Cravings, Emotional Eating, And Impulse Eating All Play A Role In Food Addiction

Before you decide to start using medication that targets brain chemistry and brain function, you may first want to learn more about how “emotional” or “mental” symptoms could be produced through changes within the body.

We have run our programs with hundreds of corporate wellness client’s participants as well as numerous one on one clients, and there are a number of things that I have observed when we address the whole person and eating in this sequence:

1. Brain chemistry
2. Hormonal chemistry
3. Metabolism

When people start regulating the carb addiction pathway in the brain AND start lowering the carb-induced addiction pathway in the body, many of the symptoms that are conventionally linked to the “mental” side of food addiction, fade away.

What was once believed to be emotional eating reduces dramatically without emotions having to be addressed at all. People are able to make decisions easier, are not charged up over certain situations or choices, and don’t feel as if they are depriving themselves once they make the choice.

When our participants choose to go 4 to 16 hours without food, cravings which seem to be acute toxic hunger and the effects of food addiction melt away and do not tempt or distract them. Cravings do not haunt them at night, and they are not driven to certain foods anymore.

Impulse eating is virtually ended and this allows them to see problematic junk food and not having to indulge, without feeling restricted when they do. They also don’t feel any anxiety about the choice.

HUGE BONUS: In time, people get to the stage that they feel free to practice what I call “curiosity eating.” This is when they can actually have a bite or two of a dessert, snack, or food without being sent into a virtual food blackout and being tempted to eat the whole serving, bag, box, or plate of junk.

What this says to me is that your body’s physiology is able to set the stage for many issues that we “feel” we’re in, and label as being in the mind. We describe many of these symptoms as being part of addiction and a mental disorder. I would however suggest that they might just rather be symptoms that originate in the body and that we interpret them as mental issues.

There is a distinct possibility here that if you address issues with the body, the brain will start working differently, the mind works differently, our emotions express differently, and our actions, behaviors, and even personalities start to change. Maybe, so much of what we thought was mental is actually an expression of the whole body’s health and in nature more centered in the physical body rather than in the brain. Just maybe.

Remember this as you work through “mental” issues. Never leave out intense work on your body’s physiology – it may provide an all-important missing link for you.