The Hunger Fix: The Three-Stage Detox and Recovery Plan for Overeating and Food Addiction: The 3-stage Solution to Free Yourself from Your Food Addictions... for Life - Hardcover

Peeke, Pam, M.d.

 
9781609614522: The Hunger Fix: The Three-Stage Detox and Recovery Plan for Overeating and Food Addiction: The 3-stage Solution to Free Yourself from Your Food Addictions... for Life
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1609614526 ISBN 13: 9781609614522
Verlag: Rodale Incorporated, 2012

Inhaltsangabe

Food addiction is real. Our body's built-in reward system, driven by the chemical dopamine, tells us to do things that give us pleasure: Creative energy, falling in love, entrepreneurship—even the continued procreation of the human race—are driven by this system. Unfortunately, so is the urge to overeat.

In The Hunger Fix, Dr. Pam Peeke uses the latest neuroscience to explain how, with repeated exposure coupled with life stresses, any food can become a "False Fix" and ensnare you in a vicious cycle of food obsession, overeating, and addiction. Indeed, she shows that dopamine rushes in the body can work exactly the same way with food as with drugs like cocaine.

Luckily, this very same system can be easily rewired to reward us with a healthy, happy, and fulfilling life. The Hunger Fix lays out a science-based three-stage plan that shows us how to break our addiction to False Fixes and replace them with healthier rewards. Fun fitness activities, customized meal plans, and delicious, satisfying recipes are designed to trigger the specific neurochemical cascade that stimulates your body's reward system, reclaims your hijacked brain, and supports your lifelong recovery. Energizing Healthy Fixes such as meditating, having sex, writing your own blog, or going for a walk on the beach—even laughing—quickly replace the junk food, couch time, and other self-destructive habits that can leave you unhappy and overweight.

Packed with practical tips, useful advice, and plenty of wit, wisdom, and inspiring stories of those who have successfully transformed their bodies, The Hunger Fix is a lifechanging program for anyone (of any size) trapped by food obsessions and the urge to overeat.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Pam Peeke MD, MPH, FACP is the New York Times bestselling author of Body for Life for Women, Fight Fat after Forty, and Fit to Live. Dr. Peeke is a Pew Scholar in nutrition and metabolism, assistant clinical professor of medicine at the University of Maryland, and a nationally recognized expert in nutrition, fitness and public health. She is WebMD's lifestyle expert, host of Discovery Health TV's Could You Survive and spokesperson for the American College of Sports Medicine's Exercise is Medicine global initiative.

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CHAPTER 1

The Dopamine Made Me Do It!

THERE IS NOTHING BETTER THAN A FRIEND, UNLESS IT IS A FRIEND WITH CHOCOLATE.

--ANONYMOUS

WE ALL HAVE ONE.

At least one.

A little darling. A best friend. A helper, a life raft.

An entrenched habit that's so comfortable, it feels like a hug or an island of calm.

A fix.

A fix starts simply enough. You think about doing something that you like to do--drink a mojito, or check your iPhone, or get it on with your boyfriend or girlfriend--and that thought lights up an entire dopamine- driven reward pathway in your brain.

You feel a rush of pleasure. You start thinking about when and how you are going to do that thing:

Is it happy hour yet?

Can I sneak a peek at my e-mail during this meeting?

Will he or she be around tonight? When are we going to connect?

Your brain becomes consumed by the drive to satisfy that urge. You try, but you just can't get it out of your head. You give in.

And then, as soon as you satisfy the raging hunger, bingo: You feel another rush. Your brain says, "Yeah! This is amazing. Bring it on. I want more."

You need your fix.

Most of the time, this neurological process is a good thing. Nature wants humans to stick around, so she uses this system to reward us for doing things that will ensure our survival--eating food, bonding with loved ones, having sex, making babies. Preferably as often as possible.

As a result, everything we do--from the time we wake up until we collapse into bed--is driven by reward. We're either getting reward in the short term (enjoying an hourlong massage) or in the long term (earning a college degree after studying for 4 years).

The reward can also be to avoid pain. I learned that as a little girl who didn't like to brush her teeth. After suffering through a cavity, I soon learned that my real reward was never seeing that dentist again.

This same reward system drives us to learn, to create, to innovate, to pursue our goals. But as a medical doctor specializing in metabolism and weight management, logging thousands of hours a year to educate the public about behavioral change, I've seen firsthand how the dopamine rush cuts both ways. The tremendous high you get from a run in the park or a hike to the top of a mountain can be powerful enough to change your life. But that healthy high occupies the same pathways, and can easily become confused with, the dopamine hit from a snort of cocaine or a puff of a cigarette. Clearly, not all rewards are created equal--and some can kill you.

