Can You Actually Be Addicted To Food?
In this video, I address how food addiction is indeed a real thing, and how you begin to recover.
This is a really important topic to discuss, and I don’t think there’s enough attention being drawn to it. Over 7 million people in the U.S alone struggle with food addiction.
Personally, I feel like society in general is happy to celebrate someone for their sobriety from alcohol or drugs, as they should! My own father has been sober for over 20 years and it’s absolutely something to celebrate! But when it comes to food addiction, we forget that it’s just as powerful. Recovery from food addiction It’s more than willpower. It’s more than drive and motivation. This addiction truly is a chemical reaction in your body that keeps you addicted to food. It’s a culmination of brain and body.
We must stop shaming people for making the healthiest choices they need to make to get through this addiction.
The Science (what’s happening in your body):
Gluten and dairy can stimulate opiate receptors and trigger those “feel good” hormones called endorphins in the brain. And they produce that “feel good” response.
And THEN, on top of the fact that you’re getting this immediate endorphin release, the cycle perpetuates. Because once you’ve eaten those foods, they start altering the chemical makeup of your gut. And it starts having a will of its own, because it wants to survive. So it will send chemical messengers to your brain that say “ I want more…”
How do you break the cycle?
Rewire the brain through training the subconscious body, while resetting the body and the gut through specific nutritional adjustments. We do EXACTLY THIS in my 7 Day reset program.
Find details at www.7dayreset.net
Full Video Transcription:
Hey
there guys, it’s Lyss here and over the next 10 minutes I’m going to be
addressing the question of whether or not you actually can be addicted
to food. Like somebody can be addicted to drugs or alcohol. So as you
guys are hopping on, whether you guys are watching me do this live or
you are catching this as a replay someplace else, I want you to do me a
favor and post your most desired comfort foods. Do me a favor and put in
the comments right now, like your top two or three comfort foods. You
know those days where you’re like you just had enough with people at
work or your kids are driving you crazy or you just had a really
stressful day and it’s like those foods that are just going to put you
in a good mood or you want to relax with on the couch.
Do me a favor and put those in the comments. So I’m going to be talking to you guys about. first, why food addiction is spoiler alert, a real thing, a legitimate thing, and then how you can fix it. Guys, the reason that I want to address this is because I think it’s such an important topic. We have literally 70 million people (and this statistic is from 2016 from the food and Drug Administration), but over 70 million people just in the U.S. alone struggle with food addiction. And so, you know, I come from a family where, you know, we’ve struggled with addiction in many different ways and so I’ve realized over the years I feel like society in general is a little bit more aware and supportive of celebrating people that are in sobriety from alcohol addiction or drug addiction. And my dad has been sober for 20-25 years and it’s like, it’s a huge accomplishment.
I mean I love when my newsfeed comes up filled with people that are celebrating their one year sober, two years sober, three years sober, a couple months sober. I think it’s such an incredible accomplishment. I just think that we also need to celebrate people that are going through food addiction and making it through there and we have to be easier on them. And so this, this training kind of came from a little bit of my selfish side of getting tired of seeing, you know, clients and people that are in my 7 Day Reset or doing any of my programs, having them just be shamed by people that are in their life, that are asking them to like go to Taco bell or go to dairy queen and get ice cream, or like go out to the bar one, two, three times a week and just make decisions that would take them further from their goals.
And it’s like people make them feel bad about it. And the way that I look at it and try to put it into perspective is I hope as a friend or a family member, if you had a friend or family member that was addicted to alcohol and you knew it was sober, I pray to God that you wouldn’t be inviting them to a bar and then getting pissed that they wouldn’t go with you. Right? Because you know that that’s going to steer them in the wrong direction, take them away from their goal and possibly bring them out of sobriety. And it’s the same thing with food. So guys, do me a favor. As you guys are hopping on like I said, I’m going to use this in just a minute. What are your top two or three comfort foods? And I’m going to talk to you about that in just a second.
I do have a reasoning behind that, but okay, so Sherry says chips and dip a Dr Pepper. Yes, drinks absolutely can do that. Some days anything will do, right? People just sometimes feel like they’re a food addict. It doesn’t necessarily even matter which specific food it is. Thank you for being so transparent, Sherry. I appreciate it. So guys, I just needed to kind of preface this as why I’m so passionate about talking about this because I just feel like as a society we, we do celebrate people that are recovering from other addictions and we don’t look at food as much of an addiction thing. I think a lot of people look at it as more of like a lack of willpower or a lack of motivation or a lack of drive and I’m here to help you understand that it actually is a chemical reaction, like a chemical response in your brain, in your body and you can reset it, which is part of what I do in my seven day reset.
