Overcoming junk food and soft drink addiction....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 12-20-2012

As if the tons of extra fat and the diseases caused by soft drinks and various kinds of junk food wasn't enough, there’s worse news!

For a while now and just recently, there have been studies showing that the several times a day intake of these things that has become common, is somewhat physically addicting.

1.  Part of it is caused by the rebound hunger effect from consuming refined grains, high fructose corn syrup, excessive regular sugar, and artificial sweeteners.

When you eat or drink these, your body notes it and releases insulin to fight the expected blood sugar spike.

Then somewhat later for consuming refined grains, high fructose corn syrup, or excessive regular sugar, the insulin overshoots and your blood sugar falls a bit too low.

Then you get extra hungry and worse for sugary or sweet foods to compensate for your low blood sugar.  Worse, when you eat or drink high fructose corn syrup, you tend to want something with that sweeter taste.

With artificial sweeteners this effect is stronger and faster!  There was no blood sugar spike to begin with, so the lower blood sugar happens sooner and the extra hunger for sugary foods happens sooner.  Worse, artificial sweeteners taste even sweeter than high fructose corn syrup which tends to make you want high fructose corn syrup or a LOT of sugary foods to compensate.   (It’s no accident the diet soft drinker tend to have bigger fat bellies than beer lovers!)

The good news is that once you realize that these effects make these foods and drinks perfect fatteners, making you hungrier and fatter at THE SAME TIME, your motivation to drop them from your life tends go up a lot..

Trying to lose fat and keep it off while ingesting this stuff is like not wanting your home to burn up and dropping lit matches all over it several times a day!

These foods and drinks actually cause you to eat more than your body would otherwise have caused you to want.

The best news is that if you start your day with a good breakfast including some health OK protein or even a lot of it and some fiber from lower glycemic foods you can even include some whole fruit.  That gives you a sweet taste and good flavor but does NOT set you up for this addictive process to kick in.

Drink real coffee, tea, or green tea for caffeine or drink strong cocoa from brewed cocoa beans or unsweetened cocoa instead of soft drinks.

Drink cold water instead of soft drinks or drink chilled carbonated water with nothing else added.

For a treat with crunch and good taste – and some fat but a healthy kind, have some nuts as a snack instead of a sweet snack.

Avocados or guacamole also work.

Both nuts and avocado ARE high in fat.  But they spike your blood sugar and cause fattening insulin release not at all.  Even better, they are so filling in part because of their nutrition and fiber too, that you automatically become LESS hungry for other foods to compensate.  So unless you force feed these snacks to yourself, you do NOT tend to gain any weight from eating them.

Contrast getting less hungry and no rebound hunger from these snacks with just getting hungrier and fatter with soft drinks and other high carb and high glycemic junk foods!

It’s a huge difference. 

It also helps when tempted to realize all the health harmful components of soft drinks and these junk foods.

They not only have these fattening and sweet things in them, they also tend to have one or more harmful ingredients. 

30% of all high fructose corn syrup has some mercury in it.  Some people have reported bad health reactions to some kinds of artificial sweeteners.

These foods tend to always contain oils high in pro-inflammatory and disease causing omega 6 oils that come from GMO crops.  Worse, many of them contain these oils that have been all or partially hydrogenated which turns them into heart attack starter.

They often contain excessive salt too.

The research has been done.  The less of these things you ingest, the fewer nasty disease you’ll get, the lower your medical bills will be, and the slower you will age.

I’ve literally looked at the packages foods I use to eat and like such as commercially baked chocolate chip cookies and found that after removing these ingredients there was hardly anything else in the cookies!

It makes me resistant to even having one!

2.  If you really understand how severe this is, a great way to break the addiction it to just go through your house and kitchen and throw out all of this stuff.

(Jillian Michaels strongly recommends this to her fat loss clients. 

She points out that if you realize how fattening and harmful this stuff is, you don’t even consider giving it away!)

For people like me who like giving people things and hate to waste money, that’s not easy to do.

But these foods and drinks are really too awful to wish on anyone else.

2.  In addition to NOT eating packaged snacks and some packaged dinners, always read labels.

If it lists MSG, anything ending in glutamate, autolyzed yeast, natural spices, or just spices, do NOT eat it. (Natural spices or spices COULD be harmless; but I’d venture a guess that well over half the time, that food, spice blend, or condiment contains MSG as the natural spice!)

MSG is not only a flavor enhancer that is somewhat addictive, we now know that it and other glutamates tends to harm your brain and make depression dramatically more severe.

Studies also found that people eating a lot of MSG were fatter than people who did not and ate the SAME number of calories.

That means that MSG and other glutamates are also perfect fatteners.  They are addictive, harmful, and fattening.

If you really like dramatic and extreme flavors, things like horseradish and cayenne pepper, and diced hot peppers can do far more than MSG but without the harm and excess fat added to your body.  They are also less addictive than MSG.

3.  For people addicted to fatty foods, there are also remedies.

One is to know what the oils and fats are that will harm you and by how much, and simply eliminate those from what you eat 100 % of the time.

These fats and oils tend to always be, or the foods with them contain, oils high in pro-inflammatory and disease causing omega 6 oils that come from GMO crops.  Worse, many of them contain these oils that have been all or partially hydrogenated which turns them into heart attack starter.

Nuts, avocados, and extra virgin olive oil and even sparing amounts of butter and cheese from cows fed only grass, when eaten in moderation can do the positive jobs for you.

Omega 3 and DHA supplements and fatty wild caught fish that’s also very low in mercury also work and have anti-inflammatory and other beneficial health effects.

These oils and foods tend to satisfy your fat cravings.

The populations of people who eat virtually all those kinds of fats and oils and ONLY those kinds tend to be healthier than everyone else on the planet.

And, they have worked well in cooking for thousands of years!

Just like soft drinks and junky foods and MSG, the best cure for the bad kinds of fats and oils is to just toss them in the trash.

So, once you know all of WHY these foods and drinks harm you and make you fat, and you know what to replace them with, it still takes some effort to break the addiction to them.

But the good news is that once you do, it becomes easier than you might think to keep doing it.

The very best news is that by doing this set of things, something truly magical happens.

You can lose anywhere from 5 to 305 pounds without being any hungrier!