There are not many reasons why people need eating help, and the most common by far is they feel like they can't control their eating habits. Whether they're eating too much, too fast, or simply cannot bring themselves to eat the foods they know they should, people who can't control their basic food habits aren't lacking self-control: they're lacking knowledge. They need to learn how to eat food in the way that their body intends them to. That level of eating help is too much for one small article, but I'll lay out the basics.
Listen to your Gut
Unlike modern psycho-medicinal logic would have us believe, eating is not a conscious decision made by strong- or weak-willed people, who then eat correctly or in- respectively. One need only watch a baby eat to understand: eating is a response to internal needs, not a deliberate choice. Like other involuntary responses, we can sometimes tame our eating reflex - just like we can sometimes tame our fight-or-flight response when confronted with a scare. But unlike being startled by an unexpected motion, when your body needs a nutrient, the stimulus doesn't go away just because you recognize what it is.
The knowledge you need to overcome uncontrolled eating is easy in concept, but harder in execution: you need to understand what your body is lacking, so you can find it and start eating. Help fully, our bodies come equipped with a mechanism that tells you when you are shy on a nutrient, whether it's a vitamin like tocopherol (Vitamin E) or a mineral like iron, or an enzyme like trypsin. If you find yourself hankering for something, and the hankering doesn't go away when you eat - you're eating the wrong thing. So listening to your body is part one.
Might as Well Face It, You're Addicted to Carbs
Part two is not letting your body get confused. There are thousands of addictive substances out there, from heroin to cheese, but the number one most common and hardest to overcome addiction in America is...sugar. If you are addicted to sugar - and most people are - than your uncontrollable eating may be due to that addiction rather than any actual nutritional needs. There are other foods that share this property - flour, including any and every baked good, being the second most common addiction in America.
Overcoming carbohydrate addiction is like overcoming any other addiction: it involves a period of suffering. When I went through it, it was too miserable weeks of waking up feeling tired and irritable, and literally getting the shakes whenever I thought about a doughnut or a plate of linguini. I had violent reactions at just the thought of eating. Help came in the form of a supportive wife (who had already gone through the same process) and a house devoid of sugar and floury foods. Two weeks later, I was over it, and life got much, much better.
Unless and until you break your food addictions, you won't be able to listen to your body and understand what you need. So maybe, really, part 2 should be part 1 if you look at it chronologically. Most people, once they accomplish that difficult task (on par with breaking heroin addiction according to some studies), won't need any further eating help to control their dietary habits. For the worst-case scenario, however, a significantly more in-depth form of eating help is required.
The depression/addiction cycle.
A scenario exists that requires special attention, and that is the depression/binge eating cycle. When you consume certain foods like cheese, chocolate, and highly processed floury and sugary foods, you get a kind of high. It's akin to a drug high, but less noticeable, especially if you're depressed. But like a drug high, when you crash, your body compels you to find more of what made you feel better. You need serious eating help.
This kind of scenario is usually short-lived relative to the lifespan of a human being, but it can have serious health repercussions including, on the extreme end, diabetes and heart problems. To break the cycle, you have to break the carb addiction, which can be damaging to someone who is already suffering. The same kind of dietary restriction must be applied - no sugary foods, no floury foods - but the pain can be lessened with other less addictive but still somewhat helpful foods, specifically cheese and dark chocolate.
If you are in this scenario, you need to have someone else control your access to chocolate. No more than 12 ounces per day of 60% dark (no lighter) - spread out across the day. The caffeine and the hormones in chocolate will give you a boost, but too much will make you hyper, which will result in a dangerous crash. Cheese you can snack on all day long with only one restriction - get a variety. The reason is simple: with different kinds of cheese, you will naturally eat more than if you try to binge on a single kind. You want lots, because the high from cheese isn't nearly as potent as the high from chocolate or sugar - and the protein and fat content will help you keep your energy levels stable across the day.
There are a lot of reasons to eat right - and uncontrollable eating is near the bottom of the list. (Avoiding cancer, diabetes, dementia, and other major scares of aging is toward the top.) But it's something that people really notice - and it's something that can totally be helped. If you can't stop eating, help yourself
This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.
No comments:
Post a Comment