How Addictive Is Sugar?

Icing Sugar

Marching down the left-hand side of the homepage at My Addiction, there is a list of nearly 30 possible addictions. Sugar addiction is not lumped in with food addiction or eating disorders. No, sugar addiction is in a category all its own. And if there is one single substance that correlates with childhood obesity, sugar […]

Prenatal Measures to Prevent Childhood Obesity

Reading Books

In advanced cases of overweight, up to and including morbid obesity, in teenagers and adults, the answer becomes clear. Many, many people are addicted to food in the same way an alcoholic or cocaine addict is hooked. They can only help themselves through interventions that adhere closely to the classical 12-step program, especially effective in […]

‘Melting Mama’ Looks At ‘Designated Fat Girl’

Jennifer Joyner and Melting Mama

Jennifer Joyner is Assignment Editor at WRAL-TV in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and also works in radio, among other pursuits. She also published a book entitled Designated Fat Girl: A Memoir. Starting from morbidly obese at 330 pounds, her book covers 16 years of struggle against food addiction, a condition that is not taken seriously by […]

5-2-1-0 and the Let’s Go! Initiative

How Portland Maine

Everybody wants to know: Is there anything that works to prevent childhood obesity? And if so, what is it? The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation wonders, too, and not only in a general, curious way. The Foundation has a specific goal, to reverse the growing obesity trend by 2015. Getting everybody slimmed down by then would […]

Famous Food Addict Carnie Wilson

Christmas in Harmony

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 […]

Reviews, Presentations, Publications

Here is a very exciting development. Dr. Robert Pretlow’s “Addiction To Highly Pleasurable Food as a Cause of The Childhood Obesity Epidemic: A Qualitative Internet Study” will be published in the summer edition of Eating Disorders: The Journal of Treatment and Prevention. The study, which will appear in Volume 19, #4 (In Press) July/Aug/Sept 2011, […]

It’s Official: Food Addiction Is Real

Saint Lucia Day 4

Well, better late than never! Dr. Robert A. Pretlow, numerous other medical professionals, and very many obese people (whose experiences were previously dismissed as “anecdotal evidence” and “non-validated data”) have been saying for years that food addiction is as real as any other officially identified addiction. It is a problem most appropriately viewed through the […]

Weight Loss Surgery, Part 4

Sunbather

Why does food have such a powerful effect on people? Overeating and consequent obesity can lead to a juncture in life’s pathway where surgery becomes a very real possibility. The relationship between a person and food can get really twisted. There are people who actually gain weight intentionally, so they can qualify for surgery under […]

Weight Loss Surgery, Part 3

bench press

We have been exploring the different kinds of surgery designed to help an obese person lose weight by having part of their stomach either removed or shut off, and the other bits reconnected in different ways. The various weight loss surgery (WLS) procedures each have their advantages and disadvantages. The vertical banded gastroplasty (or stomach […]

Weight Loss Surgery, Part 1

Surgery Morning

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 […]