095: Food Addiction

Today’s show was inspired by my recent appearance on The Buzz, an Edmonton streaming talk show, where I sat in as the expert on addiction. That same evening my clients and I had a coaching session where the topic of food addiction came up again. So it’s on my mind, it’s been percolating in my brain, and now I really want to share my thoughts with you. Because I have come to a bit of a realization that we risk damaging ourselves when we call our overeating a food addiction. I’ll explain why I think that and I’ll define addiction and talk through it as well.

Addiction is medically defined as requiring four things: 1) compulsion, 2) negative consequences, 3) symptoms, and 4) development of a tolerance to the object of addiction. It’s important to understand how each one of these requirements plays into addiction, whether it’s alcohol, gambling, shopping, social media, drugs, or anything else we latch onto to numb uncomfortable emotions. But there are considerations that I think separate food from being an addiction. What is the treatment for overeating as compared to the treatment for over-consumption of alcohol or sugar, for example? And how does labeling food struggles as an addiction actually hamper our healing efforts? These are some of the questions I work through in this episode, so join me for this thought experiment journey.

About host Michelle Tubman:

Michelle Tubman is an emergency physician in Alberta, Canada. She is also an overweight woman who has struggled for decades with her own weight and body image. She has spent her adult life constantly battling the urge to overeat with her desire to be thin and healthy. As a physician she understood the nutritional aspects of a healthy diet, but having the knowledge wasn’t enough to produce the changes she wanted in her body. And so she pursued extra training in life coaching, nutrition coaching, the science of habit formation, and eating psychology. And this is where the magic is. There is so much work that needs to happen on the inside before we can see changes on the outside.

Michelle founded Wazya Health to help successful, professional women who, after years of dieting, understand that optimal weight and health is more than calories-in-calories-out. She wants to help women listen to that quiet voice inside that tells them there’s deeper work to be done when it comes to weight and body image.

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Learn more about Dr Michelle Tubman and Wayza Health: