Season 2 Episode 4: Food Addiction with Marci Evans, RD
Food Addiction, specifically sugar addiction, has become a hot button topic in recent years. People feel out of control around highly palatable foods and struggle to avoid over eating them. Sugar also lights up the pleasure centers of our brains, similar to drugs like cocaine and heroin. Does that mean that it, and other highly palatable foods are actually addicting? Listen to this great discussion I share with Marci Evans, RD to find out.
In this episode:
- The research around food addiction and pleasure
- Feeling out of control with food is definitely an issue
- The Restrict/Binge Cycle
- How HAES and Intuitive Eating can help reduce feelings of addiction around food
- Yale Food Addiction Scale – is it harmful?
- Cocaine vs Sugar and the Pleasure Centers
Marci is a Food and Body Imager Healer®. She has dedicated her career to counseling, supervising, and teaching in the field of eating disorders. She is a Certified Eating Disorder Registered Dietitian and Supervisor, certified Intuitive Eating Counselor and Certified ACSM personal trainer. In addition to her group private practice and three adjunct teaching positions, Marci launched an online eating disorders training for dietitians in 2015 and co-directs a specialized eating disorder internship at Simmons College. She volunteers for a number of national eating disorder organizations including the iaedp certification committee and is serving as an eating disorder resource professional for The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. She has spoken locally and nationally at numerous conferences and media outlets. She loves social media so tweet her @marciRD, follow her on Facebook and Instagram, and check out her blog at www.marciRD.com/blog.
“If we are promoting a paradigm of abstinence or restraint or restriction, we are neurobiologically setting ourselves up, potentially, to act in a way that feels compulsive and out of control.”