RYW 152: Is Food Addiction Helping You or Keeping You Stuck?

We are going to be exploring the idea, the concept around food addiction.

So I think where I want to start before I even get into this episode is, as always, this is my opinion it's my professional opinion it's what I have witnessed for many many years now having worked with thousands and thousands of people and I always like to bring these conversations onto the podcast because I want them to be thought-provoking like I want you to listen to this And take from it what you will.

And that might also be that you're gonna reject everything that I say and have a completely different opinion.

That's also very, very valid.

But I think certainly in the realms of food noise and food thought, food obsession, overeating, binge behavior, like wherever you are with food at the minute, I think certain conversations need to be acknowledged and we need to explore them because how we think about stuff is the whole philosophy that I work around.

Our belief systems and our brain is the biggest reason why we have the behaviours that we have in the first place.

So there was a point in my life when if someone had told me well, you're addicted to food.

I honestly probably would have said, well, actually, yeah, obviously that explains everything because I could not understand my behavior in any other way.

Like I'd wake up in the morning and I decide that I wasn't going to binge that day.

I was going to be really good.

And I could genuinely mean it, right? Complete sincerity because the desire to stop that behavior was real.

And I could feel completely certain that today was going to be that day.

It was going to be different.

But then later on that day, i'd find myself eating food that i hadn't intended to eat feeling this enormous urgency around it as well and almost watching myself break that promise that i'd made to myself like a few hours earlier and when that happens over and over and over again you start looking for an explanation as i'm sure that you probably have as well you know it's like well why can i not stop why am i thinking about food again why do i want to eat more when i've literally just finished eating Now, why can someone else have two biscuits and then apparently forget the packet exists whilst I'm over here having this internal conversation about those bloody biscuits for the next four hours? Like, why does part of me desperately want to stop doing this, but another part of me seems absolutely determined to carry on? So I'm addicted, I'm going to do those in like speech marks, I'm addicted, can seem like a really reasonable conclusion.

And this is why I've quite a complicated opinion on the idea of food addiction, because I think food addiction can be a useful idea, but, or and, I also think it can become a very dangerous story and I want to be really clear from the beginning that I'm not trying to give you the definitive scientific answer on whether food addiction exists or doesn't exist.

I'm not interested in planting my flag in one camp and screaming at everybody else on the other side.

I'm talking about my opinion, my own experience with binge eating and also what I've seen professionally from working with people around their own relationships with food.

What I'm interested in is what happens psychologically when somebody starts believing I am addicted to food, because sometimes a label can give you an explanation that actually sets you free, right? They can be really, really powerful.

For example, if you have been labelled, say labelled slash diagnosed as ADHD, or maybe you're somehow neurodivergent, like I know those labels personally, can actually be a very freeing, empowering thing to own.

It's like, this is who I am.

This makes so much sense.

But sometimes...

the explanation itself can become another prison, right? So this is really where I want to explore this.