In the past few years, I've started to see a growing manifestation of this double-edged sword in my own medical practice. More and more men and women are coming into my office desperate to find an answer to the same questions: Why can't I stop thinking about food? How can a cookie or plate of pasta or bag of chocolates have this kind of hold on me? I feel like a junkie!

As I listen to people's tortured stories of unbearable cravings, yo-yo dieting, weight obsession, and emotion-driven stress eating, I've seen a pattern emerge. Their pleas for help are no longer your standard "Gosh, I'd love to drop 10 £ds before the reunion" fare. Instead, these entreaties have become eerily similar to the cries for help from my patients with hard- core drug or alcohol addictions:

"I just need that sugar fix every afternoon. If I don't get it, I'll go crazy with withdrawal."

"I need a dose of pizza."

"Those Tostitos and dip are like crack to me--once I start, I just can't stop."

I started to realize that in more and more of my patients, these cravings are the result of a reward system gone awry. I had also reviewed the new science that shows the mere anticipation of that food-related dopamine high will cause the reward centers of the brain to light up like Times Square on New Year's Eve--the same as brain scans of cocaine addicts eager for their next fix. It doesn't take much to trigger this cascade of brain chemicals: A casually mentioned word, a picture in a magazine or on TV, or a smell from a bakery is all it takes to awaken the desperate cravings. That same insatiable drive for reward keeps all addicts pressing the dopamine accelerator, overriding their brain's normal "satisfaction" signals.

These dopamine-driven moments of pleasure start to accumulate. With constant practice, they progress to habits, carving deep neural pathways in the brain. With every repetition of the cycle, those pathways get stronger and healthier alternatives get pruned out to make way for these new, ultra- rewarding but unhealthy habits. A walk in the neighborhood with your best friend begins to pale in comparison with sitting in front of the TV and bingeing on bags of your favorite chips. This False Fix becomes the default, setting up a domino effect, constantly reinforcing itself.

I Need a Fix

Voices of Addiction1

On my blog on WebMD, I asked people to share their thoughts on food addiction--is it real? The answers were very telling. See if you can recognize yourself in any of these comments.

My addiction to ice cream and other sweets began in childhood. Celebrations were made with half pints of the hand-packed ice cream of our choice, which became an addiction to relieve grief, stress, and other emotions. Because after all--life is good with ice cream.

While I have been eating mostly healthy for 9 years, I still cannot have ice-cream-type things in my home--still a binge-type food. Why having it available sets me off, I have no idea.--Jis4Judy

For those whose recommendations include, "Well, just don't eat that," I wish it were that simple. It's like a smoker's need for cigs and an alcoholic's need for alcohol. If I have a lot of sweets available, I have a hard time not eating all of them. I keep it out of the house, except on special occasions.--nursingbug

I still struggle with the bread issue but am constantly re-focusing to look at what I really want: consistency, a comfortable weight, and peace of mind. When I eat binge foods, I switch into an addict, focused on the next fix. I hate that cycle, but not always enough to avoid it.--init4life

Of all the stresses I have subjected myself to in my life, I thought smoking was the worst. I never even thought I had an addiction to food!

When it was clear to me that I was as dependent on food as I was on smoking to get me through events, that's when I realized I was fighting one of the toughest enemies of all ... me.--mawsings

My mother was an alcoholic. She did not eat much; she always felt she was competing for my father's attention, that she had to be thin. So she smoked and drank vodka. She hid the smoking from my father, and she would sneak her vodka on some occasions.

I was hiding foods because I was embarrassed by the size that I had become. Someone asked me why I just didn't stop eating the foods that I was gorging on. I could not do it at that time. I was not ready to change, and I had not hit my rock bottom.--GoingForGoal

See if this sounds familiar: Eat in bed, stay up too late, get rotten sleep. Feel like hell in the morning, reach for sugary, caffeinated foods to stay awake. Mindlessly seek the numbing of "just one more [candy/ chip/cookie]." A glass of wine at dinner becomes three, and maybe even take a sleeping pill before bed to get "a good night's rest."

Without fully realizing it, many people have created a life of continuous, comfortable opportunities to "dope up" in front of the computer, in the doorway of the fridge, and on the couch. They are driven to repeatedly score hits of what I call "False Fixes"--anything (like food) that leads to short-term reward in association with self-destructive behavior, followed by feelings of guilt, shame, and defeat. In contrast, Healthy Fixes are...

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Verlag
Rodale Incorporated
Erscheinungsdatum
2012
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1609614526
ISBN 13 
9781609614522
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
346
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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