The Hunger Fix: The Three-Stage Detox and Recovery Plan for Overeating and Food Addiction - Couverture rigide

Peeke, Pamela

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 1609614526 ISBN 13 : 9781609614522

Editeur : Rodale Incorporated, 2012

Synopsis

The body's built-in reward system, driven by the chemical dopamine, is a fascinating adaptation: It tells us to do more of the things that give us pleasure. Creative energy, falling in love, entrepreneurship, and even the continued propagation of the human race are driven by this system...just as is, unfortunately, the urge to overeat. In "The Fix", Dr. Pamela Peeke uses the latest neuroscience to explain how unhealthy food and behavioural "hooks" have gotten us ensnared; indeed, she shows that dopamine rushes in the body work exactly the same way with food as with cocaine. Luckily, we are all capable of rewiring, and the very same dopamine-driven system can be used to reward us for healthful, exciting, and fulfilling activities. "The Fix" makes this possible by laying out a lifelong, 3-stage plan that starts with a 3- to 4-week jump start to break so-called heinous hooks and replace them with healthier actions. Fitness guides, meal plans, and recipes are constructed to bolster the growth of new neurons and stimulate the body's reward system.Gradually, healthy hooks like playing games, meditating, having sex, going for a run, laughing, and learning a new language will replace the junk food, couch time, and other bad habits that leave us unhappy and overweight.

A propos du livre

Extrait :

CHAPTER 1

The Dopamine Made Me Do It!

THERE IS NOTHING BETTER THAN A FRIEND, UNLESS IT IS A FRIEND WITH CHOCOLATE.

--ANONYMOUS

WE ALL HAVE ONE.

At least one.

A little darling. A best friend. A helper, a life raft.

An entrenched habit that's so comfortable, it feels like a hug or an island of calm.

A fix.

A fix starts simply enough. You think about doing something that you like to do--drink a mojito, or check your iPhone, or get it on with your boyfriend or girlfriend--and that thought lights up an entire dopamine- driven reward pathway in your brain.

You feel a rush of pleasure. You start thinking about when and how you are going to do that thing:

Is it happy hour yet?

Can I sneak a peek at my e-mail during this meeting?

Will he or she be around tonight? When are we going to connect?

Your brain becomes consumed by the drive to satisfy that urge. You try, but you just can't get it out of your head. You give in.

And then, as soon as you satisfy the raging hunger, bingo: You feel another rush. Your brain says, "Yeah! This is amazing. Bring it on. I want more."

You need your fix.

Most of the time, this neurological process is a good thing. Nature wants humans to stick around, so she uses this system to reward us for doing things that will ensure our survival--eating food, bonding with loved ones, having sex, making babies. Preferably as often as possible.

As a result, everything we do--from the time we wake up until we collapse into bed--is driven by reward. We're either getting reward in the short term (enjoying an hourlong massage) or in the long term (earning a college degree after studying for 4 years).

The reward can also be to avoid pain. I learned that as a little girl who didn't like to brush her teeth. After suffering through a cavity, I soon learned that my real reward was never seeing that dentist again.

This same reward system drives us to learn, to create, to innovate, to pursue our goals. But as a medical doctor specializing in metabolism and weight management, logging thousands of hours a year to educate the public about behavioral change, I've seen firsthand how the dopamine rush cuts both ways. The tremendous high you get from a run in the park or a hike to the top of a mountain can be powerful enough to change your life. But that healthy high occupies the same pathways, and can easily become confused with, the dopamine hit from a snort of cocaine or a puff of a cigarette. Clearly, not all rewards are created equal--and some can kill you.

In the past few years, I've started to see a growing manifestation of this double-edged sword in my own medical practice. More and more men and women are coming into my office desperate to find an answer to the same questions: Why can't I stop thinking about food? How can a cookie or plate of pasta or bag of chocolates have this kind of hold on me? I feel like a junkie!

As I listen to people's tortured stories of unbearable cravings, yo-yo dieting, weight obsession, and emotion-driven stress eating, I've seen a pattern emerge. Their pleas for help are no longer your standard "Gosh, I'd love to drop 10 £ds before the reunion" fare. Instead, these entreaties have become eerily similar to the cries for help from my patients with hard- core drug or alcohol addictions:

"I just need that sugar fix every afternoon. If I don't get it, I'll go crazy with withdrawal."

"I need a dose of pizza."

"Those Tostitos and dip are like crack to me--once I start, I just can't stop."

