An Addiction YOU May Have

You may pride yourself on the fact that you stay away from drugs, but if you eat too much, you may be an addict–to FOOD. Sweets and high-fat foods affect the brain the same way drugs do–and like drugs, eating too much of these can cause permanent changes in the parts of the brain that control our eating behavior. Both animal and human brains have special pathways that make us feel good when we eat food with lots of calories. On the NPR website, Jon Hamilton quotes neuroscientist Ralph DiLeone as saying, "The motivation to take cocaine in the case of a drug addict is probably engaging similar circuits that the motivation to eat is in a hungry person." In fact, food addiction came FIRST: Hamilton quotes DiLeone as saying, "Drug addiction is really hijacking some of these pathways that evolved to promote food intake for survival reasons." Hamilton quotes pharmacologist Teresa Reyes as saying, "It is similar to what happens in cases of chronic drug abuse. The reward circuitry changes in a similar way, and that promotes the seeking of that drug, or in our case, in seeking palatable food." This helps explain why obese children tend to grow up to be fat adults.

If YOU’RE one of those fat adults, you need to download Anne Strieber’s famous diet book, "What I Learned From the Fat Years." Using scientific principles, she devised a diet that helped her to lose 100 pounds and YOU CAN TOO.