Fast Food Addiction?

I admit, I have never been one to frequent any fast food chain for a meal. In fact, the last fast food meal I can remember eating was when I was in High School. I ate a hamburger, fries and shake while sitting in the establishment. I remember not eating for the rest of the day, I was so full!

I didn't acquire the habit of eschewing fast food restaurants because I had a pristine diet; it was a matter of money for me. However, I am glad that it happened the way it did, because I don't have the addiction to fast food today. And yes, I call it an addiction. Let me explain why I think it is so.

Have you seen the movie, "Super Size Me"? Or have you read the book, Chew On This? These are two sources that peaked my interest earlier in my life, and they led me to look for answers in other places as well.

I have learned that there are so many additives in the ingredients of fast food. What is an additive, anyway? An additive is any salt,  preservative (BHA, BHT), nitrate, nitrite, artificial color, artificial scent, artificial flavor, filler and emulsifier – the list could go on. And they seem to be getting longer and longer, too! Most of us probably know nothing about any of them, so we tend not to think about them. But that doesn’t change the impact those additives have on our bodies. If I were to guess, I would say that they are either unhealthy or nutritionally unnecessary - at best - and, at worst, harmful to our body and our health.

That's the physical part. But the physiological part is that some of these man made ingredients can cause an addictive reaction in the consumer's body, causing them to crave more.

Let me ask you a question. Do you think these fast food companies intentionally put these things in the food so that you will buy more and more of their food? Don't put this past them! They are out to sell and make a profit, and your health has nothing to do with it.


You don’t have to be a chemist to know that these things can have a negative impact on your body. And if you decide that you don't want to contribute to the profits of these establishments and contribute to your ill-health, it may be hard to completely eliminate the habit at first. Suffice it to say, the less you eat processed foods, the healthier you will be.

Here's something to try for a month. Let's say you eat fast food 5 times a week, Monday - Friday. What if you were to cut it back to M/W/F? On T/Th, you could brown bag it and stay in the office,  or you could get a smoothie. If you did this, you would cut back this unhealthy habit by 40%!  Now that's a change that would get results! Then, after that, if you liked how your body responded to this new habit, you could just make Fridays the fast food day. Wow! I would love to hear feedback on this experiment, so let me know your thoughts. Good luck!

Circumstantial Triggers

   How do you react to sudden, unexpected "events" in your life?

For some, these "events" - whether good or bad - can trigger an impulse in us to eat. 

   For example, if our boss gave us an unexpected bad review, we could take that home with us and eat over it. Or maybe we got stuck in a traffic jam and were late for an important meeting. The frustration with this has the potential to stay with us all day. What if we had a fight with our spouse that morning, or experienced any other unexpected unpleasant situation out of our control? Is the food a stress-reliever for you in these situations?

   When we are caught off-guard with life's "bumps in the road", and if we already have a tendency to abuse the food, then any food can become a trigger, and this is a circumstantial trigger. 

   Circumstantial triggers can cause overeating of any type of food, leading to a portion control problem. And this problem can be more of a behavioral issue rather than a substance one – or, it can be both, depending on what food is consumed. In either case, if we are prone to reacting to these events by overeating, then what we really need to do here is recognize our emotion preceding the first bite and then deal with the situation differently.

   Here is an exercise: take a moment to list at least two circumstantial triggers you have had recently, that you ate over.  Simply becoming aware of the things that bother you will be your first step in overcoming the tendency to eat over them. Listing these triggers will become red flags for you to recognize, so that in the future, you can avoid getting into trouble with the food. 

Behavioral Triggers

Behavioral triggers are behaviors that cause and encourage unconscious eating. Unconscious eating is eating without realizing how much is being consumed. Behavioral triggers involve the act of eating with a specific kind of activity simultaneously. This person can eat and eat, but doesn't realize how much s/he is eating. They might not care, either, about how much they are eating. Their minds are elsewhere when they are eating. Hence, the amount they consume winds up being more than what they needed. 

Now sometimes, a person might want to engage in unconscious eating. This might be an escape or a stress reliever. But the problems begin when the weight piles on, and some decision must be made to deal with it.

Trigger behaviors can include eating a bag of chips in front of the TV or eating at the computer while you do work. These types of triggers are often done in isolation. One may even plan to have time alone in order to do this.

If you engage in behavioral triggers, you have two choices:

1.Continue on the way you have been going, continue to gain weight and stay in denial that there is a problem. Note here, that this is a decision: it is a decision to ignore the problem.

2.Change the behavior in some way. You can cut back, you can change the food or the activity, or you can stop doing them together. However, if one attempts to stop the food, but continue the activity, there will be a void. There will still be that urge to eat while engaging in the activity. Something will have to replace the food.

If you have opted for #2, in the case of television, simply turning off the TV might do the trick. But in the case of computer work (that is probably a necessary thing), something will have to be substituted. 

