I sometimes wonder why it is that you never hear about addiction to broccoli or spinach? Do you crave cabbage or curly kale or something that might do you some good?
We might like them a lot – but we don’t have to have them in large quantities and we can usually stop eating after a reasonable portion without craving more.
Cravings and addictions are usually for junk food – sugar and fats and of course – chocolate. The comfort foods.
Remember back to when you were a small child. Were you given chocolate or sweets to make it better? Or an ice cream as a reward for being a good girl/boy or for not making a fuss – or for getting over a disappointment?
So its not much of a surprise when we automatically turn to these foods when we want to reward ourselves or need to make ourselves feel better.
What if there’s been lots of disappointments which are too painful to acknowledge? And what if we pacify ourselves with the reward we like best every time we feel bad? Then feeling better is associated with these rewards and gradually you can only feel better if you have a chocolate bar or an ice cream and nothing else will give you the same feeling.
These foods are never great for our bodies at the best of times and if you eat them regularly and in quantity they will eventually have an effect on the body’s metabolism and digestive system.
What we crave can also be as a result of a food sensitivity. When I find that a client has a weak immune system I look for foods which they love. I often find that these foods are the very thing that they are sensitive to and that the body doesn’t know what to do with, and so will set up a craving. If that is the sole reason for the addiction and you stop eating that food – the craving very quickly goes with it.
Eating sweets, chocolates and sugary foods is responsible for a lot of poor health. The way our bodies deal with sugar is finely balanced. When the system is overloaded the pancreas begins to function less well, insulin production fluctuates and you can eventually end up with diabetes. While the body struggles with the overload we don’t feel good. This has an effect on the emotions – we don’t feel wonderful when the body isn’t working well. So what happens? We have some more chocolate or cake to make these feelings go away.
Then there’s the terrible guilt for being weak willed – for having finished an entire box of chocolates on one’s own, or like Bridget Jones – a huge tub of ice cream in front of the television.
How to make the guilty feelings go away? By having another chocolate bar of course!
There’s a combination of triggers that support food addictions.
• The body trying to adjust itself to the overload sends out alarm signals which might make you eat more sugar.
• The subconscious search for something to relieve anxiety and emotional pain.
• The habit of eating certain foods at certain times and in certain situations
We have learned that the most effective way to relieve distress is by having something in our mouth. Since birth – unless we’ve been fed to a strict time schedule – the moment we started screaming we were given the breast, a bottle or a pacifier. This usually stopped the screaming and its also where we began to understand that if we put something in our mouths we felt better.
Trying to break a food addiction is not easy. The person with an addiction feels powerless. The addiction rules them and they are its slave.
Its not just the food which has become an addiction – its also the habit which needs to be broken, and all the underlying emotions that go with it need to be looked at. To successfully overcome an addiction all these things have to be understood and addressed.
I have found through my work with Theta Healing and NLP that all these issues can be dealt with, and that the addiction when it is no longer anchored in the emotions and by habit can be effectively resolved.
If you would like help with an addiction
Please call me on – 07979538 378 to find out more
Go to my website www.18.135.123.1. I have given an explanation on Theta Healing and how it works.
If you click on the page – What clients have said – you will see how they have overcome some of the anxieties which lie beneath addiction.