Famous Food Addict Carnie Wilson
Carnie Wilson’s dysfunctional relationship with her world-renowned musician father was, she feels, the root cause of her lifelong struggle with eating disorders. Then in 1993, her own singing group broke up. A couple of years later, Wilson admitted that she was a 300-pound food addict, and began to explore bariatric surgery as an option. She […]
Weight Loss Surgery, Part 1
We have speculated before on why highly pleasurable food gets such a hold on people that they let it impair their well-being, to the point where surgery is then necessary to control their overeating and restore health. We have suggested that any habit which leads to surgical intervention could fairly be called an addiction. That […]
Live-In Addiction Programs and Permanent Change
Many live-in addiction treatment centers include food addiction in their agenda, and a place called Shades of Hope, located in Buffalo Gap, Texas, specializes in “eating disorders and co-occurring addictions.” Oprah Winfrey is profiling this center in her new series, “Addicted to Food.” Here is the center’s definition of food addiction: Food addiction is loss […]
Things Parents Can Do at Home
There are plenty of things parents can stop doing. Obesity is bad enough; a kid doesn’t need nagging too. But today, we’re talking about things that parents can actively do. Aracelly Clouse is a personal fitness trainer in California, who also writes about such specialized topics as places for cheap family outings in her area, […]
Many Doctors Believe Food Can Be Addictive
Can food be addictive in the same way as, for instance, heroin? Many doctors believe that it can. While some people are not very addiction-prone, others are, but are too busy being junkies involving some other substance, and food doesn’t do a thing for them. Not every person who eats is a food addict. But […]
Peer Groups Work for Many Addicts
So many different fields have something to contribute to solving the childhood obesity problem, and there are a lot of things that can be done, both large and small. We’ve talked about change that can be undertaken right at home, like chewing more thoroughly and drinking lots of water, or even amateur aversion therapy. We’ve […]
Food Addiction Paradigm Early Adopters Gettinger and Winfrey
We’ve been going on and on about the difficulty of introducing the concept of food addiction. And it is in many ways an uphill push, but not a hopeless one. Today, we salute some people who have opened their minds enough to look through the psychological food dependence-addiction lens, and see a way out of […]