Try keeping a large glass of water right next to your computer. You might also try brewing a cup of hot tea to sip on while you work. Regardless what you change, you will notice that something is different at first, and there will be some discomfort. Move through the discomfort and know that it will dissipate with time. Good luck!

Situational Triggers

Some foods may not be triggers, but the impulse to overeat or binge may be a result of a situation in one’s life that occurs periodically. For example, a situational trigger can be work-related, where one has a regular meeting that causes stress. It could be hiring or firing of an employee, or even a particular event where loads of food are brought in from an outside source.

     Another trigger situation could be going to a party and “socializing” right by the food table, making it an easy temptation to indulge in too much food.

     The person who is prone to these situational triggers is automatically going to fall into the pattern of overeating in these cases, unless they are aware of what is happening. But as you can see, situational triggers don’t have to be negative to have a negative impact on one’s weight loss goals. In fact, the positive events on one's life can be the worst culprits!

     Take a quick inventory of a situation in your life, where you are tempted to eat for no other reason than the fact that you find yourself in that particular situation. Once you are aware of your tendencies, you can make decisions to change your behavior.

Substance Triggers

Have you ever eaten something that caused you to crave more of the same at a later time? Do you have a certain food item (some people call it their "poison") that you go to when you choose to indulge? Is there a specific food item in your life that you have a love-hate relationship with, meaning that you love to eat it, but you always feel badly after having eaten it? These could be your substance triggers.

And the most important questions are, if you know what your substance triggers are, do you want to rid yourself of them and no longer be a slave to them? Do you want to recapture control over your life and not let any kind of food item control you?

If you answered yes to the previous two questions, then you are ready to be catapulted into the next dimension of life! But it won't do you any good to rely on circumstance or luck to make it happen. You are going to be the source of your own success in this matter. You are going to have to choose each day and each meal exactly how and what you will and will not eat.

Becoming aware of your substance triggers is the first step. Most people who struggle with their weight don't ever get to this step. They go through life confused as to why they can't seem to get control over the food - and their weight. If you have become aware of what your substance triggers are, you can begin now to protect yourself from being sabotaged, and you then have hope of reaching your weight loss goals. But this will take time and planning. Here is something you can do today to begin:

Take an inventory of your kitchen, pantry, refrigerator and office setting. What do you have control over? Are you able to remove temptations? What unnecessary and tempting foods lurk in the shadows of your pantry or refrigerator? How about the jar of candy on your desk? Who is that for? Is it more of a temptation to you than your co-workers?

Take control over those things you are able to take control over. Make the decision now, and stick with it. Next time, we will talk about situational triggers.

What Are Your "Triggers"?

First, let me define "trigger", for those of you who may not know…

A trigger is any person, place, thing, situation - or food, that has a tendency to cause one to overeat.

Common trigger substances are sugar and white flour. These substances wind their way in to a multitude of foods, such as breads, bagels, pastas, cookies, candy or pastries. Some people may call these foods, "comfort foods", meaning when they need comfort - something emotional is going on - they want to receive comfort in the food. But by eating these junky foods, we set up a craving that makes it irresistible to NOT eat that food the next day - and so on.

I want to talk about this "comfort" for a moment. First of all, food is not capable of rendering comfort. In fact, if I am to indulge in comfort food for the sake of receiving comfort, I will be less than comforted after consuming vast quantities of nutritionally empty food. Why? Because I started off feeling emotionally vulnerable and needing comfort. I needed to connect, to be loved by someone, or I needed a listening ear or a shoulder to cry on. Or perhaps, I just needed to go to bed after a rough day.

But what I did instead of meeting my needs head-on, was to eat food: lots of junky food, with the presumption that this food was going to meet my emotional needs and make me feel better.

Not only did the food not meet my needs, but also I felt worse after indulging. I felt fat. I deviated from my goals to take better care of my body. And finally, I continued a pattern that will be harder to break now, since I have had one more time to strengthen it.

How do we break this cycle? How do we stop indulging in this type of food and behavior that works against us and makes us feel badly about ourselves?

For me, it took time to see the signs - the triggers - that something was up. Something was stirring in my emotions that I wasn't even aware of at first, and I was doomed to fall into another binge. When I became willing to look at myself objectively, I began to see those signs that something was wrong and that I had some emotional needs.  I began to recognize my triggers. I became aware that the food was not going to meet my emotional needs, and I had to become willing to reach out elsewhere to get my needs met - and this time, they really would get met, because I would be addressing the issue the right way - instead of isolating with food.

When I isolate and overeat, it makes me feel badly about myself and I isolate more, because I don't feel worthy of other people's company. My self-esteem suffers.

What are your triggers? Are you able to see the signs that might warn you of a binge coming up? And how can you intercept that behavior with a more healthy one?