motivations (eating, drinking, sleep) and underdevelopment of higher levels of the motivational sphere. These patients are depressed, anxious, and prone to overestimating the severity of existing disorders. Aggressive reactions (usually hidden) are possible, and social adaptation is impaired. There is a pronounced dependence of patients on the assessments of others, a desire for approval, admiration, and attempts to compensate for the lack of attractive appearance with hysterical reactions.

Main clinical characteristics seasonal affective disorderis the appearance of symptoms in the dark season and their disappearance in daylight. The clinical picture of seasonal affective disorder is manifested by depression, hypersomnia, daytime sleepiness, and premenstrual tension syndrome. With this form of emotional eating behavior, a reduced mood is accompanied by increased appetite and decreased satiety, and a craving for sugars and fatty foods is noted.

The role of neurotransmitters in the development of seasonal affective disorders cannot be ruled out. It can be assumed that the melanocortin system or serotonin deficiency during the dark season is involved in the formation of seasonal affective disorders.

External eating behavior

External eating behavior is that the stimulus for eating is not the physiological feeling of hunger, but external factors, such as the type of food or the person eating it, food advertising, etc. The decisive factor is the availability of products. This feature underlies eating “for company,” snacking on the street, eating too much at a party, and buying extra food. An increased reaction to external stimuli for eating is largely associated with a lack of a full feeling of satiety. The feeling of satiety occurs later in time; the habit of eating quickly makes a certain contribution to the delay in the feeling of satiety.

Chapter 5. Types of food addictions

There are four main types of food addictions: bulimia, anorexia, binge eating disorder, unspecified eating disorders (anything that does not fall into the other categories). In the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10), eating disorders are coded F50.

Bulimia is a disorder characterized by an irresistible desire to eat, overeating (a person suffering from bulimia can eat a large amount of food in a short period of time) and at the same time the desire to lose weight or at least not gain weight, which is achieved by extreme methods: fasting, active physical activity, laxatives, vomiting.

Anorexia nervosa is a deliberate restriction of food for the purpose of losing weight due to the belief in the presence of an imaginary or sharply overestimated obesity.

Compulsive overeating, so-called “food drunkenness,” occurs as a reaction to stress and leads to psychogenic obesity.

Obesity is not the disorder itself, but a consequence of it; in particular, obesity is primarily a consequence of compulsive overeating.

The eating disorders discussed above do not reflect the full variety of disorders. There are many other options for their manifestation. Below I would like to look at them in more detail.

Bulimia (Bulimia Nervosa)

Bulimia - bull hunger - a disorder based on the syndrome of gluttony with subsequent cleansing of the stomach. Synonyms: “syndrome of abnormal control over normal weight”, “eating chaos syndrome”, “special variant of eating behavior”.

Bulimia can be identified by several signs:

.Bouts of gluttony, recurring periodically.

2.Taking inadequate measures related to the fight against excess weight, for example, inducing vomiting, enema, laxative, diuretic.

.A person's figure and body weight have a strong influence on his self-esteem.

.Fear of obesity.

Psychologists distinguish two possible courses of bulimia: “with purging behavior” and “without purging behavior.” Patients with bulimia “with purging behavior” use not only fasting, but also vomiting, enemas and medications to maintain weight. Patients in the second group maintain weight only through strict dietary restrictions.

You need to understand that bulimia is not ordinary overeating. With normal overeating, a person is satisfied with food and does not experience the fear of obesity and does not use compensatory actions, he enjoys the quality of food and its intake; a person suffering from bulimia absorbs food at a rapid pace, practically without chewing it and not paying attention to taste, while he often eats incompatible foods at the same time; in a healthy person, food does not suppress other needs and, finally, the cause of ordinary overeating is external (upbringing, ethnocultural characteristics, etc.), while the cause of bulimia is psychological.

With bulimia, increasing the value of food and overeating become the only pleasure in life, which to an addicted person seems boring and uninteresting. Nutrition for a person is an alternative to everyday responsibilities and everyday problems.

Like other food addictions, bulimia occurs predominantly in women (90-95% of cases), begins in adolescence (ages 15-22) and is the result of intensive dieting.

Bulimia has three groups of causes, including organic, social and psychogenic.

Organic causes of bulimia include various metabolic pathologies, diabetes mellitus, tumor or toxic brain lesions affecting the hypothalamus region. Genetic factors also influence the disease: some congenital diseases can affect the structure of the brain.

Social reasons include the attitude of the society in which a person lives to body weight. For example, in countries where weight is a significant criterion for assessing a person, the number of bulimics is increasing. If a woman constantly adheres to a strict diet, afraid of gaining extra pounds, she thereby increases the risk of developing bulimia, because the constant fear of gaining weight causes stress, which is most easily relieved by food.

The psychogenic group of causes includes various psychological traumas or depression, which is most easily relieved by simple pleasure - food. The psychogenic cause may be low self-esteem, a negative attitude towards life and other psychological factors. Often, bulimics, fearing obesity, artificially induce vomiting after eating.

Health problems that develop as a result of bulimia affect the digestive system, cause tooth loss (as a result of compensatory actions), kidney disease, and heart failure.

Interestingly, the weight of people suffering from bulimia does not differ from the norm, which is achieved through compensatory actions. In this case, it happens that the weight even begins to decrease, and bulimia smoothly turns into anorexia...

Anorexia (Anorexia Nervosa)

Anorexia is an eating disorder in which a person voluntarily refuses to eat. A person obsessed with the idea of ​​losing weight partially and then completely refuses to eat any form of food, which subsequently leads to death.

Today this disease has affected the entire modern society. Mostly women suffer from it, but men also occur. Initially, a person applies various diets, reduces the amount of food consumed, then gradually gives up food completely. And this mechanism cannot be stopped without outside help. Having lost significant weight, a person does not stop and still refuses to eat. Firstly, this happens because a person, no matter how much he weighs, considers himself fat. Secondly, even if he is happy with his new weight, he is terrified of gaining extra pounds again. In addition, they exhaust themselves with physical exercise, even if it becomes very difficult and their health condition does not allow it.

The following stages of development of anorexia nervosa are distinguished:

) the initial stage, at which there is a strong dissatisfaction with one’s figure, its excessive fullness, and the desire to lose weight develops against the background of an orientation towards the developed ideal;

) the stage of active correction, at which a decrease in the value of nutrition occurs and the formation of deviant behavior: specific methods of weight loss are developed (changing the diet, following a strict diet, resorting to physical exercise, taking laxatives, enemas, artificially provoking the gag reflex); speech behavior changes - in conversations the individual constantly turns to the topic of losing weight, discussing diets;

) stage of cachexia, which is characterized by the appearance of signs of dystrophy: weight loss, dryness, pale skin, etc.

