Struggling With Your Weight? How to Beat Food Addiction – Health Essentials from Cleveland Clinic (blog)

If youre overweight, theres a good chance youre addicted to certain foods.

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It doesnt mean youre gluttonous, weak-willed or a bad person.It means your biology has learned to crave junk food.

Food addiction is usually framed as an emotional issue. But readily available, intensely addictive sugary foods can hijack your hormones, taste buds and brain chemistry.

Research shows that these sugars light up the pleasure center in your brain, which can cause addictive cravings. How else to explain why:

Were biologically programmed to eat lots of hyper-palatable sweet or fatty foods, then store the excess calories as belly fat to sustain us through scarcity.

But what saved us as hunter-gatherers doesnt work for us today.

Our bodies certainly need the starches and sugars found in healthy carbohydrates: veggies, whole-kernel grains and low-glycemic fruit like berries.

But the refined carbs and sweeteners filling processed foods like bread, pasta and chips basically turn into sugar in our bodies.

These foods spike blood sugar, trigger cravings and drive us to seek out more of the substance that gave usthat high. They also leave usstruggling with weight and feeling sick.

A powerful Harvard study reveals the addictive nature of sugary foods. It proves that foods with more sugar, which quickly raise blood sugar (foods with a high glycemic index) trigger the brains pleasure center: the nucleus accumbens.

Activating this center makes us feel good and drives us to seek out more of whatever gave us that feeling.

In the study, researchers gave 12 overweight or obese men, ages 18 to 35, a low-sugar, low-glycemic milkshake. Four hours later, they measured activity in the nucleus accumbens, along with blood sugar and hunger levels.

Several weeks later, the same men got another round of milkshakes. This batch tasted and looked the same, with the exact same flavor and texture, and the same amount of calories, protein, fat and carbs. But it was higher in sugar and had a higher glycemic index.

Without exception, the high-sugar, high-glycemic-index milkshake caused a much greater spike in blood sugar and insulin levels, and increased hunger and cravings four hours after they were consumed.

But the breakthrough finding was this: For every single participant, when the high-glycemic shake was consumed, the nucleus accumbens lit up like a Christmas tree.

The low-glycemic shake caused no such response.

You can probably guess that table sugar and sodas, juices, sports drinks and vitamin waters have a high glycemic index. But you may be surprised to learn that:

In fact, about 80 percent of the hundreds of thousands of processed food items that are sold contain added sugar.

You may hear that foods are neither good nor bad, that all you need to do is practice moderation.

Yet personal empowerment and responsibility are rarely strong enough defenses against addictive foods.Eating such foods leads to a vicious cycle of cravings. Chemically exaggerating certain flavors can create taste sensations so intoxicatingly appealing that no matter how much you devour, you feel you can never get enough.

You may also hear that you can eat whatever you want and simply exercise it off.

But youd have to walk 4.5 miles to burn off one 20-ounce soda. And youd have to run 4 miles a day for a week to burn off just one supersized fast-food meal. (And once youve eaten it, youre going to want another soon.)

Twelve Step addiction programs dont advise practicing moderation. They want alcoholics and addicts to completely clear the brain and body of the addictive substance.

Moderation wont work for food addiction, either.

If you continue to use sugar and processed foods, your dopamine receptors will decrease. You will develop tolerance. And you will need more and more of these addictive substances to generate the same amount of pleasure.

The more youre aware of the biological forces at play in your cravings and how important it is to break free of them, the better your chance of healing yourself.

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Struggling With Your Weight? How to Beat Food Addiction - Health Essentials from Cleveland Clinic (blog)