I started to realize that in more and more of my patients, these cravings are the result of a reward system gone awry. I had also reviewed the new science that shows the mere anticipation of that food-related dopamine high will cause the reward centers of the brain to light up like Times Square on New Year's Eve--the same as brain scans of cocaine addicts eager for their next fix. It doesn't take much to trigger this cascade of brain chemicals: A casually mentioned word, a picture in a magazine or on TV, or a smell from a bakery is all it takes to awaken the desperate cravings. That same insatiable drive for reward keeps all addicts pressing the dopamine accelerator, overriding their brain's normal "satisfaction" signals.

These dopamine-driven moments of pleasure start to accumulate. With constant practice, they progress to habits, carving deep neural pathways in the brain. With every repetition of the cycle, those pathways get stronger and healthier alternatives get pruned out to make way for these new, ultra- rewarding but unhealthy habits. A walk in the neighborhood with your best friend begins to pale in comparison with sitting in front of the TV and bingeing on bags of your favorite chips. This False Fix becomes the default, setting up a domino effect, constantly reinforcing itself.

I Need a Fix

Voices of Addiction1

On my blog on WebMD, I asked people to share their thoughts on food addiction--is it real? The answers were very telling. See if you can recognize yourself in any of these comments.

My addiction to ice cream and other sweets began in childhood. Celebrations were made with half pints of the hand-packed ice cream of our choice, which became an addiction to relieve grief, stress, and other emotions. Because after all--life is good with ice cream.

While I have been eating mostly healthy for 9 years, I still cannot have ice-cream-type things in my home--still a binge-type food. Why having it available sets me off, I have no idea.--Jis4Judy

For those whose recommendations include, "Well, just don't eat that," I wish it were that simple. It's like a smoker's need for cigs and an alcoholic's need for alcohol. If I have a lot of sweets available, I have a hard time not eating all of them. I keep it out of the house, except on special occasions.--nursingbug

I still struggle with the bread issue but am constantly re-focusing to look at what I really want: consistency, a comfortable weight, and peace of mind. When I eat binge foods, I switch into an addict, focused on the next fix. I hate that cycle, but not always enough to avoid it.--init4life

Of all the stresses I have subjected myself to in my life, I thought smoking was the worst. I never even thought I had an addiction to food!

When it was clear to me that I was as dependent on food as I was on smoking to get me through events, that's when I realized I was fighting one of the toughest enemies of all ... me.--mawsings

My mother was an alcoholic. She did not eat much; she always felt she was competing for my father's attention, that she had to be thin. So she smoked and drank vodka. She hid the smoking from my father, and she would sneak her vodka on some occasions.

I was hiding foods because I was embarrassed by the size that I had become. Someone asked me why I just didn't stop eating the foods that I was gorging on. I could not do it at that time. I was not ready to change, and I had not hit my rock bottom.--GoingForGoal

See if this sounds familiar: Eat in bed, stay up too late, get rotten sleep. Feel like hell in the morning, reach for sugary, caffeinated foods to stay awake. Mindlessly seek the numbing of "just one more [candy/ chip/cookie]." A glass of wine at dinner becomes three, and maybe even take a sleeping pill before bed to get "a good night's rest."

Without fully realizing it, many people have created a life of continuous, comfortable opportunities to "dope up" in front of the computer, in the doorway of the fridge, and on the couch. They are driven to repeatedly score hits of what I call "False Fixes"--anything (like food) that leads to short-term reward in association with self-destructive behavior, followed by feelings of guilt, shame, and defeat. In contrast, Healthy Fixes are productive, positive habits associated with feelings of pride, happiness, and achievement: the enjoyment of tasty, delicious whole foods, gardening on a sunny day, or taking a long walk with your best friend. When False Fixes prevail, Healthy Fixes are tossed aside. The seductive lies of the False Fixes now occupy center stage. In pursuit of each False Fix, you create self-defeating habits to support your habit. You start to set up rituals surrounding your bingeing. And voila, you're ensnared in your own endless vicious False Fix-seeking cycle.

This phenomenon clearly isn't just in my practice. We can see ample evidence of what many False Fixes have created in society:

Right this second, 800,000 people are texting or chatting on cell phones while driving.

The average child spends 53 hours a week in front of some kind of screen.

The average American family carries almost $15,000 in credit card debt.

And now we see the emergence of food addiction, which is striking us at all ages: Toddlers' obesity rates have doubled in the past 30 years, and older kids' rates have tripled. Teens' rates almost quadrupled. Half the population of the United States will be prediabetic or diabetic by 2020--an estimate that, as a devoted public health advocate and policy advisor, frightens me to the core. We've even made up new words--such as diabesity-- to describe what we're becoming. Even men and women of average size who've never been seriously overweight can struggle with food obsessions and addictive behavior. Folks who have dropped weight and kept it off still continue to grapple with how to avoid their "crack." Food addiction does not discriminate--it can afflict people anywhere along their weight- management journey.

