In the carbohydrate addict, individual triggers—sometimes situations or stressful events—can affect the body’s biochemistry. There may be an effect upon the neurotransmitter balance in the brain, which controls the experience of hunger and satisfaction and therefore the complex mechanisms involved in fat storage. This translates to a difficulty in losing weight or an increased or recurring hunger.
In general, weight-loss programs that do not treat the cause of carbohydrate addiction do not address such triggers. Most programs are unable to help the dieter to counteract them. The result is that carbohydrate addicts find themselves trying to cope with strong impulses to eat or snack with no alternative strategy available to help.
Some particularly strong-willed people are able to resist for a short time the urge to snack, eat, or binge. If the trigger situation or stress continues for a prolonged period, however, few carbohydrate addicts are able to withstand the resulting drive to eat. When several different trigger situations or stresses occur one after another or even simultaneously, they seem to have a multiplying effect, making it even more difficult to resist that powerful urge to eat. The Carbohydrate Addict’s Diet was designed to help the carbohydrate addict reduce the recurring desire to eat that is brought on by these triggers. The eating plan that makes up the diet was especially designed to reduce the hormonal backlash that the triggers can bring on.
Almost all of the carbohydrate addicts with whom we have worked over the years have found that they are better able to handle everyday stresses and strains with less anger, internal conflict, and aggravation when using the diet. When they put it to use, our dieters experience the benefit of a more balanced system. The system itself acts to enable carbohydrate addicts to deal with trigger situations or stresses and help them to stay firmly in control.
There are different triggers for different people, as the stories of Adrian, Mary, and the others that follow suggest.
Adrian’s Story
Adrian looked frazzled the first time she came to see us. Attractive and well groomed, Adrian was in her late forties, but her pent-up tension and anger made her look older.
“If I were an alcoholic, we would say that my boss was driving me to drink. Instead, he’s driving me to eat. I don’t mean this as an excuse, but I really feel that he’s making me eat.
“I am so angry at him, I tear into food. I literally bite into a roll like I’m biting into him. I don’t leave my anger at the office, either. I bring it home with me and overeat at home, too.”
Adrian looked sad and hopeless as she told us, “I’m stuck. I can’t leave the job.” With a child in college and another in law school, she and her husband needed the money. Yet her physician had found her blood pressure had grown dangerously high, and she had put on twenty pounds since taking her high-pressure job. “I have more food in my drawers than the guy on the coffee cart. I’m getting to the point that I stuff my face without even knowing what I’m eating,” she said.
Adrian lost her weight and regained control of her eating— though it took a confrontation with her boss, as well as the Carbohydrate Addict’s Diet, to do it.
Mary’s Story
One of the most frequent addiction triggers for the women we work with are changes that occur immediately before the monthly onset of menstruation. Mary O.’s case is typical.
Mary made her appointment several weeks in advance. “I want to come and see you when I’m in the middle,” she told us on the phone. “I want you to see how bad it is.”
When she arrived, we were struck almost immediately by her anger. She was frustrated at her plight—and she had a deep sadness about her. It became apparent that she was very tired of fighting and feeling frustrated at her periodic loss of control.
“Four, five, maybe six days a month, I’m a mess. I’m miserable. And I can’t stop eating. I eat everything in sight. I’m like a crazy person. I’ve given up even trying to control myself. And I end up starving myself the rest of the month to try and limit the damage I’ve done during these few days.
“Nobody seems to be able to do anything to help me. They all agree that it’s probably hormonally related, but nothing they have done has helped. If you could just help me to stop eating, maybe I could get the other things under control.”
She unburdened herself of her fears. “I feel like my life is falling apart. It’s not getting better. If anything, it feels like it’s getting worse.”
The result of Mary’s Carbohydrate Addict’s Test placed her in the severe range during her premenstrual days, so we recommended she start on the Carbohydrate Addict’s Diet immediately.
She was reluctant at first because we advised her to remain on the diet all month long, not just on the days when she usually experienced her eating problems. She said when she decided to come to us that she had “hoped this diet was only going to be necessary during those four or five days.
We finally convinced her to try the diet full-time by explaining that a balanced eating program was necessary all month long. Only by its sustained use could the diet help her reduce or even eliminate the swings of mood and eating that she had experienced.
Mary called us within days; her own words speak most clearly for the results. “Why didn’t you tell me it would be like this?” she exclaimed. “I feel better than I have in years. Better than I ever felt. I can’t believe it. I wouldn’t go off this diet on a bet.
“The cravings are gone. I’m losing weight, and I never lose weight at this time of the month. I feel human again. It’s like I’m not expecting it at all.”
Chris’s Story
Chris L. presented us with a different kind of problem. She was a carbohydrate addict all right, her test scores revealed that. What wasn’t so apparent was the reason why.
“You have to understand that a couple of years ago my test results would have been entirely different,” she told us. “Something’s changed and, so help me, it’s making me a carbohydrate addict.”
Like detectives, we tried to trace the changes that had taken place in Chris’s life that might have set off an addictive response. At first, the only life event that seemed to correlate with her change in eating habits was that she had moved to a new apartment on her own, after having lived with roommates.
We asked her to keep a food diary to help us pinpoint the culprit. She was to note everything she ate, the times and places she ate, and the level of her hunger. Sure enough, a pattern emerged. When she ate with other people, whether it was at a restaurant, at her home or theirs, or at work, she didn’t experience the drive to eat. But when she ate alone, she often felt the compulsion to eat. But that still wasn’t the whole story, because it didn’t always happen when she ate alone.
Another week of keeping her food diary offered the answer. Her addictive response to food invariably occurred after eating at a restaurant in her neighborhood. She always ate alone there; it was kind of a second home for her. The people knew her, she liked the food, and she felt comfortable there.
We asked Chris to experiment. The test worked: when she stayed away from the restaurant for a week, her cravings stopped, confirming her and our suspicions. But we all wanted to know exactly what was the cause. A talk with the head cook provided the answer.
We had briefed her on food sensitivities, on the several foods and additives that we had found had brought about an addictive response in other people with whom we had worked. Chris called the next afternoon.
“Bingo.” She laughed with relief. “We got it. It’s MSG. Monosodium glutamate. They put it in the casseroles, they put it in corned beef hash, they put it in the vegetables.” Her trigger was the additive MSG, which is often used in preparing Chinese cuisine but may also be present in a variety of other foods, among them salad dressings.
Chris L. eliminated monosodium glutamate from her diet; with that gone, her cravings disppeared as if by magic.
We’ve had people who, because of changes in their daily habits, found themselves snacking and gaining weight. One recently widowed woman had begun spending time with a group of women in her building. They played cards, went to the movies, lunched, and dined together. This also meant a significant change from her previous eating history. She had kept her husband company at meals, she told us, but “food was never very important to him, and not to me either.” When she suddenly found herself around food all the time, she started eating a lot more than she ever had.
Another woman who came to us drank quantities of a certain diet soda that triggered her carbohydrate addiction. Caffeine seemed to be the culprit in her case. Other people, too, have found that changing seasons seem to provoke an addictive response—the cravings and the pounds accumulate in the fall and winter and they struggle (but fail) to take them off in the spring.
These varied problems suggest how everyday foods, activities, and other factors can trigger a carbohydrate addiction. Be alert for such life-events. If your carbohydrate addiction occurred suddenly, or if your addiction intensifies rapidly, there may be a simple explanation. Finding it may help you resolve or more easily gain control over your addiction.
But now it’s time to learn about the diet itself in detail.
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