Article written by Heidi Campo; NSCA CPT, CSCS, and certified Fitness Nutrition Specialist
Over my years working as a nutritionist, I have often heard people say. “I can’t help it. I am addicted to (chips, soda pop, treats) you name it!” What is food addiction though? Is it a real thing? Let’s define what food addiction actually is and if a weight loss clinic can help you.
Food addiction can be identified when a few key things are present. Such as tolerance, withdrawal, and progression. Tolerance is when you need more and more to achieve the same effect. You are no longer satisfied with one portion and you need to eat more to feel satisfied. Withdrawal is when you present with physiological symptoms when the food is removed. Have you ever felt sick when you clean up your diet or go into fits of hangry rage? Then progression is similar to tolerance, and it means that you can be eating more over time, or spending greater amounts of effort to recover from food addiction (yo-yo dieting). It can also impair your social, physical, occupational, psychological, and recreational activities.
It is estimated that about 5-10% of the American population has a real food addiction. However, at clinics like ours, we can expect that about 50-70% of our clients struggle with food addiction. You can download and complete the Yale Food Addiction Scale to assess your relationship with food. If you find that your score reflects a possible food addiction. We highly recommend talking to our Doctor about treatment. There are things that we can do to treat this from a clinical standpoint.
As far as diets go. A diet where you lose weight and gain it back is not a successful diet. It is only successful if you can lose the weight and keep it off for more than 5 years. This is why we want our clients to continue working with us at MD Diet weight loss clinic even after they hit their goal weight. You should come in and meet with the nutritionist to discuss lifestyle diets and balanced changes that you can make for yourself. We recommend that you come in bi-annually to see the nutritionist even after hitting your goal weight. This helps you stay on track and keep learning new tricks to adapt your lifestyle to your goals!
If you are interested in learning new ways to reduce the number of calories you eat in a day, perhaps you would be interested in our blog post 11 ways to trick yourself into losing weight.