Food addiction is it real?

idk, but my predilection for Cheez-Its would certainly make it seem so

We’re all addicted to food. Can’t live without it, man.

You can be addicted to anything. The issue is whether or not you can overcome the addiction. Some may be easy (like food), others may be inherently more difficult (like crack).

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Can you be addicted to food?

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I suppose it depends on your definition of addiction if you want to play word games, but yes food can absolutely start as a coping mechanism and evolve into a full on addiction complete with physical withdrawal symptoms.

It’s easy to dunk on sloppy fat people. This society is ridiculously lacking in compassion. Compassion does not mean acceptance of everyone’s lifestyles. We have stopped seeking treatment and care for the physically and spiritually sick in our community and instead we either pander to their illness or ostracize them completely from care.

Many people, myself included, start using food to either cope with or hide from trauma. No different than any other substance. If you eat enough high processed junk food in a short window it will shut down your feelings and numb you. You get addicted to that feeling and you gain weight. As you gain weight your body craves more calories and because all you eat is junk your body is always craving nutrition but you misinterpret it as craving more garbage and it becomes a vicious spiral. The more you eat the worse you feel physically and mentally and spiritually and the worse you feel the more you eat. You have now trained your body to dump serotonin and dopamine into your blood at the thought of junk food, reinforced by all the sugars and processed garbage in the food you eat. Thats what causes addiction. Compound alcohol and/or drug abuse into this problem and you get a brutal addiction.

Eventually you are 100lbs overweight, miserable, hurting, your joints are inflamed and you’re always in a sort of foggy miserable malaise. You have no ability to control your impulses or your feelings because you just bury problems rather than learning to overcome and solve them. The problem with this as with any addiction is as soon as you attempt to go sober you are forced to confront not only the underlying cause of your addiction but the added consequences of the addiction itself.

This confrontation is not easy and what leads to relapse. Overcoming it is a daily battle that never really goes away. You have to retrain your brain to switch the established pathways you’ve paved.

I’ve been sober and healthy for 6 years now and there is rarely a day that goes by that I don’t want to grab a bottle of bourbon and some fast food and bury myself inward. 99% of the time I have the strength to deny my urges and be a better person than I used to be.

The truth is there are still a couple days a year when I’m having a brutally bad stretch of days and instead of seeking the light I return to darkness where I will end up 6000+ calories deep and drunk before I even realize what I’m doing. The next day after that never ever gets easier.

Food is meant to sustain us.

It’s not supposed to be “tasty or yummy.”

Yet who would eat if it was flat?

Kinda like sex. It’s meant to feel good so that we’ll want to reproduce.

I would say a combination of things.

Lazy
Income
DGAF

learn to cook and you can eat healthy, stop snacking all day.

A bag of spinach costs the same as a box of Debbie's

We also live fast paced lives and that doesn't help.

Its not a food addiction, its an eating addiction.

Absolutely. Also, you don’t have to be OBESE to be addicted to food.

It’s the stuff in our food that makes it addictive.

I say yes. This is my biggest issue with Ozempic. Yes, it can be a great way to jump start weight loss, and losing weight has a ton of health benefits. This is a given.

Using Ozempic alone doesn't address the behaviors that caused the extreme weight gain in the first place. Contrary to what the media will have you believe, people do not just spontaneously become obese.

People become obese over time by consuming more calories than they burn. Full stop.

IMO, prescriptions should only be given in conjunction with nutritional counseling. You have to treat the brain to heal the body.