The causes of anorexia can be different. Factors that influence such human behavior are hereditary, biological, psychological, and social.

Hereditary factor. If the family has had a case of anorexia nervosa in one of the relatives, then the likelihood of the disease in another increases. But it is so small that it is more likely a psychological factor than a hereditary one: imitation of the behavior of a loved one.

Biological factor. Some scientists argue that the part of the brain responsible for appetite and pleasure is subject to some changes. Disruption of this part of the brain causes depression, loss of appetite, and anorexia nervosa.

Psychological factor. People susceptible to this disease are mostly perfectionists. For them, there are either thin or fat. And since they don’t want to be fat, they have only one way out - to be thin. For them there is no ideal of beauty; they strive to lose as much weight as possible, because if they don’t do this, they will certainly begin to get fat. They are not interested in other people's opinions; all attempts to bring them to their senses are perceived as envy and deception. These people are prone to depression and despondency.

Social factor. Most often, anorexics come from families with very strict rules or dysfunctional and dysfunctional families. In the first case, stereotypes of nutrition and appearance are imposed on the family, and a slight deviation from these norms due to the individual structure of the body and organism is perceived negatively. In the second case, it may be the ridicule of one of the relatives over the flaws in the figure, or the person’s fear of being like one of the parents who does not meet his ideals.

Very often, the development of anorexia nervosa is associated with a turning point in life. This could be a change of place of study, work, separation from a loved one, etc. The age of puberty is also very dangerous for the development of this disease, since girls aged 14 to 20 years mainly suffer from this disease. A person begins to change in appearance, shape and weight change. And this event is perceived negatively, as a denial of its nature. Therefore, it is very important for loved ones to be close and attentive to what is happening to their child, sister, brother, relative.

The consequences of anorexia can be the most dire. Up to and including death. Modern society knows many examples when great men and women passed away at an early age, exhausted by this terrible disease, destroying their lives with their own hands.

Consequences of anorexia:

Excessive weight loss, muscle mass

Delayed puberty

Complications of the gastrointestinal tract (diarrhea, constipation, gastritis, ulcers)

Cardiovascular disease (irregular heart rhythm, low heart rate, cardiac arrest)

Diseases of the kidneys and genitourinary system (urinary incontinence, infections, renal failure)

Diseases of bones and teeth

Reproductive system disorders in men and women (impotence, infertility, loss of libido)

Dry skin and skin diseases

Chronic fatigue, irritability, insomnia, cramps

Depressive states, suicide

In fact, a person suffering from anorexia can go through all these consequences and, ultimately, simply die. But even if a person stopped in time, the echoes of this terrible disease will affect his health for a very long time, and maybe even his whole life.

Eating disorders according to ICD-10 are considered borderline mental disorders for which involuntary hospitalization is usually not necessary. However, anorexia nervosa has the highest mortality rate among all patients with mental disorders. The mortality rate for anorexia nervosa, according to foreign authors, reaches 30-40% with an observation period of more than 10 years and increases with the duration of observation.

Compulsive overeating

Compulsive overeating affects many people, and the disease is widespread. As a rule, with this disorder there is increased weight, often obesity. But in some cases, even people who do not have weight problems can be susceptible to this disease. It's no secret that many people overeat from time to time. In addition, they are well aware that they have eaten more than is required.

However, if a person eats a lot, this does not mean that compulsive overeating occurs. According to experts, those people who suffer from overeating always know that they are unable to control their appetite.

Signs that identify compulsive overeating.

The line between compulsive overeating and just a good appetite is quite unstable, but there are certain signs that indicate that the patient has this disorder. First of all, such people eat very quickly. They continue to eat until they begin to feel discomfort. Always choose large portions, even when you are not acutely hungry. They prefer to eat alone, as they are well aware that they are eating too much and are embarrassed by their overfilled plates. After eating, such patients become depressed, feel guilty and weak-willed.

Often, compulsive overeating is caused by another disorder, bulimia nervosa.

Who is susceptible to compulsive overeating?

According to statistics, up to two percent of Westerners are susceptible to this disease, which means that approximately four million people are affected. Of this number, up to fifteen percent have mild obesity, and many make attempts to get rid of the problem on their own and use certain therapeutic programs. But basically, this disorder is characteristic of people with severe obesity.

Women suffer from compulsive overeating more often than men; there is no difference according to nationality. Obese patients with this disorder usually become overweight at a young age. They can monitor their weight for a certain period of time, go on diets, but more often than not they gain weight again.

Unspecified eating disorders

1.Orthorexia nervosa

This term was first introduced by American doctor Stephen Bratman. He said: “The pleasure of food is an integral part of human life, and any attempt to give up this pleasure is perceived as a deviation from the norm.”

First, a person simply decides to lead a healthy lifestyle and switches to a healthy diet. But sometimes the thought of leading a healthy diet takes over a person so much that everything else ceases to interest him. A person is afraid to eat something extra and wants to eat only organic food, only natural food. He refuses many foods - primarily meat, butter, bread, and sweets.

This behavior affects not only the physical state of a person, but also the mental state. He turns into a neurotic, very thin, who suffers from insomnia, extreme fatigue and bad mood.

Chronic malnutrition primarily affects the functioning of the heart, because against the background of malnutrition, the amount of potassium in the body decreases. And a lack of calcium leads to premature wear of the joints. Of course, the intestines work poorly and the stomach suffers.

.Prader-Willi syndrome

This is a rare genetic disorder in which approximately 7 genes from chromosome 15, inherited from the father, are not expressed. Around the fourth year of life, the child has an increased appetite. He eats, but is not satisfied. Then a lag in mental development begins to be observed. It is very important to diagnose the disease on time, otherwise the patient may “eat to death.” Treatment is medication (hormonal drugs) and diet therapy.

Geophagy

Geophages eat what is inedible: ash, paint, earth, and so on. This also includes the habit of pregnant women to eat chalk. Essentially, geophagies get the minerals they need, but they can also eat helminth eggs and pesticides.

.Selective eating disorder

Refusal to eat specific foods, that is, eating only a limited list of foods and reluctance to try new types of food. The principles for choosing products can be anything: from their color to their type.

