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> Hints > Past Newsletter Editions > Articles > Overcoming food addictions

Overcoming food addictions

Constant exposure to and over consumption of highly processed fatty, sugary foods triggers similar changes in the brain to those seen in drug addiction, and these changes drive the development of compulsive overeating and excessive weight gain.

This was the conclusion of Paul Johnson and Paul Kenny from the Scripps Research Institute in Florida, in their study published in Nature Neuroscience last month.

Johnson and Kenny gave adult laboratory rats unlimited access to bacon, sausages, cheesecake, pound cake, frosting and chocolate (as well as their normal healthy diet) for about twenty hours a day for forty days.

Similar to what you may have noticed yourself in situations where fun foods are freely available to you, the rats quickly came to prefer the more processed foods.

Not only did the rats prefer the fun stuff, they also started eating it compulsively, as demonstrated by the fact that they kept eating it even in adverse conditions that normally put rats off their food. Needless to say, the animals gained significant amounts of excess weight within the forty-day experiment.

This drive to eat compulsively was likely due to a decrease in the amount of dopamine D2 receptors in a part of the brain involved in the development of addictive behaviors. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that is released in the brain in response to pleasurable stimuli such as eating, sex or addictive drugs like cocaine. By acting on dopamine D2 receptors, dopamine induces changes in mood. Intriguingly, this reduction in dopamine D2 receptors in the brain is also seen in the brains of people who are addicted to drugs, as well as in people who have a body mass index in the obese range.

These findings help to explain the addictive quality of fun foods, whereby the more processed foods you eat, the more you seem to need a regular fix of them just to feel normal.

The good news, however, is that this addiction-like brain change seems to be reversible. Just as the low levels of the dopamine D2 receptor in the brain of people who are addicted to drugs are increased upon abstinence from the drug to which they are addicted, a similar increase also occurs in people who have lost excess weight. In fact, many people who've changed their diet and have lost weight actually end up disliking many of the cheap processed foods they used to eat compulsively.

For instance, while I still love a bit of chocolate from time to time (and while I certainly ate more chocolate than I really needed this Easter), I don't eat it compulsively any more like I used to, nor do I eat it in ample quantities just before dinner. Moreover, many of the foods I used to binge on - takeaway pizza, hot chips, takeaway ice cream sundaes and lollies from convenience stores - no longer hold much appeal to me at all.

As another example, when 31 year-old Nellie decided to lose weight by listening to her body, she weighed over 130 kilos and felt driven to eat heavily processed foods such as fried chicken and chips, chocolate-covered ice creams and commercial muffins at least once a day. However, when she started eating more nutritious foods, Nellie's cravings for fun foods rapidly diminished and the weight started falling off.


So, if the prospect of cutting back on the amount of fun foods you're eating so that you can lose weight feels like an insurmountable feat, keep in mind that the more you persist at cutting back gently, the easier it's likely to become, possibly due to re-wiring in your brain.

Over to you

Here's something you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

The more you're exposed to highly processed fattening foods, the more highly processed fatty foods you're likely to eat, and the more you're likely to want to eat them compulsively.

To break the cycle, one of the easiest things you can do is sanitize your environment so that you're not constantly exposed to foods that thwart your intentions of eating well.

Do you struggle with your weight because you find it hard to resist a couple of glasses of wine or a sticky date pudding when you go out for a meal in a restaurant? That's easy to fix. Just find some additional ways of socializing that don't revolve around food, such as ten pin bowling, ice skating, or going for a walk in a forest or by the beach.

Do you find it hard to resist eating too many of the kids' chips at dinner? That's easy to fix, too. Just don't buy or prepare chips for them. A hungry youngster will happily eat boiled spuds if that's the only available option, and you're less likely to splurge on boiled potatoes than on chips.

Do you pig out on the left over ice cream in your freezer after dinner parties? I know I do. The solution that worked for me was to make dinner party desserts that don't involve ice cream. One of my current favorites is chocolate-covered strawberries because there are never any leftovers for me to scoff.

Whatever it takes to remove temptation from your environment, do it now and you'll see how much easier it will be to eat well, lose weight and keep it off.

Have a wonderful couple of months, and I'll write again in August.

If you'd like to comment on this newsletter or send me an update on your progress, click reply and send me a note.

Sincerely,

Amanda

Dr Amanda
Connect with your body
www.DrAmandaOnline.com