addiction Archives - Nirvana Diet

Breaking the sugar habit

January 22, 2016 by Skyler Madison Leave a Comment

Breaking the sugar habit has everything to do with getting in touch with your feelings. I can’t emphasize enough how many people tell me that their real problem with food is about feelings and using food to fill a need it cannot fill. A big one is comfort. The usual food of choice for this need is sugar and starchy food which is also of course highly addictive. The two things go together. That is why the real goal is to learn how to unblock your feelings, identity your needs and find a way to get them met that does not include any addictive substances such as sugar.

Eating sweets can be a reward after a long day, a way to unwind, a source of what feels like a quick fix in a difficult world. What I suggest is that you start breaking the pattern which some equate with an addiction by identifying the pattern.

Once you do this you can be better prepared to deal with it when it comes up. When you get a thought to eat, changing or breaking the pattern starts with asking yourself if you are really hungry. This gives you a clue as to whether you are using food for its true purpose as fuel or using it to feed a feeling. There is a psychology to losing weight that starts with understanding our relationship to food and eating.

Then try to unpack your feelings. Why do I feel this way? What is my feeling trying to tell me? What do I really need that I am mistaking for food and eating? If it’s a reward you need, something that feels good, you can identify other ways to fill that need.

Some rewards that work for me are: taking a walk, a delicious dinner made from healthy foods that I love and look forward to; going out to meet a friend after a long day; or buying myself a really great book to enjoy reading. Find ways to take feed your self-care in place of harmful foods that contain sugar and starch.

Research is showing that when tasting sugar, the brain lights up in the same regions as it would in an alcoholic. When we eat sugar it causes dopamine—the so-called reward chemical to spike and reinforces the desire to have more while sugar also fuels serotonin which is calming.

Most importantly if you take anything away from this, research shows sugar is toxic to your health and well-being. .

Studies are also showing that it is processed food that produces the changes in the brain that resemble an addiction to alcohol and other addictive drugs. This is the main reason why I advocate getting rid of the processed food… that means anything that comes in a box or package or anything that is not real.

When you look for things that give you the same comfort or feeling that sugar does, don’t turn to things like wine. All you would be doing is trading one for another.

If you are hungry or feel you need a pick me up, go for the healthy food. Berries are great, I love eating big juicy red strawberries or copious amounts of blueberries. They are low glycemic, meaning they produce very little sugar in your blood and body. They won’t trigger your addiction to sugar, and even if you ate a lot of them there are virtually no negative consequences and they contain valuable antioxidants.

The good news is if you eliminate sugary treats, after initial intense cravings you will find your cravings virtually disappear and you feel quite content without them. Some people are very sensitive to this. One day, you might be tempted to try a dessert and you will find that you will be back in the cycle. The next day, your body is craving sugar again, so you give in, just this once. The next day it happens again. And then again. So it goes until you find your clothes are tight and you feel terrible.

That’s because most people do not realize that sugar truly is a highly addictive substance for many people. Studies with rats have shown that the brain changes created by heroin are similar to those created by sugar intake. This includes artificial sugar which works on the brain the same way as actual sugar.

I cannot impress on you enough how misled we have been in terms of sugar and processed foods. More than anything understands getting out of this is a process and sugar is one of the most addictive unhealthy substances out there.

If you need support I recommend you try one of the hypnosis series I created especially Ending Emotional Eating and start taking back control. Breaking the sugar processed food habit is one of the most important things you can do for your health and well-being.

If you have some tips on how to break the sugar processed food habit please share it below.

Obesity and Overeating; Why you have no willpower…

August 8, 2011 by admin Leave a Comment

Here’s what I have learned in the ten years of working with people who struggle with diet plans and are seeking healthy ways to lose weight.

Although Kelly Brownell who wrote Food Fight is focusing on children who are certainly victims of the obesity epidemic, we are all prey to these insidious and dangerous phenomena of the addictive substances in processed food. What is going on?

I think we have all been misled into believing and thinking that diet and exercise are the answer. You have been programmed to think that if you are challenged by losing weight it is because you don’t have enough willpower. There is only one problem with that solution.

You can’t diet and exercise if you are addicted to sugar.

According to Robert Lustig MD, an endocrinologist at the University of San Francisco, you don’t have a chance because sugar is for some people as addictive as the ethanol in alcohol and should be a controlled substance.

