Can Your Workouts Hide Your Food Addiction? by Joan Kent, PhD
“I don’t understand. She trains well.”
The program manager said this when a participant in our weight loss program didn’t get results. I was both an athletic coach and the lead nutritionist.
His comment exasperated me. Of course she trained well. She was an expert at that because of her food issues. She’d junk out, then “train well” to burn off the calories.
It wasn’t always the same ‘she’ – but she was typically a sugar addict. Sugar addicts don’t necessarily have difficulty training.
Training’s the easy part: early classes at the gym, hitting the weight room, weekend runs, core work, scheduling with a trainer. No problem.
Workouts don’t threaten their addictive behavior. Sugar addicts want to continue eating junk, and then use their workouts to compensate for it.
Workouts help them keep the addiction going.
Yet Nutrition Rules Push Buttons
Food guidelines trigger stonewalling. My nutrition program – highly successful with most of the participants – annoyed the major “resisters.”
I’ve written articles about resisting weight loss, but let’s look at one client here. This woman kept demanding more specific instructions. Our guidelines were never good enough.
She claimed she didn’t know what to eat. She wanted menus. When we provided those, she wanted more details: exactly which foods to eat, exactly when, exactly how much for her calorie needs.
The program manager saw this as our problem. I immediately recognized it for the smokescreen it was.
“Until we provide those things,” he commented, “she feels as if her program hasn’t begun.” That was profound – but not in the way he thought.
If you don’t know the games people play to avoid doing the necessary work to lose weight, registering for a robust weight-loss program and demanding specifics seems like a sincere desire to lose weight.
But I’ve been around defiant and resistant weight-loss clients. Until we fulfilled every demand, she had an excuse not to change. Not to give up pizza, margaritas, nachos, wine. Not to move forward – to any degree – until things suited her to a T.
If we had done everything she wanted, she would have brought more complaints and more demands.
Bottom Line?
She saw the lack of personalized info as the chink in the armor, a weakness to attack. A good friend of mine who works as a life coach said, “It’s better for her if the program fails than if she fails. Again.”
This life coach said she dislikes the games her weight loss clients play.
So how can we make this helpful to you? You might be interested in weight loss. You might be addicted to sugar.
Here are a few suggestions:
- Be honest with yourself.
Assess your weakness—sugar, alcohol, butter, whatever. You don’t have to tell anyone about it. It’s no crime to decide you don’t want to lose weight or end your food addiction. Just know what you want.
- See the finish line with no time element.
I learned this from my ultra-endurance athletic coach. Don’t worry about fast results. These days some people push rapid weight loss. That’s fine if you prefer, but you don’t have to race.
If it’s more comfortable to set it and forget it, decrease calories by, say, 200 to 300 per day. It will take longer to reach your goal, but that’s the only drawback. So what? Do it, forget about it, and let the pounds melt slowly while you go about your business.
- If you’re addicted to sugar or other foods, concentrate on the addiction first.
Don’t self-sabotage by taking on too much at once. If you deal with sugar first – no matter who disagrees – you’re taking a strong and solid step toward your goal. Once your eating is under control, the other goals will fall in place.
- Get past your sugar addiction with qualified help and a proven system.
Everyone has ideas on how to stop sugar cravings and end sugar addiction. Some of them are almost ridiculous. With the right help, it’s a straightforward process. With the wrong advice, it can be ineffective, even agonizingly difficult. Find a solid system.
Anthony Robbins said, “Knowledge is potential power. Implementation is power.” Nutrition coaching from a professional who understands sugar problems completely is implementation on steroids!
I use ordinary foods to help you change brain chemistry and hormones so you can get better results from your workouts, lose the weight you want to lose, transform your health, end your mood issues, and even more.
Go from struggling to feeling empowered, confident, and great about yourself. To take your next success steps, visit LastResortNutrition and grab your free Help Me Crush Sugar consult. Discover how easy this can be!
Brought to you by Dr. Joan Kent, best-selling author of Stronger Than Sugar.
