Anatomy Of A Food Addiction

Featuring an honest account of the author's own struggles with food, "Anatomy of a Food Addiction" helps readers understand binge eating and plan a recovery through exercises, self-tests, and an examination of family issues. Illustrations.

HOPE, HELP, AND A REAL EXPLANATION FOR THE DISEASE OF FOOD ADDICTION If you have struggled with compulsive eating, dieting, and the guilt and conflict they bring, your life will be changed by this important, life-affirming, and astonishingly wise book. Anne Katherine, a Certified Eating Disorders Therapist and former compulsive eater, explains the chemical reactions in the brain that work in conjunction with lifelong emotional conflicts to make food - particularly sugar and refined carbohydrates - such a comfort that it's almost like a drug. Once you realize that your binge eating is a physical disease that can be treated, you can use the book's self-tests, exercises, examination of family issues, and complete recovery program for newfound understanding and confidence.

This is an impressive work: carefully structured, researched and written . . . a refreshingly lucid account that is both intellectually stimulating and professionally helpful.-Janet McCalman Addicts are generally regarded with either pity or grave disapproval. But is being addicted to something necessarily bad? These attitudes are explicit both in contemporary medical literature and in popular, self-help texts. We categorise addiction as unnatural, diseased and self-destructive. We demonise pleasure and desire, and view the addict as physically and morally damaged. Helen Keane's thought-provoking text examines these assumptions in a new light. In asserting that the 'wrongness' of addiction is not fixed or indeed obvious, she presents a refreshing challenge to more conventional accounts of addiction. She also investigates the notion that people can be addicted to eating, love and sex, just as they are to drugs and alcohol. What's Wrong with Addiction? shows that most of our ideas about addiction take certain ideals of health and normality for granted. It exposes strains in our society's oppositions between health and disease, between the natural and the artificial, between order and disorder, and between self and other.

This book analyzes the scientific evidence for the addictive properties of food. It covers of all subjects pertinent to food and addiction, from basic background information on topics such as food intake, metabolism, and environmental risk factors for obesity, to diagnostic criteria for food addiction, the evolutionary and developmental bases of eating addictions, and behavioral and pharmacologic interventions, to the clinical, public health, and legal and policy implications of recognizing the validity of food addiction.

Compulsive Eating Behavior and Food Addiction: Emerging Pathological Constructs is the first book of its kind to emphasize food addiction as an addictive disorder. This book focuses on the preclinical aspects of food addiction research, shifting the focus towards a more complex behavioral expression of pathological feeding and combining it with current research on neurobiological substrates. This book will become an invaluable reference for researchers in food addiction and compulsive eating constructs. Compulsive eating behavior is a pathological form of feeding that phenotypically and neurobiologically resembles the compulsive-like behaviors associated with both drug abuse and behavioral addictions. Compulsive eating behavior, including Binge Eating Disorder (BED), certain forms of obesity, and ‘food addiction’ affect an estimated 70 million individuals worldwide. Synthesizes clinical and preclinical perspectives on addictive eating behavior Identifies how food addiction is similar and/or different from other addictions Focuses on the underlying neurobiological mechanisms Provides information on therapeutic interventions for patients with food addiction

Can certain foods hijack the brain in ways similar to drugs and alcohol, and is this effect sufficiently strong to contribute to major diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, and hence constitute a public health menace? Terms like "chocoholic" and "food addict" are part of popular lore, some popular diet books discuss the concept of addiction, and there are food addiction programs with names like Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous. Clinicians who work with patients often hear the language of addiction when individuals speak of irresistible cravings, withdrawal symptoms when starting a diet, and increasing intake of palatable foods over time. But what does science show, and how strong is the evidence that food and addiction is a real and important phenomenon? Food and Addiction: A Comprehensive Handbook brings scientific order to the issue of food and addiction, spanning multiple disciplines to create the foundation for what is a rapidly advancing field and to highlight needed advances in science and public policy. The book assembles leading scientists and policy makers from fields such as nutrition, addiction, psychology, epidemiology, and public health to explore and analyze the scientific evidence for the addictive properties of food. It provides complete and comprehensive coverage of all subjects pertinent to food and addiction, from basic background information on topics such as food intake, metabolism, and environmental risk factors for obesity, to diagnostic criteria for food addiction, the evolutionary and developmental bases of eating addictions, and behavioral and pharmacologic interventions, to the clinical, public health, and legal and policy implications of recognizing the validity of food addiction. Each chapter reviews the available science and notes needed scientific advances in the field.

For the fourth book in her popular Setting BoundariesTM series, Allison Bottke turns to our relationship with food, and a problem that affects more than 200 million Americans (68 percent of the adult population)—obesity. Setting Boundaries® with Food is a very personal book for Allison. She knows from personal experience about the struggle against obesity—feeling trapped in a seemingly never-ending cycle of dieting, deprivation, and despair. At one time in her life, Allison’s scale hit the 300-pound mark. Her overweight status resulted in Allison being the first full-figure model ever signed by the prestigious Wilhelmina modeling agency, where she worked for some of the biggest names in fashion, such as Gloria Vanderbilt and Alfred Angelo. From her struggle, Allison offers more than just hope for the future. By introducing readers to her popular S.A.N.I.T.Y. steps, she encourages readers to turn away from the insanity of dieting and deprivation and to focus instead on establishing healthy relationships with food, self, others, and God. Her words will strike a chord with millions who have struggled for years to lose weight as they are encouraged to examine the emotional and spiritual aspects of their bondage to food and obsession with weight.

There is a growing view that certain foods, particularly those high in refined sugars and fats, may be addictive and that some forms of obesity may be treated as food addictions. This is supported by an expanding body of evidence from animal studies, human neuroscience, and brain imaging. Obese and overweight individuals also display patterns of eating behavior that resemble the ways in which addicted individuals consume drugs. Scientific and clinical questions remain: Is addiction a valid explanation of excess weight? Is food addiction a behavioural (i.e., eating) or substance (i.e., sugar) addiction, or a complex interaction of both? Should obesity be treated as a food addiction? Should we distinguish food addiction from other forms of disordered eating like Binge Eating Disorder? It is also unclear what impact food addiction explanations might have on the way in which we think about or treat people who are overweight: What impact will a food addiction diagnosis have on individuals’ internalised weight-bias, stigma, and self-efficacy? Should some foods be regulated like other addictive commodities (i.e., alcohol and tobacco), whose advertising and sale is restricted, or like certain foods, which are taxed? This Special Issue addresses questions raised by the concept of food addiction.