Despite this, sugar is literally in everything. This is a biochemical problem that wreaks havoc with your brain and disenables the hormones you rely on to tell you when you are hungry and full. They no longer work when you are under the influence of this toxic addictive substance. According to the Harvard Health Letter, October 2006 issue, annual consumption of sweeteners has increased to about 100 pounds per person over the past 20 years. During this period more people especially children have become overweight and obese…added sweeteners such as high fructose corn syrup may be the reason. Artificial sweeteners added to drinks are particularly troubling because people believe these drinks are healthy. People who drink two cans of diet soda a day over a decade are 70% more likely to be obese. Not only are you saturating your body with sugar, it is debilitating your energy so you can’t exercise even if you want to.

The cure for this like all addictions is to become knowledgeable and ready to make some changes. The pain of continuing to eat like this has to become in your mind greater than the reward you think you get.

This includes taking a hard look at the underlying emotional or life issues that created it. As with most addictions the cure is abstinence and or a modification of how you eat that includes the consumption of plant based foods supplement with moderate amounts of concentrated protein preferably fish. This means focusing on eating real foods such as vegetables, salad, fruit and some “truly” whole grains.

Lustig said this is such a problem for our children. It starts with the baby formula we feed. If we do not have government intervention to help protect us…we will be sorry. This of course will not happen. So you have to take charge of your health yourself. The New York Times has run several articles on the merits of taxing food such as soda and subsidizing vegetables:

We need to treat the food industry just like we did the tobacco industry.

The best diet plan is to eat real food and take up something like meditation and walking to help rebalance the brain chemistry in a This is why I put together a great home study program for stress reduction that includes a great beginner course: Doubt Free meditation.

This is why I put together a great home study program for stress reduction that includes a great beginner course.

Sugar Cravings: Why you can’t follow a plan to lose weight.

August 8, 2011 by admin Leave a Comment

Sugar Cravings: Why you can’t follow a plan to lose weight.

Why are we reluctant to call eating disorders and other negative habits that relate to food eating addictions?

According to Gabor Mate, MD, author of In the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts, a powerful book, the definition of an addiction is:

a habit that causes negative consequences and despite these consequences you cannot stop or change easily.

According to most addiction experts, an addiction is also a chronic neurobiological disease, characterized by behaviors that include: impaired ability to control use of the drugs, which eventually becomes compulsive, and continues despite the harm it brings to the person. Typically when one tries to stop, there is a relapse of the behavior.

Perhaps the reason the medical community is reluctant to categorize eating problems as an addiction this way is because they do not consider food to be an addictive substance.

I believe until we begin to acknowledge the drug-like effects of processed sugar and flour especially when combined with other ingredients such as fat that hook and high jack the brain, we are denying one of the most prevalent addictions our society today.

Recently, Marcia DeSanctis wrote a powerful article in Vogue’s April issue about her fear that her sugar cravings and eating behavior were in fact an addiction. The medical community calls it “hedonic eating.” This means eating for pleasure as opposed to sustenance. In my own practice, I have come across this problem in about 30% of the cases I saw.

What I do now when I come across a case like this is to refer them for testing. Often there is an insulin sensitivity that goes along with this condition, and a brain chemistry imbalance, although this is hard to unravel. DeSanctis discovered a correlation between her cycles being “out of whack” and carbohydrates became a “tranquilizer of sorts on which she was “overdosing.” Interestingly what she found was trying to quit cold turkey is partly why we fail. Although the key is to address the imbalance, and remove the addictive substance from the body to allow the brain chemistry to heal, it is the drastic change of trying to stop all at once that causes failure and relapse.

Kelly Brownell, PhD, and director of Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity says: “the magnitude of the effect that sugar has on the body is not as strong as what you get from cocaine or morphine or alcohol, but the whole body of evidence suggests that sugar affects the brain in a very similar way.”

Understanding this takes away some of the shame associated with addictions and food addictions in particular. It is not something that is so easily controlled by one’s will and it is often an attempt to self-medicate an underlying chemical imbalance in the body/brain. I do not necessarily advocate that people automatically turn to antidepressant medication either which is now the most frequently prescribed drug in the U.S. and our most popular export.

There is new body of work suggesting that nutrition therapy holds more promise to treat the underlying condition than antidepressants. This is why I work with teaching mindfulness skills and meditation, a process I have worked with for years. Research is showing that meditation has the ability to change the brain by creating new brain cells in the part of the brain that registers happiness and compassion. The stress reduction process I work with which includes an easy effective way to make meditation a part of your life is in my opinion, the best way to start breaking a sugar addiction.

One thing is for sure, treating these problems the way we have been doing does not do them justice. If you have any experience curing a sugar addiction, I would love to hear about it.