Is Food Addiction Real?
- Oct 22, 2021
- 4 min read
Written by: Vanessa McLennan, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Is food addiction real? Can you really be addicted to food, like you can alcohol or drugs? And if you can’t stop eating, is that really an addiction? It can be confusing
What’s an addiction?
An addiction is not being able to stop using a substance or partaking in a behaviour even though it is causing physical or psychological harm. We can misuse substances which is slightly different from an addiction. Misuse is using a substance in high doses or in inappropriate situations that could lead to health or social problems. Gambling, gaming and sex are categories that fit in here. Food fits in here, especially if we binge and overeat, where we eat lots of food in a short space that eventually leads to health problems. Someone with an addiction will continue to misuse the substance even when it is causing many problems in your life. It is that inability to stop. The difference between substances and food is that we cannot give up food. We need it to live on.
In the DSM 5 (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition) which mental health experts will go to for reference. Food is not mentioned in there. Technically then, food is not classed as an addiction.
Food is not an addiction because we may not experience withdrawal feelings from it if we don’t have it. Abstaining from food like sugar will not cause our work or our relationships to suffer. However, we can experience not being able to stop eating. We can experience continually having thoughts about food that takes over our lives. This can feel like an addiction because we cannot control it or stop.
What helps us then is to know what the symptoms of an addiction are so we can identify what our particular issue is. Then it allows us to work on it.
There are 4 categories of addiction symptoms:
Impaired control
This is not being able to cut down or cut out a substance and using more then is intended.
If you have binged on a type of food, this would fit in here. An example might be binging on chocolate, sweets, crisps.
Social problems
Neglecting your responsibilities and relationships. Stopping activities you used to care about because of your substance use. An inability to complete tasks at home or at work.
With food, I see this where people give up on themselves. They really don’t like their body. They don’t like what they have become and because they don’t like themselves they think that no one else is going to like them. In turn that causes relationship problems because a person could be inadvertently pushing away their partner. Not liking yourself in a relationship is going to cause a rift. It could cause issues with friends who do want to help but you are pushing them away.
I also see people not doing activities because they are self conscious and do not feel good about getting out and doing an activity. I often hear when I lose the weight then I will do the activity they love.
Risky use
Using in risky situations or continued use despite the problems.
This would be continuing to binge or eat sugar knowing you have health problems. There is a big difference between food and other addictions here in that you are not likely to get involved with gang crime or have major financial difficulties because of your misuse of food. The big thing at stake then is your health and this is a danger because your health is not going to deteriorate straight away, so the dangers are not so immediately obvious.
Physical dependence
Needing more of the substance to get the same desired effect. Having withdrawal symptoms when the substance is not used.
I see this with chocolate. Not so much withdrawal symptoms that you would see from a drug user but it is still a feeling of not being happy when not eating chocolate. Most people tell me they started out with one piece of chocolate then over time they started eating the whole bar or going onto having to have many bars.
Severity
Another sign of addiction is to guide on the severity of your use. Two or three symptoms and it is a mild addiction, four or 5 symptoms a moderate addiction, and six or more is a severe substance use disorder and that is what is classed in the mental DSM 5 manual as having an addiction.
Healing your addiction
Now that you have an idea of your particular symptoms, you can start to heal. But where do you start?
Awareness. Become aware of your eating habits and triggers. This will help you to start being able to manage it.
Dive deeper. Really explore where your addiction has come from and why it is there. Knowing this helps you to understand your patterns even better and you are able to either stay away from your triggers or not be so emotionally reactive to them.
Work. Work on the deeper issues troubling you so healing comes from within, and you stop reaching out to food to heal you instead.
Vanessa McLennan, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
"Vanessa McLennan is a hypnotherapist/psychotherapist specialising in Binge Eating, Weight loss and obesity. After experiencing challenges in life, she found therapy and it was a life changing experience for her. Her life moved forward so much that she wanted to help others. She started specialising in weightloss and disordered eating because her own poor health caused her to clean up her own diet and healthy living became a passion of hers.
She helps people who have been on many diets and they have not worked. Their eating has got out of control and they can't escape the cycle between eating too much or restriction.
Are you ready and open to exploring your mind and emotions to help clear your unconscious saboteurs? To go within to work on the cause of your habits and not just the symptoms?
Vanessa takes her clients on a healing journey where they heal the relationship with themselves and with food. An exploratory, liberating, life changing journey"