Chapter 6. Research

Food addiction questionnaire

It is believed that the people most prone to food addiction are women. I conducted a survey among my friends and their friends. In total, I interviewed 31 people, among them 17 were female and 14 were male. A questionnaire was used showing the tendency to food addiction (see Appendix 1). From the authors’ point of view, a normal person should score no more than 5 points, ideally 0. That is, 5 is like a threshold. The questionnaire includes 18 questions and requires “yes” and “no” answers.

Table 1. Propensity for food addiction depending on gender.

The graph shows that the tendency to food addiction in men is within the normal range, or on the border, but rarely goes beyond the limits. For women, the indicators are very different, but the result is either above the threshold or closer to the threshold. Interestingly, in three cases the result was below zero. I believe that this is due to the fact that either the person was not telling the truth when answering the questions, or he is limiting himself in food, or he is so independent of food that he simply does not think about it.

I also looked at the tendency to food addiction depending on age.

Table 2. Tendency to food addiction depending on age.

I examined 31 people aged from 16 to 53 years. The graph shows that the greatest results come at the age of 17-20 years. At an older age, the tendency to become dependent is lower. I decided to look at the tendency towards food addiction depending on age in men and women separately.

Table 3. Tendency to food addiction in women depending on age.

The graph shows that the greatest results are among young girls (16-19 years old). This is due to the fact that girls often begin to monitor their figure too actively, which leads to anorexia, or, on the contrary, they constantly eat up their emotions, which is why they gain weight.

Table 4. Tendency to food addiction in men depending on age.

The graph shows that men are rarely prone to food addiction. Of the men that I interviewed, only two had a result greater than 5 (17 and 25 years old). Of course, this is unreliable data, since 14 people are, in principle, a small sample. But still, on this basis, we can assume that such answers will not be isolated. I can conclude that such answers are associated with stress, at 17 years old - due to exams and personal relationships, at 25 years old - due to work and relationships with the opposite sex.

Eating Behavior Questionnaire

The Dutch Eating Behavior Questionnaire (DEBQ) will help identify eating behavior problems. This questionnaire, developed by Dutch scientists in 1986, allows you to find out the reasons why a person overeats.

There can be three main reasons.

The first is the inability to resist tasty food, its appetizing smell and appearance (external eating behavior).

The second is the habit of eating emotions (emotional eating behavior).

The third is the desire to strictly limit oneself in food (restrictive eating behavior), as a result of which a person either goes on a strict diet or breaks it, abundantly rewarding himself for past deprivations and prohibitions.

I interviewed 22 people, 12 of them were female, 10 were male.

The questionnaire contains 33 questions, the first 10 questions on restrictive eating behavior, the next 13 questions on emotional eating behavior, the last 10 questions on external eating behavior.

I Restrictive eating behavior. The average result in this part is 2.4. If a person gets more, then he limits himself too much in nutrition. If it’s less, it means he doesn’t control himself when he eats.

Table 5. Restrictive eating behavior. Dependence on gender.

The graph shows that in most cases women limit themselves in nutrition, sometimes too much. Unlike men, who do not attach importance to the amount of food.

Table 6. Restrictive eating behavior. Dependence on age.

The graph shows that the older a person is, the more he limits himself (with some exceptions). You can also highlight the age of 18-19 years.

Table 7. Restrictive eating behavior. Dependence on age in women.

The graph shows that women, in principle, usually limit themselves in nutrition. There are those who do not limit themselves in food, but, as a rule, there are not very many of them. Judging by the graph, we can say that restrictive eating behavior in women depends little on age, although the older they get, the less fixated on their figure, and therefore the less they limit themselves.

Table 8. Restrictive eating behavior. Dependence on age in men.

Judging by the graph, we can say that at the age of 25-30, men limit themselves in food. Perhaps this is due to the fact that by this age they have gained a lot of extra pounds, since before that they did not monitor their diet. It is at that age that they try to build relationships with the opposite sex.

II Emotional eating behavior.Questions 11-23 determine how prone a person is to eating emotions. The average result in this part is 1.8.

Table 9. Emotional eating behavior depending on gender.

The graph shows that women are more inclined to eat away problems and emotions. This is due to the fact that they usually perceive the situation more acutely than men.

Table 10. Emotional eating behavior depending on age.

The most pronounced emotional eating behavior occurs at the ages of 16-19 years and 25-35 years. I think this is due to the fact that these are the years when people experience the most stress (in relationships, at work, at school).

Table 11. Emotional eating behavior depending on age in women.

In women, in principle, emotiogenic eating behavior is strongly expressed. Judging by the graph, we can say that with age it becomes less pronounced.

In their youth, girls are more emotional than in older age. In addition, at an older age, women control their emotions better than girls.

Table 12. Emotional eating behavior depending on age in men.

Men, on the contrary, control their emotions in their youth, but do so less at an older age.

III External eating behavior.

This behavior determines how much a person gives in to the temptation to eat something tasty.

The average score in this part is 2.7. If a person gains more, it means that he tends to overeat in company, in restaurants and cafes; he cannot deny himself food if it looks appetizing and smells good.

Table 13. External eating behavior depending on gender.

The graph shows that both men and women tend to give in to food temptations. In women this is slightly more pronounced.

Table 14. External eating behavior depending on age.

The graph shows that the result reaches its highest values ​​at the age of 16-20 years. Boys and girls often go out to eat in groups, most often at fast food establishments. The food looks good and smells good there.

Table 15. External eating behavior depending on age in women.

Girls and women usually tend to go out to lunch in groups. Often, in order not to offend their friend, they eat more than they want. They are also greedy for beautifully decorated dishes.

Table 16. External eating behavior depending on age in men.

As you can see from the graph, men are rarely greedy for good-looking and smelling dishes, and rarely eat with company. And if it’s bad, perhaps it’s due to the fact that they cook it themselves.

Conclusions from the research

From the research I have conducted, I can say that women are more prone to food addiction, since they are much more dependent on their own appearance, on the opinions of others. They are also more emotional. If they have problems, they get stressed and binge eat it. In addition, in childhood they are often consoled with sweets more than men. They regularly receive chocolates or sweets when they cry or are simply sad. This is in contrast to boys, who receive sweets primarily as a reward for doing something good, such as getting an A in math or for washing their plate. Girls, therefore, remember that sweets are what help overcome a bad mood, and therefore in adult life, when they become sad, they resort to the right remedy.

Chapter 7. Consequences of excess weight

1. Cardiovascular diseases. Obesity increases the risk of myocardial infarction - because in order to push blood through the systemic circulation through a significant volume of muscle tissue, the heart of an obese person has to work with increased load. In addition, fullness makes it difficult to expand the chest. It is difficult for a fat person’s heart to push blood into the pulmonary circulation, since the blood vessels in the lungs are in a compressed state. Constantly experiencing a lack of oxygen in the blood, overweight people are at risk of developing hypertension and stroke.

