Many people know the state, when with each swallowed piece of favorite cake magically the bad mood disappears, and the world becomes brighter and more cheerful. Such attachments have the property of becoming a ritual, and then a habit.
It’s one thing when, having broken a chocolate bar, a cheerful employee declares that she is chocolate-dependent. The real dependence on food is not shown to others: it is ashamed and carefully concealed.
Where the legs grow from the pathological passion for food, the correspondent of SE recognized.
Be careful: the beast is dangerous!
By and large, our biological existence depends on food, and there is nothing wrong with that. As, however, as in cases of rare excesses. “We all drink alcohol from time to time, sometimes we can even go too far, but this does not mean that we become alcoholics and drunkards at the same time,” Aleksei Markov, a psychotherapist, MD, head of the weight loss center Bormental “. He notes further that only a condition can be called a dependence, accompanied by an irresistible attraction to a chemical substance, product or dish, accompanied by discomfort, guilt, and social disadaptation.
According to Varvara Leshchinskaya, a specialist in weight reduction at the Academic Psychosomatic Center, food dependence is not a disease, but an excessive fixation on food. It is implemented in several types of behavior with its own causes.
Emotiogenic eating behavior: “hunger of the mind” and “hunger of the heart”
Eating food is the most common way to relieve emotional stress. We always feel the lack of information, emotions or food as a hunger, but we do not always determine which. That is, it is hunger in the sense of “lack of something important. ”
He is particularly susceptible to people with low rates of so-called emotional intelligence – when a person does not know how to separate his individual emotions and feelings from the general flow of the state. In such people, troubles with the soul and body are poured into one continuous level of discomfort, which they often eliminate by eating.
A typical “hunger of the heart” is when a woman who succeeds at work can not be realized in her personal life, substituting food for inaccessible pleasures. By the way, the lack of sex is often the only reason for weight gain in a woman.
According to observations of one of the psychotherapists, the client who applied for help lost 7 kg per week only after her lover left the hospital after fracture: her excessive appetite instantly disappeared.
The “hunger of the mind” is usually manifested in people who are ambitious and purposeful, who for various reasons can not at present apply themselves.
For example, a man often has problems with excessive appetite and weight due to the fact that he can not show his creative essence – for example, he is left without work or simply earns less than his wife.
According to Natalia Sannikova, a nutritionist at the “Effekt” health center, men suffer from food addiction and excess weight no less than women, but rarely turn to a psychologist or a nutritionist.
Externally oriented behavior: “society of clean plates”
In the common people – to eat for the company. Most often it is brought up in childhood, when not to eat at a table or at a party was considered a great sin and was blamed by society. The success of the family holiday was measured by the amount eaten. In adulthood, a stable stereotype is formed: not a single feast without a feast, no dinner without the first, second and dessert.
Restrictive behavior: “I eat until no one sees”
Not every dependence on food leads to excess weight. For example, if a person on the next day after a plentiful meal wears himself out in the gym. The appearance of a sense of guilt is a symptom and a sign of dependence, which often leads to weight gain. A person with a model of restrictive behavior is very well restrained in people, but it is necessary for him to cross the threshold of the house, as he has attacks of gluttony. According to Varvara Leshchinskaya, the sense of guilt is so powerful that the protective mechanisms of repression begin to play: a person simply does not remember what he ate. Often, such a trap falls rationals, seeking to subordinate everything to their control.
To get rid of food addiction, experts recommend the following:
• Listen to yourself at every moment of time: gradually you will learn how to isolate the source of the negative and to separate the emotional hunger from the hunger of the present.
• It’s not harmful to dream. Try on the way home to introduce yourself to the warm coast (and let it while only dream): in the cerebral cortex, other pleasure centers are activated, removing the load from the unfortunate center of saturation.
• The easiest way for women to relieve the emotional tension is to discuss with the girlfriend all the disliked. Gradually you will calm down and once again you will not go to the refrigerator.
• Visit a doctor. A sharp increase in appetite may be a sign of health problems, often of thyroid disease.
• Follow the diet: the love of sweet rolls, for example, is observed with a lack of B vitamins, and to chocolate – with hypoglycemia (low sugar level). The body needs to be helped, but adequately: dried fruits, nuts and honey will replace sweets during a day’s snack, whole-grain bread and porridge in the morning will provide slow carbohydrates for the whole day, and the desire to eat a kilo of donuts is unlikely to visit you in the evening. The results will not be immediate, but by adjusting your diet, you may forget about the attacks of unmotivated hunger.
And further. Fill your life with emotions: make a romance, jump with a parachute and provide yourself with quality sex. And you will forget about irrepressible hunger, quenching appetites of a different kind.
