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Anatomy of a Food Addiction: The Brain Chemistry of Overeating - Paperback | Diverse Reads

Anatomy of a Food Addiction: The Brain Chemistry of Overeating

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If you have struggled with compulsive eating, dieting, and the guilt and conflict they bring, your life will be changed by this important, life-affirming, and astonishingly wise book.

Anne Katherine, a Certified Eating Disorders Therapist and former compulsive eater, explains the chemical reactions in the brain that work in conjunction with lifelong emotional conflicts to make food—particularly sugar and refined carbohydrates—such a comfort that it's almost like a drug.

Once you realize that your binge eating is a physical disease that can be treated, you can use the book's self-tests, exercises, examination of family issues, and complete recovery program for newfound understanding and confidence.

ISBN-13: 9780936077130

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Turner Publishing Company

Publication Date: 12-19-1996

Pages: 232

Product Dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

Anne Katherine, M.A., CEDT, CMHC, is the author of Boundaries: Where You End and I Begin. She has a Master of Arts in Psychology from Peabody College and a Certificate in Addiction Studies from Seattle University. She is a Certified Eating Disorders Therapist by the International Association of Eating Disorder Professionals, and a Certified Mental Health Counselor. She has 14 years of personal recovery from binge eating and 23 years of experience as a psychotherapist. Her practice, with Associated Recovery Therapists, is in Seattle where she leads her own program in Binge Eating Recovery.

Read an Excerpt

When I took my first step toward recovery from binge eating in 1983, I had no idea that my life was unfulfilled because I was eating too much. What a wonder, then, that with each small step I took into recovery, my life gained more luster, my mind got clearer, and my energy grew.

I didn’t realize that certain foods act in the body as if they are drugs, creating an addiction powerful enough to have held me in a pattern of binge eating despite my most fervent and spiritual efforts to break free. I call these foods "drug foods," which by themselves are not drugs, but through a series of chemical reactions eventually cause production of brain chemicals that can have a drug-like effect on the body. These chemicals cloud the mind, imprison the soul, and steal freedoms. All this from particular foods in interaction with a particular body type.

This susceptibility stems from the fact that many people have an inadequate supply of certain chemicals that can, among other things, alleviate pain. We learn, even as small children, to stimulate the release of these chemicals by eating sweets and we do this for a much more significant reason than to get a particular taste. We do this because, soon after, we feel better.

Thus, we discover how to manipulate our brain functioning by choosing to eat an abundance of certain types of foods. We make this adjustment without any consciousness of how or why it works; but, over time, such manipulation causes other brain changes, and we can unknowingly get trapped in a cycle of eating that causes more eating. This book explains that process.

What People are Saying About This

Ruth Lorenz

Ruth Lorenz, recovering food addict
Anne Katherine's book helped me to make it through the night when I was bingeing and had no other hope. It mapped out a plan of recovery, offering tools that I have found essential in maintaining my abstinence.

Claire Boehling

Claire Boehling, M.Ed., Eating Recovery Center, Solon OH
This book takes you from active food addiction into recovery with love and a true understanding of this painful disease. I recommend it to everyone who goes through my center.

H. Theresa Wright

H. Theresa Wright, MS, RD, CDE, Renaissance Nutrition Center, Inc., Plymouth Meeting, PA
This book offers a clear and logical explanation for the origins and progression of compulsive eating disorders, with a moving and deeply honest account of the author's own struggle with food. It outlines a gentle and compassionate approach for beginning your own recovery. Insightful, loving and effective.