Oncological diseases. Obesity increases the likelihood of colon, breast and uterine cancer, as excess adipose tissue causes increased levels of estrogen in the body.

Lipid metabolism disorders. An increase in cholesterol and triglyceride levels leads to the development of pathologies of the pancreas, gall bladder and cardiovascular system.

Type II diabetes. With it, the sensitivity of cells to the action of insulin is lost (unlike type I diabetes, when the production of this hormone by the pancreas is reduced). Type II diabetes was previously called non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus, or adult-onset diabetes. It develops predominantly in people over forty years of age, and eighty percent of those affected are obese. Most of them can get rid of the disease by switching to a healthy lifestyle: losing weight to normal, following a diet and doing physical exercises.

Diseases of the joints, ligaments, spine and back. They are very typical for overweight people. The greatest stress is placed on the knees, ankles and back.

Complications of pregnancy. Overweight women often carry very large children, which leads to serious difficulties during childbirth. Often such women develop gestational diabetes, have problems with blood pressure and experience seizures. Obesity is dangerous not only for the health of the mother, but also for the child.

Postoperative complications. Obese patients have difficulty undergoing surgery. The healing processes are sluggish. Patients who are overweight respond poorly to anesthesia and are prone to developing infections. They have an increased risk of blood clots.

Aging. Due to the excess load that the body experiences, the aging process in obese people is difficult and complicated by various ailments. Premature aging is common.

conclusions

Food addiction is becoming an increasingly pressing problem these days. If obesity used to be considered a good sign of health, now it’s the opposite. More and more girls are chasing fashion. People experience more stress at work and in their personal lives.

Plus, the food industry makes money on our needs. They produce semi-finished products that are “heat only” and add monosodium glutamate to food. In the store, the most important products are located at the back of the store, and chips and Coca-Cola are near the entrance.

People don’t watch their diet, or they watch it too enthusiastically.

In general, the problem needs to be eradicated, since food addiction leads to great health problems and sometimes death, as is the case with anorexia.

Bibliography

Books

1.I.G. Malkina-Pykh "Eating Behavior Therapy" 2005.

2.“How to overcome food addiction” - M.: Eksmo Publishing House, 2010.

.Neal Barnard "Overcoming food temptations" 2007.

.Gillian Riley "Eat less. Stop overeating." 2012.

5.Jörg Ziplau, Annette Saberski "Eat or Die! How the food industry makes us drug addicts" - St. Petersburg: Peter, 2010.

.Frank Mineart, Paul Mayer, Robert Hemfelt, Sharon Sneed, Don Hawkins "A Drug Called FOOD" - Triad Publishing, 2011.

Articles from magazines

7.BUT. Nikolaeva, Moscow City Psychological and Pedagogical University, "History and current state of research on eating disorders (cultural and psychological aspects)", journal "Clinical and Special Psychology" No. 1 2012

8.Barabash P.I. "Strategic approach and algorithms for rational nutrition in the psychological correction of excess weight", scientific and methodological electronic journal "Concept" - 2013. - No. 05 (May).

.B.Yu. Prilensky, A.V. Prilenskaya "Stages of development of food addiction", Tyumen State Medical Academy, Tyumen Medical Journal No. 1, 2010

.M.S. Artemyeva, R.A. Suleymanov, "Social and legal aspects of the treatment of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa", Department of Psychiatry and Medical Psychology, Faculty of Medicine, Peoples' Friendship University of Russia Bulletin of the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia. Series: Medicine. 2009. No. 4

.A.V. Vakhmistrov, “Clinical and psychological analysis of various forms of emotiogenic eating behavior”, MMA im. THEM. Sechenov, Almanac of Clinical Medicine. 2001. No. 4

12. Ziegelbaum D. J. In search of a test tube hamburger. Time Magazine, 04/23/2008<#"justify">13.Article "Who chooses dishes made of clay and glass for lunch"

URL:<#"justify">14. Article "Bulimia"

URL: #"justify">15. Article "Compulsivity and its genetic roots"

URL:<#"justify">16.Article "Compulsive overeating"

URL:<#"justify">17.Article "Chocolate addiction"

URL:<#"justify">18.Article "Addiction and other harm from sugar"

URL:<#"justify">19.Volkova Gyuzel Evgenievna, “Eating behavior, emotional and personal characteristics and mediators of energy metabolism in obese patients,” dissertation for the degree of candidate of medical sciences / State Institution “Endocrinological Research Center of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences”. Moscow, 2011

Applications

Food addiction questionnaire

Answer questions with yes or no answers.

1.Can you formulate the goal you are currently striving for? Do you experience a feeling of “emptiness” in life, meaninglessness, aimlessness?

2.Are you satisfied with your personal life?

3.Are you able to determine when you feel hungry when eating and stop eating?

4.Do you always clearly identify the cause of a bad mood or mental discomfort?

5.Can you say that after feeling full, life takes on meaning for you?

6.Would you like someone else, kind, strong and powerful, to be responsible for you?

7.Does it ever happen that you “feel bad for no reason”?

8.Do you have a desire to eat to calm down and find balance?

9.Do you eat to relieve tension and stress?

10.Do you eat as punishment, “confirmation” of your shortcomings, “to spite yourself”, in order to “be even worse”?

11.Do you often experience aggression, anger that you are forced to hide?

12.Do you often experience apathy, boredom, and emptiness in life?

13.Do you often have no one to complain to? Do you find it difficult to get rid of resentment? Are you often bullied?

14.Does it happen that you eat simply because “there is time and opportunity for this”, “in reserve”?

15.Does it happen that you eat only to gain strength to work or to restore strength after work?

16.Does it happen that you eat because of other people (out of a sense of duty, to please, to be in society)?

17.Does it happen that you eat “out of spite”, out of a feeling of contradiction, when they try to influence my appearance and nutrition?

18.Is there something, someone in your life that you do not accept, that you are trying to escape from, that you want to avoid, but have not yet succeeded in doing?

You need to add up the “yes” answers to questions 5-18. This is the number A. The sum of the “yes” answers to questions 1-4 is the number B. You need to subtract B from A.

Appendix 2. Dutch Eating Behavior Questionnaire

The Dutch Eating Behavior Questionnaire (DEBQ) was created in 1986 by Dutch psychologists at the Faculty of Human Nutrition and the Faculty of Social Psychology of the Agricultural University (Netherlands) to identify restrictive, emotional and external eating behavior.

