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The following article was published in Your Health Magazine. Our mission is to empower people to live healthier.
Monica Marusceac, owner
Using Food To Self-Medicate The Single Most Common Reason People Put On Weight
NOVA Hypnosis and Wellness
. http://novahypnosisandwellness.com

Using Food To Self-Medicate The Single Most Common Reason People Put On Weight

Do you find yourself eating when you are sad, stressed, worried, bored, tired, scared, lonely, or [fill in the blank]? Do you find that food has control over you instead of the other way around? If you answered yes, you are self-medicating with food, the single most common reason why people put on weight.

We used to think overeating was a problem of willpower, but now we know better. The food you eat literally changes the structure and function of your brain. Recently, researchers from Yale and Harvard have shown that food addiction is a chemical dependency, no different than a drug addiction.

Whether it's genetically hard-wired or environmentally driven isn't easily determined; most important is to focus on breaking the addictive cycle.

Scientific Explanation of Emotional Eating

A 2010 study showed for the first time that the same molecular mechanisms that drive people into drug addiction are behind the compulsion to overeat, pushing people into obesity.
The study demonstrated in rat models that the development of obesity coincides with an increasing chemical imbalance in reward brain circuitries. As reward centers in the brain become less and less responsive, rats quickly develop compulsive overeating habits, consuming larger quantities of high-calorie, high-fat foods until they become obese. The very same changes occur in the brains of rats that overconsume cocaine or heroin, and are thought to play an important role in the development of compulsive drug use in humans.

The study confirms the addictive properties of junk food, explaining what happens in the brains of these animals when they have easy access to high-calorie, high-fat food. It presents compelling evidence that drug addiction and obesity are based on the same underlying neurobiological mechanisms. In the study, the animals completely lost control over their eating behavior, continuing to overeat even when they anticipated receiving electric shocks, highlighting just how compulsive the desire to consume the high-fat, unhealthy food can become.
What happens in addiction is simple. The reward pathways in the brain become so overstimulated that the system basically turns on itself, accepting addiction as the new norm, whether it's addiction to cocaine or to cupcakes.

How Hypnosis Helps Stop Emotional Eating

Hypnosis helps break the cycle of emotional eating by allowing people to access the root of their problems with regards to food and to break the “food as reward” or “food as punishment” connection. Once people take back control of their emotional state through hypnosis, they no longer rely on food to self-medicate, allowing the reward centers of the brain to rebalance.
Hypnosis helps transform the desire for health into a greater temptation and desire than the food which seemed so attractive yesterday.

Stop the Cycle

Too many people try to exercise away a bad diet instead of limiting exercise and cleaning up their diet first. As a result, most people fail miserably over and over again every time they try to lose weight. By using a combination of health coaching and hypnosis you can take back control of your eating for good and establish healthy eating habits once and for all.

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