We address the brain and the body part, but how many of you guys have ever felt like maybe you struggle with something but when you understand why it’s happening, it just helps it kind of put into perspective and you can just swallow it a little bit better. Like have you ever been sick or you’re experiencing certain symptoms and you know you go and you get a diagnosis from a doctor and it doesn’t necessarily mean that once you got that diagnosis that everything is better, but it helps you be able to just be like you’re not crazy and to feel like you can just kind of swallow it a little bit easier. Hey, has anybody else ever felt that way? I know I have. It just makes it a little bit easier to, to take on and to tackle. And so I feel like helping you guys understand the very like layman’s terms like science behind what is going on, the understanding that you’re not crazy for.
Yeah, you are being addicted to those chips or being addicted to the pasta or the breads. There is a reason why you’re craving that. Ben and Jerry’s like, it’s not just that you don’t have willpower, it’s not just that you don’t have self control. Is the brain important? Is Retraining, rewiring the brain important? Absolutely. But there’s a chemical reaction in your body. And so this is not just you being crazy and not having self control. This is literally something that is going on within you. So what happens here guys is most of the foods that you guys are commenting or describing have either gluten or dairy in them for a lot of things. And then sugar. Sugar has it’s own own level of addictive properties. But what happens guys is when you’re having gluten anything with wheat in it, you have your pastas, your breads, you know those Carby things, any type of dairy, I don’t care whether it’s ice cream, whether it’s really buttery popcorn, any type of dairy that’s in there, cheese, pizza, pizza’s got gluten and dairy, how many of you guys feel like pizza is super comforting to you guys?
They don’t call it comfort foods for nothing. It literally is triggering these opiate receptors in your brain that are the same receptors that can get activated by alcohol, activated by drugs, activated by certain medications, activated by like exercise. You get like that runners high, right? It actually is a chemical response that’s in your brain. So you instantly are getting this feel good response when you’re having any of these comfort foods. It’s called a comfort food because those neurotransmitters, those endorphins are comforting you. It’s not like your, your bag of chips or Ben and Jerry’s is sitting there petting you. You’re, you’re cuddling up with it. I mean, maybe you’re cuddling with it, but it’s because it’s comforting, literally chemically to your brain. So that’s that instant release of endorphins and then what’s happening guys, even worse yet, you’re not only getting that immediate like satisfaction from those foods, but once you start having them a couple of times and you have them repetitively, it’s starting to change the bugs in your gut.
So when you have sugar, when you have dairy, when you have gluten repetitively, you start to have more of like the bad bacteria in your gut. And then if you stop eating those, your gut’s smart. Like it starts to have a mind of its own now and it’s like, hmm, Alyssa stopped beating me this stuff. I’m going to send Chemical Messengers to the brain saying I need more of this now. Did you guys ever want to stop having certain foods? You really want to cut that Ben and Jerry’s out. You really want to stop having pasta every day. You really want to get rid of your total Bagel, baked food, donut, whatever addiction that you have. And it’s like you have withdrawal symptoms. It’s a real thing. You absolutely have food withdrawal and usually it’s happening between the first two and five days that you stop eating one of these types of foods.
This is why when I do my seven day reset program and we address a lot of this stuff, days two through five are typically the hardest for most people and then by the end of it they got everything reset. But not only are we rewiring their brain, but we got to do the rewiring of the gut. You’re literally resetting the, the bacteria and the cultures in your gut through certain nutritional changes in this program. So any of you guys out there, whether it’s you or somebody that you know that super struggles with being able to cut out certain foods that feels like they’re addicted to certain foods, addicted to food in general, feel like they can’t get a hold of their cravings and, and just being able to tackle this, this, this beast, this beast of feeling like, you know, you have some type of sadness or negative emotion in your life and you solve it with food.
Or just feeling like even if you are a happy person, why are you addicted to food and why can’t you stop? There is a chemical reason for it. And we work through it in the seven days of my seven day reset. That’s just one of the benefits. So guys, please do me a favor. And if you or anybody else that you know struggles with any type of food addiction, send this to them in messenger. Share it on your wall because this is something that I feel like most people think. It’s, it’s them, it’s, it’s them just being broken and not having enough willpower. And so much more than that. And we need to lift the shame and just be able to give people true tangible advice and good solutions that they can start to implement today. Because it absolutely is possible to break this addiction and you know, as little as a week because you, you can rebuild the cells in your gut in three to seven days, which is a big portion of it. So if you guys have any questions as always, post and below. Otherwise I will see you next time.
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