Healthy Weight Loss Secrets - Is Food Really an Addiction?

Healthy weight loss experts sometimes refer to obesity as a condition which comes about as a result of food addiction...but is this really fair? Should someone who is struggling with their weight have to consider themselves in the same category as someone who is begging for money on the street to buy alcohol or huddled over a craps table in Las Vegas, gambling away the money that's supposed to be putting food on their family's table? Better yet, if food is an addiction, what answers are the experts offering to treat it, other than the obvious "diet and exercise?"

Let's start out by answering the question about food addiction...

Putting Addiction into Perspective

Here's a question I used to ask my client's who came to be for healthy weight loss advice and were resistant to the idea that they were "addicts:"

"If one person dies of a heroin overdose, another of liver cancer and the other of heart disease because of being obese, who is the most dead?"

You can use this same line of questioning when it comes to any addiction. If poor health costs you a fortune in medical bills (the leading cause of personal bankruptcy), are you LESS broke than someone who lost the same amount ofВ  money to a gambling addiction? If you're having trouble focusing and you have low energy, willpower or self-esteem because of being overweight...how is that better than having these problems as a result of an addiction to alcohol or a drug?

As you ask yourself these questions, it becomes crystal clear that whether or not food addiction is a "real" addiction doesn't matter. What matters the consequence it brings...after all, that's what you have to live with.В  So why get into the "my addiction can beat up your addiction" argument? If you're in poor health due to being overweight, you're just as at risk as if that poor healthy was caused by another type of addiction. So what now?

The Real Questions to Consider

Now that the addiction question is out of the way, here are the two questions that you want to ask: "Are you willing to deal with the consequences of being obese?" and "If not, when are you going to do something about it?" If the answer to the second question isn't now, it's as good as never. Now is the only time that you can take charge of your life, the past and the future only exists in the imagination.В  Most people know what they need to do to lose weight, it's just easy NOT to do these things as long as you're not painfully aware of the consequences.

Instead of trying to force yourself by means of willpower, really take time to confront the reality of what obesity is going to cost you in the next 10, 20 or 30 years. This will end the contemplation about whether or not food addiction is the problem and get you motivated to go to work on the solution.

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