How to take the questionnaire. To get a reliable result, take the test quickly, without hesitation.

Answer every question

"never",

"very rarely",

"often" or

"Often".

If your weight starts to increase, are you eating less than usual?

Do you try to eat less than you would like during breakfast, lunch, and dinner?

Do you often refuse to eat or drink because you are worried about your weight?

Do you carefully control the amount you eat?

Do you make intentional food choices to lose weight?

If you overeat, will you eat less the next day?

Do you try to eat less to avoid gaining weight?

Do you often try not to eat between meals because you are watching your weight?

Do you often try not to eat in the evenings because you are watching your weight?

Do you think about how much you weigh before you eat something?

Do you feel the urge to eat when you are irritated?

Do you feel like eating when you have nothing to do?

Do you feel the urge to eat when you are depressed or discouraged?

Do you feel the urge to eat when you're lonely?

Do you feel the urge to eat when someone has let you down?

Do you have a desire to eat when something interferes with you or your plans are disrupted?

Do you have a desire to eat when you anticipate some kind of trouble?

Do you feel like eating when you're anxious, anxious, or stressed?

Do you have a desire to eat when “everything is wrong”, “everything is falling out of your hands”?

Do you feel like eating when you're scared?

Do you have a desire to eat when you are disappointed, your hopes are destroyed?

Do you have a desire to eat when you are excited or upset?

Do you have a desire to eat when you are tired or anxious?

Do you eat more than usual when the food is delicious?

Do you eat more than usual when food looks and smells especially good?

If you see and smell delicious food, do you feel the urge to eat?

If you have something tasty, will you eat it immediately?

If you pass by a bakery, do you want to buy something tasty?

If you pass by a cafe, do you want to buy something tasty?

When you see others eating, do you feel the urge to eat?

Can you stop when you eat something delicious?

Do you eat more than usual in a group (when others are eating)?

When you cook food, do you taste it often?

Calculate the points: for each “never” - 1, for “very rarely” - 2, for “sometimes” - 3, for “often” - 4, “very often” - 5 (with 31 questions - it’s the other way around).

Answers to the first ten questions determine restrictive eating behavior. The average result is 2.4. If the number you get is much lower, it means you have little control over what and how much you eat. If it is much more, you are too strict with yourself and may be prone to anorexia.

Questions 11-23 determine the emotional line of behavior: are you inclined to eat emotions or not. The lower the number, the better (average result 1.8). If it is very high, think about what to do so as not to pounce on sweets out of sadness and boredom.

The last ten questions make up the externalizing eating behavior scale. It determines whether you are easily tempted to eat something tasty. The average score on this scale is 2.7. If you earn a lot more, it means that you tend to overeat in company, in restaurants and cafes, where the dishes look appetizing, and even on a diet you cannot deny yourself a delicious-smelling freshly baked bun. Watch yourself carefully in such situations.

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Has it ever happened to you that after eating you are completely full, your stomach is full, but you still want to eat something just to enjoy it? Has it ever happened to you that you have already eaten at home, but suddenly find yourself at a party or in a public catering place where you are offered something to drink or eat, and you are overcome by the fear that if you do this, you will definitely gain extra pounds? Does it ever happen that you don’t notice how you eat a kilogram of candy in one sitting and don’t even feel like you’ve overeaten? If you answered yes to at least one of the questions, then most likely you have a food addiction.

Types of food addiction

Don’t be too scared and run to the doctor or register yourself as disabled. It is possible that such eating behavior is not typical for you all the time, but happens very rarely and you can count such situations on your fingers. But if this happens often enough, and you realize that you cannot control yourself and control it, then you should think seriously about your health.

We all know that there is alcohol or nicotine addiction, drug addiction and gaming addiction, the so-called gambling addiction, but few people realize about food addiction. In fact, it is difficult to imagine dependence on what all of humanity is dependent on. Food is what every living creature needs to sustain life. The difference is that we eat to live, and people with food addiction live to eat. No matter how loud it may sound, it is true. I speak about this with complete confidence, because I myself experienced it and still experience it, although much less often.
So, let's figure out what types of food addiction there are and what separates them.

The most common type of food addiction is the usual Binge eating or Gluttony. In religious literature this is called gluttony and is equated to a great sin, like murder or theft. Many people nowadays suffer from this disease without even noticing it. A person consumes much more food than he needs, devoting himself completely to eating, making a whole event out of it, devoting a lot of time and attention to eating. Moreover, very often a person is not aware that he is overeating and that his weight is rapidly growing, and even if he notices, he does not concentrate his attention on it, because eating food in large quantities is very pleasant, and the rest is not important.

Another type of food addiction is (translated from Greek as bullish appetite). The person has an insatiable appetite and consumes large amounts of food in one sitting or throughout the day. Moreover, the understanding that he is overeating clearly and clearly appears before him, but he is not able to stop on his own. Very often a person eats to such an extent that the stomach cannot stand it and empties on its own. But basically, the patient himself empties his stomach so that all the food eaten does not have time to be absorbed by the body. Unlike the first type of food addiction, a person suffering from bulimia is very afraid of gaining excess weight and strives in every possible way to get rid of excess calories. This is usually achieved by artificial cleansing of the stomach or intestines, using.

The last type of food addiction is (translated from Greek - not the urge to eat). A person suffering from anorexia completely or partially refuses to eat for fear of gaining excess weight. At the beginning of the disease, a person refuses some foods completely, avoids them and is even afraid. Later, he reduces the amount of all food consumed, and, in the end, may completely refuse to eat. Food in principle causes hatred and fear in them. They avoid visiting public places where they might be offered food.

Signs of food addiction

All types of food addiction that I described above are presented in the very last stage of their development, that is, an already existing disease. Like any disease, food addiction has its own symptoms, and if you notice any of them in yourself or your loved ones, you should pay close attention to this and determine the extent of the disease.

So, how food addicts behave and how they feel:

• They think that thin and beautiful are the same thing
• They don’t take care of their appearance and don’t want to notice their excess weight
• Uncontrollable cravings for food in general, or for certain foods
• Constantly feeling anxious about eating
• Attachment to certain products and feelings of dissatisfaction and rage due to the absence of this product in the house
• Eating frequently throughout the day (every hour or more often)
• Intentionally refusing to eat or visit places that offer food
• Impatience when eating, eating food quickly
• Uncontrollable anxiety about skipping meals
• Feelings of guilt caused by food consumption
• Self-blame and low self-esteem
• Depression
• Frequent headaches
• Gastrointestinal problems

These are just a few of the symptoms that indicate an incipient or progressive disease. Each patient has his own symptoms that are not inherent in the other. Only you yourself can feel that your life and all your thoughts depend on food. If you live from breakfast to lunch, from lunch to dinner and nothing else occupies you, then this is the first signal that you are gradually starting to get sick. Food addiction is not born in one day or even in one year. This is a very long process that usually begins in childhood.

