6 Tips to Help You Overcome Food Addiction

Food addiction is a recent and controversial phenomenon. It’s considered to be a result of certain types of food triggering pleasant feelings in the brain, which causes the brain to become addicted. The brain becomes so addicted to this feeling that it causes one to carry on eating those happy or reward foods even after being sated.

Food addiction is still being researched, but there is undeniable evidence of its existence. Food addiction, just like any other addiction, is something that can be overcome. If you are struggling with food addiction, here are a few tips to help you gain control.

1) Start Meal Planning

Something you can do to help your food addiction is to plan meals every week and stick to that plan. Say, you’re going to make lasagna for dinner tonight and lunch tomorrow. Then maybe something else for dinner tomorrow night. When you go to the grocery store, bring your meal plan and only buy the ingredients that you need. This takes away the opportunity for last-minute changes that contribute to food addiction, helping you gain control.

2) Don’t Diet

When you’re worried about weight gain, you might be tempted to diet, but that’s not helpful at all. It will only hurt you in the long run. What will truly help you is eating well-balanced meals. Food addiction is tricky because unlike other things you may become addicted to, you need food to survive. That’s why dieting is a bad idea. Instead, you need to make sure the meal plan you make every week includes meals that give you all the nutrients you need to keep going through your day.

3) Eat Mindfully

When you struggle with food addiction, food becomes a reward, something you do simply because it makes you feel good. But you’re not appreciating what you’re eating. To combat your food addiction, you should stop multitasking while eating. You have to focus on what you’re eating and be fully present in that moment.

You don’t have to count calories or sugar levels. That doesn’t matter. You don’t need to know all that to be mindful while you eat. All you need is the food in front of you and no other distractions. You need to treat the meal as an event, an experience. Not as a reward.

4) Explore Other Options

Rewarding yourself with food is a bad habit, which means it won’t go away on its own. The best way to do that is to swap it for a different habit. What can you do instead of eating when you’re already full? It depends on what you like. You can explore new hobbies or find other ways to reward yourself and feel better that don’t involve food. It’s just going to take a little trial and error first.

5) Involve Others

If you struggle to keep yourself accountable, you can try asking others for help. You don’t even have to explain everything to them if you don’t want to. You can, for example, invite some close friends or family members for dinner and tell them the menu in advance. You can pick something good and nutritious to cook, and your friends will enjoy that.

6) Seek Help

The best thing you can do when you’re struggling with any kind of addiction is to reach out to a professional. They’re the ones best qualified to help you, especially in something as complicated as food addiction. Unlike other substances you may become addicted to, food is something you can’t fully quit. You need it to live. That’s why it’s important to reach out to counselors and professionals when you need them.