'Weight-loss' Schemes Can Make Food Addiction Worse

Goal of the Handout : Describes the ways in which weight-loss schemes can make food addiction worse.

Application: The Handout can be used by food addicts to understand the relationship between failed weight-loss programs and the development of food addiction. With this awareness, food addicts can shed painful self-blame for weight struggles. The Handout can also help food addicts resolve to build a sufficient program to counteract the effects of repeated weight-loss attempts.

Some ‘weight-loss’ schemes may actually make food addiction worse. This may occur for a number of reasons: 

• The scheme creates nutritional deficits which cause the body to crave foods.  
• The scheme contains addictive foods which trigger cravings in the brain.  
• The scheme can cause stressful physical or emotional conditions.  Stress is a trigger for food addiction.                                                                                                                                                   

 THE ‘WEIGHT-LOSS SCHEME’ PROMOTES CRAVINGS THROUGH MALNUTRITION

• Calorie restriction has been shown to promote food obsession and intensify cravings.
• Low-carb, low-salt, low-fat diets create nutritional deficits which can lead to intensified cravings for sugars, flours, salty foods, and fatty foods.
• Partial foods such as egg whites and skinless chicken leave the body yearning for the nutrient-rich yolks and skin. 
• Weight-loss surgery is plagued by malabsorption of nutrients and encourages switching to liquid addictive substances as well as recreational drugs which pass through the surgery easily. 
• Liquid replacement meals are not food. When ‘food’ is reintroduced, addictive foods are typically included which re-establishes the disease of food addiction.  

THE ‘WEIGHT-LOSS’ SCHEME CONTAINS ADDICTIVE FOODS WHICH TRIGGERS CRAVINGS

• Diet food products are highly processed addictive foods. 
• Small portions of processed food products
• Point systems that allows for ‘splurges’ of processed foods that activate the addiction.
• Artificial sweeteners have been shown to be chosen by rats over heroin and cocaine. 
• Exercise for weight-loss promotes the delusional idea that we can eat addictive processed foods and then exercise them away. 
• Celebrity ‘diet’ cookbooks that promote desserts made from addictive substances.
• Liquid protein schemes which are followed by reintroduction of addictive foods.  

THE ‘WEIGHT LOSS’ SCHEME DAMAGES KEY BODY FUNCTIONS CAUSING STRESS. 

• Pharmaceuticals have resulted in a variety of physical and emotional damage and further, weight returns when the drugs are stopped.
• Hormone ‘therapy’ has consequences such as loss of menses, infertility, and nausea, vomiting and dehydration. 

A safer route to weight loss is to eliminate obesogenic, processed foods from the diet and replace them with unprocessed foods such as meats, poultry, fish, vegetables, fruits, non-gluten grains, beans and cold-pressed oils.