The Most Devious Fix of All

You can get high on dopamine in many different ways. Some fixes are productive, like going to the gym or reading the Sunday New York Times. These highs build you up--you come away from them feeling proud, fulfilled, and eager for more. These are Healthy Fixes.

A False Fix, by contrast, is destructive. You feel guilty, ashamed, and disappointed.

This is the last time. Never again. And I mean it.

But once the False Fix cycle is triggered, you feel like you don't have a choice.

Some False Fixes, like drugs, nicotine, and alcohol, are clearly addictive substances. And let's not forget sex and gambling. But food? Is it a federal offense to rip through an entire cheesecake? Will you be hauled off and convicted of a felony fat count?

For years, many of my colleagues refuted the fact that food can be "addictive." Yes, the research said that foods can be habit forming--but just on a behavioral level. There was no proven biological basis to believe otherwise. What people need is willpower! Hey, it's just a cookie, for crying out loud. Control yourself! Discipline!

Addiction researchers have long documented the danger of "real" drugs of abuse. Not only can you die from your meth addiction, this addictive substance directly changes the physical structure of your brain. As drugs hijack the pleasure system and wipe out dopamine receptors, the brain adapts and adjusts, creating a tolerance that demands ever more of its drug to get the same False Fix high. Eventually the addict has to have the substance to simply feel normal. He doesn't just want it; he needs it. He hungers for it.

At that point, all other healthy survival motivations--self-care, family, friends, career, sex, love--are cast aside in favor of scoring the drug. Researchers call this deadly change "motivational toxicity," which, in the case of hard drugs, can run its course pretty quickly: Basically, unless you get clean, you're looking at jail or even death.

Well, some experts would say, unlike heroin, meth, or crack, at least you can't die from OD'ing on Jamocha Almond Fudge--at least not immediately. So food wasn't considered a "real" addiction. It's never been taken seriously. Until now.

In the past couple of years, the entire medical field has started to shift. Researchers have uncovered irrefutable proof that food itself can, even under the strictest definitions, be considered a substance of abuse. Nora Volkow, MD, director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA), has committed millions of dollars to studying the relationship between food and addiction.

Dr. Volkow is my hero. She has made it her professional mission to study how certain foods can hijack the brain's reward system. Beginning her odyssey in 2001, Dr. Volkow and her team used PET scans and radioactive chemicals that bind to dopamine receptors.2 Their research revealed that obese people had far fewer dopamine receptors in the brain's striatum, the reward center, and therefore had to eat more to experience the same reward or high as average-weighted individuals.

In 2002, Dr. Volkow delved into the craving or "wanting" question. When people were exposed to their favorite treat foods but were not allowed to eat them, a tidal wave of dopamine surged through the striatum.3 They said they "hungered" for their fixes. Yet they weren't hungry at all. This is exactly what happens in the brain of drug abusers after just watching a video of people using cocaine.

Since these landmark findings, numerous NIDA-funded studies published in gold-standard peer-reviewed journals such as Nature Neuroscience have proved that the brain is forever changed by this food addiction cycle of anticipation and reward. When rats are given free access to the kinds of "highly palatable foods" that we humans are surrounded with all the time-- such as chocolate, cheesecake, bacon, sausage, and other fat and processed food treats--these foods change the structure of the brain the same way that cocaine does. Researchers from Yale University have used functional MRI (fMRI) studies to prove that both lean and obese women who test positive for addictive behavior around food show the exact same pattern of neural activity as a chronic drug abuser: very high levels of anticipation of their drug of choice--in this case, a chocolate milk shake--but very low levels of satisfaction after consuming them.4

The addiction develops like this: Think of a river during a flood. The water charges over the banks, taking down trees and houses along the way. Continued dopamine flooding in the brain works the same way. The pathway between the ventral tegmental and the nucleus accumbens areas of the brain floods with dopamine again and again. The brain think it has "too much" dopamine--so the brain attempts to compensate for this overabundance by battening down the hatches, decreasing the total number of dopamine receptors to lessen the amount of dopamine your brain absorbs. This "down regulation" decimates receptors in a variety of brain regions, particularly your limbic system, the site of motivation and emotions.

Revue de presse :

“For countless men and women who have tried to lose weight and failed, The Hunger Fix offers hope of a real, permanent solution to weight gain. If you truly want to conquer your food demons, take control of your body and your health, and set yourself on the path to sustainable weight loss, The Hunger Fix is a must read.” —David Zinczencko, Editor in Chief, Men’s Health and author of Eat This, Not That!

