Healthy eating pattern and carefully planned diet charts and our resolve to eat sensibly, crash every other day, as we mope around on our lack of will power and lack of time. All the workout and exercises to burn calories go down the drain when we gorge down on all that unhealthy stuff. Compulsive overeating is a lot more than just eating junk food. An emotional disturbance or stress related lifestyle may result in a person eating away just to divert his attention from the cause. This often ends in disturbing results. Researchers are becoming increasingly alarmed of this emotional overeating disorder and are trying to find the connection between our mind, feelings and food addiction.
While ‘food addiction’ may seem laughable to many, researchers confirm that addictive drugs use the same neural pathways as the food and that it is now established as a fact that a person can be as addicted to unhealthy food habits as to smoking or consuming alcohol! In America, the statistics show that 64% of its society is overweight and most of it can be blamed on convenience food, fast food and snacks that are so readily available these days.
Overeating for comfort has emerged as a pattern, largely due to our fast paced lives, demanding careers, ready-to-eat foods and emotional isolation from family and friends, as part and parcel of the lifestyles today. Some common factors for compulsive overeating include anger or frustration that lead to binge eating; lack of love and increasing loneliness; insecurity that can be financial, related to future or career.
Children who develop unhealthy eating patterns early in life often become prone to food addiction when exposed to strict dieting later. Elderly people are often seen trying to kill ennui and compensate themselves with food for boredom and lack of excitement and thrill in their lives. Helplessness and constant anxiety is as much a major cause to addiction of food as it is for alcohol addiction. Constant nagging and a resulting low self esteem may manifest itself as overeating.
Tasty foods such as nuts like cashews and almonds, biscuits, sweets, ice creams and chocolates often serve as potent triggers for such food indulgence and overeating and are often known as comfort foods. A little food addiction is a common thing and can easily be controlled by consulting a good doctor at the right time. If you choose to ignore the symptoms and think that it is going to be okay, then be prepared to face the worst. It is better to do something about this problem before it is too late as it may result in irreversible damage.