Causes of food addiction

All signs of food addiction are already consequences of the disease, its extreme forms, so to speak. But the reasons for food addiction are purely psychological. Unlike drug addiction, which is caused by a physical effect on the nerve centers of the brain, food addiction is more psychological in nature. Although, of course, food also affects our brain and causes it to produce substances that cause a feeling of euphoria and satisfaction.

Despite this, the reasons for this dependence are psychological factors. However, I cannot say clearly that food addiction is caused by any specific feeling. Each person has completely different reasons. For some it is a child’s resentment towards their parents, for others it is a resentment towards their husband or wife, etc. One thing I can say for sure is that a feeling of dissatisfaction with oneself, one’s appearance and low self-esteem are inherent in everyone suffering from food addiction. Some people know exactly what triggered the problem; some find it difficult to figure out the reasons for the addiction themselves. To do this, it is best to contact a professional psychologist or psychotherapist. In the treatment of food addiction, it is very important to understand what exactly caused such consequences. Fighting the disease with purely physical methods (hiding food, replacing harmful foods with healthy ones) is not effective. It is more important to understand the psychological reasons and motivate a person to get rid of this addiction.

Why is food addiction dangerous?

If you suffer from food addiction, then you understand that this is the most disease there is and it brings as much suffering as, say, toothache. Imagine that this toothache constantly accompanies you, before bed, in the morning, at work, at home, wherever you are. Not only do thoughts about food prevent you from working and existing normally, they also have purely physical consequences.

Food addiction in the form gluttony and overeating dangerous for obesity, heart disease, hypertension, diabetes and many other diseases that obese people are susceptible to.

It is dangerous because uncontrolled eating of large amounts of food always leads to problems with the functioning of the stomach and intestines; there have been cases of ruptures of the stomach walls. Constant emptying of the stomach leads to problems with the esophagus, destruction of tooth enamel, and diseases of the oral cavity. Frequent use of laxatives disrupts intestinal function and leads to dehydration.

Anorexia most often entails eating disorders, hormonal imbalance, cessation of the menstrual cycle and infertility, deterioration in the quality of the skin, hair and nails. The extreme consequences of anorexia are dehydration and death.

As you can see, the consequences of any food addiction are very terrible and sometimes irreversible, and ultimately leading to death.

How to get rid of food addiction on your own

Of course, food addiction is not a runny nose and it is very difficult to get rid of it forever on your own. This requires a lot of effort and long work not only on oneself, but also the work of specialists in the field of nutrition, psychology and physical education. However, we know many examples where people even got rid of drug addiction on their own. Because the main problem of any addiction is, first of all, in the head. And this is where you should start if you want to get rid of addiction on your own.

Step 1

So, the first direction you need to choose is motivation. Motivation is very important in overcoming yourself and your own fears. A person can sometimes motivate himself so much that he turns out to be capable of actions that are unusual for him, while showing courage and bravery, strength and pressure, courage and fearlessness of which he is not aware.

The main and first step on the path to recovery is to motivate yourself. You can be motivated by your loved ones, your loved one. But sometimes the people around you are not aware of your problem and cannot motivate you. We have to take everything into our own hands. First, understand that food addiction is not just a habit, it is a bad habit and sooner or later it will lead you to severe health problems, sometimes incompatible with life. Set yourself the goal of getting well for the sake of someone or something, and first of all for yourself, for the sake of life itself, healthy and happy.

Step 2

Once you have found a purpose to live for and strive to overcome your food addiction, you need to create a power system, which will allow you to eat right. Start by writing a list of foods that you can eat every day. Read the literature, scour the Internet and you will find a bunch. After that, make a list of foods that you can eat 1-2 times a week. These are foods that are also healthy, but in small quantities, which do not make you full, but contain useful substances. It could even be various sweets. Then make a list of foods, perhaps your favorites, that you can treat yourself to once a month. It is very important that you do not set any strict limits for yourself. You shouldn’t give up on your favorite chocolate and decide for yourself that you will never be able to taste it again in your life. This is wrong. Even if fast food will be present, but in such quantities that it cannot harm either your body or your figure.

Step 3

The next important stage of rehabilitation is hobby. Food addiction is an addiction not so much to the food itself, but to the emotions that eating it gives you. It is unlikely that any of you will eat raw cabbage all day long and worry about it. Most likely, these will be foods that you enjoy eating, tasting, and enjoying. By and large, food addiction becomes a problem when there is a lack of positive emotions from the outside replaced by positive emotions from eating. Therefore, during the recovery period, it is very important to get positive emotions from something other than food. You just need to keep yourself busy with something interesting. This will help you not think about food constantly and get positive emotions. Do something that interests you. Enroll in a drawing, sewing group, or a sports section. Sport, by the way, is another way to get rid of food addiction. During strenuous exercise, the body produces hormones that affect the centers of the brain responsible for pleasure and appetite suppression. This is true, I tested it myself.

Step 4

And the last stage, the most difficult and longest, is working on your self-esteem. People suffering from any form of addiction are people who are unsure of their uniqueness, of their personal integrity, suffering from low self-esteem, and subject to constant self-flagellation. The main thing is to understand that it is not your body and your organism that makes you who you are, but your consciousness that forms the wrong idea about food and your essence. Stop berating yourself, stop hating your body. It's beautiful and unique. If you suffer from excess weight or are afraid of gaining it, then do not eat your grief, do not force your body with hunger. It's a vicious circle. Loving yourself is very difficult and requires a lot of effort and time. But the work is worth it. Reward yourself for any victory, even the smallest one. And don't punish yourself for any mistake. Just forgive yourself for everything and move on towards your goal. You have no one closer and dearer than yourself. No one will ever take care of you if not you yourself. This is your life and you have only one. And there are a lot of interesting and pleasant things in it, besides food.

I suggest you watch the video of Dr. Gavrilov’s “Nothing Extra” project on how to deal with food addiction.