“In The Hunger Fix, Dr. Pam Peeke elegantly outlines a practical plan to navigate the treacherous tightrope over the food addiction ravine.” —Dr. Mehmet Oz, Professor and Vice-Chair, Surgery, NYP Columbia University, and host of the Dr. Oz show

“In her outstanding new book, The Hunger Fix, Dr. Peeke provides those afflicted with overeating and food addiction with a powerful new tool--Transcendental Meditation--to rein in impulses and control cravings. Dr. Peeke wisely makes this simple, effortless technique a key part of her holistic plan to manage food addiction, empowering men and women to enjoy a lifelong recovery.” —David Lynch, filmmaker and founder of the David Lynch Foundation

“As I know from countless conversations with friends, family and Zumba enthusiasts all over the world, food addiction is a real issue. I could not be more pleased to see that, with this book, it is finally getting the attention it deserves. In The Hunger Fix, Dr. Peeke not only dissects the science of food addiction in an easy-to-understand way, she also offers readers a pragmatic approach to triggering their own EpiphaME and embarking on a journey toward a healthier, happier life.” —Alberto Perlman, Co-Founder and CEO, Zumba Fitness International

“The Hunger Fix is revolutionary. Dr. Peeke applies her trademark holistic approach to food addiction, integrating cutting-edge mind and body science. This book offers a practical, realistic blueprint for the lifelong recovery each individual so richly deserves.” —Beth Shaw, Founder, YogaFit

“In The Hunger Fix, Dr. Peeke tackles one of the greatest health problems of our day with startling new insights. She addresses food addiction at its root cause rather than simply providing a diet that leaves people hungry and dissatisfied. The Hunger Fix is a must-read for anyone who wants to end overeating and food obsessions once and for all.” —Norman E. Rosenthal, M.D., Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Georgetown University Medical School and author of the New York Times bestseller Transcendence: Healing and Transformation Through Transcendental Meditation

“In The Hunger Fix, Dr. Peeke shows how the foods we eat can directly alter brain chemical messengers and why some find it so challenging to just say 'no' to sugary, fatty foods. More importantly, Dr. Peeke offers solutions and tools to counter the vicious cycle of food addiction.” —Norman E. Rosenthal, M.D., Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Georgetown University Medical School and author of the New York Times bestseller Transcendence: Healing and Transformation Through Transcendental Meditation

“Food addiction is a game changer in weight management. For those people who are caught in the throws of overeating and feeling hopeless and out of control, The Hunger Fix is a must read. Dr. Peeke teaches us how to use our own biochemistry and lifestyle habits to reclaim our brains and finally live a life without food and weight torment.” —Gary & Diane Heavin, Co-Founders of Curves

“The Hunger Fix presents research that is shockingly undeniable—food addiction is real! But there’s hope for those struggling with hunger and overeating. Dr. Peeke’s easy-to-follow plan will help readers rewire their brains and transform their bodies permanently. If you’ve tried everything and failed, this book is your savior.” —Chuck Runyon, Founder and CEO of Anytime Fitness and author of Working Out Sucks!

“The Hunger Fix provides people of all sizes, shapes and ages the opportunity to cast aside self-destructive behaviors, and instead get high on "Healthy Fixes." We couldn't agree more that injecting joy and fun into daily physical activity generates the real reward we're all hungering for as we seek long-term happiness and wellness!” —Kathie and Peter Davis, Co-founders of IDEA Health & Fitness Association

“In this groundbreaking book, Dr. Peeke successfully links the new science of addiction with the practical realities of our primal drives for hunger and appetite. Through this mind-body connection, The Hunger Fix offers a simple lifelong weight management and lifestyle solution that touches all aspects of how we think, eat and play.” —Paul Terpeluk MD, MPH, Medical Director, Employee Health, Cleveland Clinic

“Diets are based on denial and deprivation—they create a vicious cycle that leaves dieters feeling addicted to food. In The Hunger Fix, Dr. Peeke explains the science and biochemistry associated with addiction and food binges and offers simple eating steps for people who feel hopeless and out of control.” —Nancy Clark MS RD CSSD Sports nutritionist and author of the best-selling Nancy Clark's Sports Nutrition Guidebook

“In The Hunger Fix, Dr. Pam Peeke guides readers through the groundbreaking new science of food addiction, helping to explain how their reward systems can be altered by exposure to certain foods. After identifying the challenge, she provides an accessible, practical, science-based strategy to manage cravings and addictive habits for the long term.” —James O. Hill PhD, Co-Founder National Weight Control Registry, Executive Director, Anschutz Health & Wellness Center, University of Colorado

“I see a lot of cookbooks...but very few do what this one did, which was to make me rethink the way I shop and cook.” —MORE Magazine (September)

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Rodale Incorporated
• Date d'édition: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1609614526
• ISBN 13: 9781609614522
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 304