The everyday idea of ​​addiction sometimes differs from what exists in the scientific community. If ordinary people imagine all addictions as something bad and interfering with life, then for specialists this is not always the case. Food addiction is a completely natural condition. But provided that it does not take pathological forms. Due to food addiction, as is understandable, obesity develops. For this reason, it is necessary to arm yourself with methods to defeat it. Moreover, there are quite a lot of them.

How to tell if you have a food addiction

Hunger and the desire to eat food are completely natural for humans. Unlike, for example, drinking alcohol and smoking. You can live without a cigarette or a can of beer, but you cannot live without food. Then why did the term “food addiction” suddenly become associated with necessarily negative connotations? The difference is how intense the desire to eat is.

The main feature of pathological dependence on food is that it is determined not by physical urges (the same feeling of hunger), but by emotional ones. More precisely, psychological. Although not always. As a result, we get the following situation: the stomach is full, there are enough nutritional components for the body to function, but the person still has an irresistible urge to eat something else. We can conclude about food addiction when the desire to eat is not caused by objective reasons and remains stable, even if you are already more than full.

The results of true food addiction are deplorable: it causes not only excess weight, but also many other problems: diabetes, disorders of the gastrointestinal tract, cardiovascular system, joints, and so on. Not to mention the fact that such addiction does not allow a person to live in peace, since all his thoughts and desires are aimed precisely at running to the refrigerator...

What are the causes of food addiction?

You can find a weapon against addiction to eating food only if you determine the causes of its occurrence. No matter how hard you try to reduce the amount of food you eat, the origins of addiction will still not allow you to get rid of obsessive thoughts. Most often, the reasons for this kind of drug addiction are as follows.

1. Deficiency of certain substances necessary for the body to function normally. We are not talking about calories here, which in any case, if you eat the same product frequently, will be enough. Deficiency concerns a number of minerals and trace elements: for example, specific vitamins, iron, potassium. Due to their lack, a feeling of hunger is formed, even if it is not supported physiologically.
2. A vicious circle of fast carbohydrates. There is also such an interesting situation, which is also called the “sweet loop”. As you know, carbohydrates contained in foods are fast and slow. Fast ones are mainly found in sweets. But the more you eat foods rich in such carbohydrates, the more hungry you will feel. The mechanism is extremely simple: a significant concentration of sugar enters the blood, the body has to suddenly produce a huge dose of insulin, after which the sugar instantly drops. And when sugar levels drop, hunger appears again. And, accordingly, you need another portion of chocolate, carbonated drinks, waffles, gingerbread... This is a real trap, from which you can only escape if you exert your willpower and replace fast carbohydrates in your diet with slow ones.
3. Emotional problems. This reason occurs so often that a special term has even been introduced - “emotional hunger” (or emotional overeating). It does not mean hunger for emotions, but hunger caused precisely by stress, depression, and troubles in life. Happy and balanced people will not run to the refrigerator at night - they sleep quite peacefully. When eating food, hormones of joy are produced, so you have to discharge and enjoy in this way.

There are only three reasons, but there are so many inconveniences. In each of these cases, food addiction can become so stable that it will be extremely difficult to cope with it on your own. And it’s better to start the fight as soon as possible, before your “drug addiction” reaches completely unacceptable proportions.

How to deal with food addiction

Practice shows a not very pleasant picture: a person with food addiction independently notices his problem only after health problems arise or a particularly impressive fat reserve is deposited. In many ways, the success of the fight against the “disease” depends on those around you. It’s good when they draw the attention of the “sick person” to a disappointing situation. But, if you yourself understand your situation, then this is very cool. You have very little time left - to go through several stages along the path of getting rid of addiction. Here's where to start.

1. Determine the cause. Of the reasons presented above, it is the negative emotional state that is most often observed. In second place in terms of frequency of detection is the “sweet loop”. By the way, it is also not formed out of nowhere. Usually its origins lie in psychological problems, because it is not without reason that a person begins to consume sweet bars and other harmful things.
2. Donate blood for analysis. The action is optional, but desirable. After all, there is a possibility that you have a deficiency of components necessary for the body. It also happens the other way around - due to constant overeating, certain nutrients are found in excess in the body. Health problems will not be long in coming from this either. Depending on the test results, you will either have to create a diet (to reduce the concentration of certain substances) or start taking nutritional supplements (in situations of deficiency).
3. Analyze your own diet. You need to check your entire diet and determine which foods are needed and which are not. First of all, you will have to exclude the same chocolates, soda, fast food, semi-finished products and everything that is prepared by frying in oil. As we previously noted, when consuming the above, you only increase your appetite even more.

At first you might think that these are extremely simple actions. But, if you really have developed a food addiction, you may have difficulty even implementing them. So, try it first and then you will understand whether it is easy or difficult.

Correcting your diet to overcome food addiction

Only naive people think that they can completely change their diet in a day and forget about food addiction. No - you will have to seriously try to get rid of this vicious craving forever. You will have to adjust the menu and your own thoughts slowly, but systematically and persistently. This is what you need to strive for.

1. Choose the optimal number of meals. There are many opinions about how many times you need to eat during the day. But, probably, most nutritionists agree that it is best if there are five of them. These are the “usual” three and additionally two small snacks, which are vegetables or sour fruits.
2. Develop the habit of creating a menu of products that contain mainly slow carbohydrates and protein. The first rich in cereals and legumes. Protein is mainly meat, dairy and fish.
3. If you have to skip a main meal, you need to think about an additional snack in advance. And he, moreover, must be correct. These are, again, vegetables or fruits. Sweets are allowed, but in small quantities. And, besides, not every sweet product is suitable for a safe snack. For example, dried fruits, natural marmalade or marshmallows are a good option. Plain chocolate or yogurt with dyes is very bad.
4. Get used to the idea that food is, first of all, a source of energy. Another problem for people with food addiction: they get used to seeing eating as a way to get pleasure. You will have to forget about this. On the contrary, you need to get used to the fact that food is needed to maintain the normal functioning of the body. For pleasure, it is better to choose other activities.

Let us say once again that there is no need to rush to implement all these steps. Move gradually from one stage to another. Then you will be able to reduce stress and eventually get used to the new way of life. Along the way, improve your health, correct your figure, and pay attention to other useful activities.

Food addiction: a psychological problem

Too often, food addiction is called a disease. This is not a disease at all, but “just” a psychological problem. Of course, if no serious pathologies are detected in the body’s functioning (and in most cases there is nothing like that). Accordingly, you will have to cope with it through understanding the causes and searching for methods of psychological relaxation. Strive for a life that brings you joy and does not involve needlessly filling your stomach!

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It is difficult for people who have not encountered this problem to believe that ordinary food causes addiction in some people. People need daily food to survive, but it also brings great pleasure. If a person consumes it in large quantities, it can cause a pathological addiction.

Food addiction - what is it?

If people have a great addiction to food, then it is boldly called a disease. According to experts in this field, this disease can be compared to drug or alcohol addiction. This process is almost impossible to control, because a forced ban, on the contrary, can lead to a surge of negative emotions.

A person suffering from this disease eats so much food that it exceeds the usual norm. And therefore, a lot of overeating occurs, which can lead to diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, and gastrointestinal problems.

If a person likes the same product and consumes it often, this is not a food addiction, but only an addiction to food. But, if people no longer care what to eat and in what portions, and these portions are constantly increasing, then this can already be called food addiction.

One of the main causes of addiction is unpredictable stressful situations. And, unfortunately, not many people are able to cope with them, because they begin to get nervous and worry, which leads to a great desire to eat.

Causes of food addiction

Any addiction that a person may have always affects the nervous system. This also applies to food addiction, because when you eat food, the body produces the hormone serotonin. When a person has eaten, he feels satisfied with a surge of strength and energy. If you do not control the process of eating (quantity and frequency), over time, food becomes not a way to maintain the vital functions of the body, but something that brings a feeling of happiness and pleasure. Some of the most common causes of food addiction include the following:

• As already mentioned, stress is the main cause of food addiction. After all, there are a lot of people who “eat up” any minor excitement. For them, food becomes the only “joy” that relieves them from feelings of depression and loneliness.
• Food serves as a similar method of “treatment” for people with mental illnesses. Eating different foods calms them down, helps them get rid of negative emotions and generally improves their condition.
• Often the disease occurs in those people who have some defects in appearance. They worry so much about this that eating turns into an uncontrolled process for them.
• There are times when people eat a lot of food to reduce physical pain. On a mental level, they believe that food helps them feel much better.

Symptoms that help identify the disease

1. For a long time, people have been constantly trying to increase their food intake. And compared to previous years, meals are noticeably different.
2. Tolerance is one of the symptoms of the disease. It manifests itself when a person realizes that he actually eats a lot of food.
3. Anxiety comes when a person feels hungry. Scientists have proven that when you feel hungry, the human body feels discomfort. Also, against the background of hunger, many people experience anxiety and panic, which is a direct sign of food addiction.
4. Symptoms of concern. They manifest themselves when a person who is already addicted to food spends a lot of his time purchasing food products. And the daily necessary tasks take much less time than it was done before. And therefore, people often forget about important things because their thoughts are occupied with food.
5. Many attempts to cope with the disease on my own were unsuccessful. People who have experienced a very strong addiction try different diets to get rid of it. But for many, instead of switching to diet food, the opposite happens, a stronger appetite appears.
6. It is difficult for a person to give up his habit even after serious complications have arisen in his health. For example, eating too much food (to a large extent, consuming a lot of sugar) can lead to diseases such as diabetes, as well as obesity. This symptom almost always indicates a person’s food addiction.

How to get rid of food addiction?

When illness comes, the addiction to food takes over the human consciousness and the brain is no longer able to control it. The first thing you need to do is try to regain control over yourself. But, if a person knows that he is sick and is doing everything possible to recover, but he cannot do anything on his own, then he must definitely seek advice from a psychotherapist.

Food addiction is a disease that needs to be treated. To get rid of it you need to follow some rules:

1. In order to try to get rid of addiction, you need to adhere to an appropriate diet. It is necessary to completely eliminate sugar and flour products from the diet. This can be done at least for a while until control begins to be restored.
2. Another huge step towards recovery is eliminating irritants. To do this, you need to try to remove from the house all those products that pose a threat to humans. It is also very important that all family members stand in solidarity with the dependent person and support him.
3. Those people who are addicted are accustomed to eating irregularly, having frequent snacks, and eating at different times. You need to develop your own regime, which includes three main meals and two light snacks.
4. It is also very important that addicted people find like-minded people in this problem. Because it will be easier to find a common language with such people, since you are united by the same problem, and it will be easier to look for ways to solve it faster.
5. People suffering from this disease need to learn to cope with their emotions. If they control their emotions, it will be easier to find the reasons that influence the appearance of stress.
6. Everyone knows that physical activity always has a positive effect on human well-being. And in this case, they will be very useful, because with the help of various exercises you can not only get rid of excess weight, but you can also increase self-control over food intake. Thanks to this, people become more resistant to stressful situations.
7. Thanks to the advice and consultation of specialists, people managed to get rid of the disease and make their lives more manageable. But first you need to make sure that the addiction has completely disappeared. A person needs to be extremely careful for some time. And when everything gets better, you can return to your previous way of life.
8. Since the main reason for eating habits is various stressful situations, keeping a special journal will help you get rid of this disease. In this journal you need to write down your negative emotions, and in what quantity and how often you eat food. Experts say that this method makes a person understand that the emotional background greatly influences the increase in food consumption.
9. As soon as a person has a desire to eat, he goes to the kitchen in search of “prey”, as a result it all ends in severe overeating. In this case, experts recommend keeping your hands busy with something else, because in this way you can be distracted and control the amount of food you eat. For example, you can do a regular hand massage, because this will also be beneficial for the skin of your hands. Try doing exercises with a wrist spander. This procedure will not only help you get rid of the thought of eating, but will also be very beneficial for your muscles and joints. And the simplest “distraction” is a regular manicure. Just get your nails in order and you will get rid of the next “attack” of hunger.
10. If you find it difficult to refuse another portion of goodies, try tricking your body. To do this, you need to prepare low-calorie dishes that will bring you more benefits. For example, replace your favorite salads with mayonnaise with low-fat sour cream or low-sweet yogurt. Also choose those salads that are prepared with the addition of olive oil. Also avoid fried foods and steam food instead. If it is difficult for you to give up chocolate, eat only natural dark chocolate, not white or milk.

As a result, I would like to say that food addiction is a disease that begins at an early age. And whether in the future the child will be able to control himself while eating food depends only on the parents. After all, even in infancy, we perceive all the whims, and the crying of a child, as a desire to eat. As a result, we ourselves, without realizing it, develop a habit in our baby, which in the future can become the cause of food addiction. To prevent this from happening, you should listen carefully to your child and not feed him every time he is in a “bad mood.”

Also remember, you should never console a child with sweets, because many adults do this to children. In addition, there is no need to reward your baby with food, because you may pay dearly for it in the future.

For more information on how to get rid of food addiction, watch this video: