Professional help?

[Sarah69]

I have posted before about my serious chocolate addiction. It is getting very out of hand I’m eating at least 2 packets of chocolate (109g) a day that’s without biscuits and cakes as well. I rarely eat savoury food. I had a roast on Sunday and twice this week I’ve eaten spaghetti bolognaise and this is very rare to eat so much in 1 week. At my last hospital appointment my hba1c was 70 something but no doubt it will be more now. The dr I saw wasn’t much help just said to eat the same amount of carbs with each meal which is fine but I don’t eat regular meals and I told her that. She said to came again in a year but I have rung in to get an appointment as I feel I’ve just been left. I really need serious help to try and get over this chocolate addiction but I don’t know how or where? Please don’t say don’t buy it or buy a small amount and spread it out, that just doesn’t work. Unless I can access something free I can’t afford to pay for anything.

 

[TheSecretCarbAddict]

Food addiction hasn't yet been officially recognised as a medical condition despite it being very real to those who suffer from it. This means that there is no real help available via NHS. For me, putting addiction label to my experience was very powerful as it meant I could look at addiction treatments more generally to find ways to help myself. For me, it was a process of identifying my trigger foods and then working towards abstinence one day at a time. It is hard, and the focus on recovery never stops. There are some useful resources online - check out Vera Tarman and her Food Junkies podcast. If you need free support, I'd check if you have a local Overeaters Anonymous group available. I have some relatively nearby groups, and some of them also offer online meetings. phcuk.org have some resources that might be helpful.

 

[TheSecretCarbAddict]

PHCUK have changed links on their website recently to point Liberate project to its new website / paid course, but was able to still find these useful resources:
https://phcuk.org/liberate/quiz/ - A short quiz to get a view on the level of your food addiction.
https://phcuk.org/liberate/resources/ - This page provides a good summary of information found in Dr Jen Unwin's book Fork in the Road
https://www.oagb.org.uk/ - Overeaters Anonymous - there is a search function to locate your nearest group
https://www.foodjunkiespodcast.com/ - Food Junkies Podcast by Vera Tarman and others.
https://heyzine.com/flip-book/a00ee3aa6c.html - This is from International Food Addiction Consensus Conference - there is work happening to get food addiction recognised, this is consensus on how it could be defined.

 

[TheSecretCarbAddict]

In terms of assessing food addiction there is also a more detailed tool called Yale Food Addiction Scale. You can find some information and downloads here: https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/fastlab/yale-food-addiction-scale/

Apologies for bombarding you with all this information. The topic of food addiction is very close to my heart and felt like a good time to do a brain dump.

I mentioned on another thread that I have signed up to the Liberate food addiction programme and will be reporting back on this when it kicks off end of June. My place has now been confirmed and I have completed Yale Food Addiction Scale survey + a couple more general wellbeing ones as a pre-programme benchmark to measure the impact of the intervention.

 

[mouseee]

For me, it's when I start eating carbs that I find that I'm starting to go further and further into the carby sweet area of eating.
If I can manage to stay off carbs I can usually avoid chocolate and biscuits etc.
Before I was diagnosed I'd scoff as many carby things as possible when I got home from work and just couldn't stop.
I have found that if I have finite amount of something like a small bar of chocolate I am slightly more able to stop. Same with biscuits. A wrapped biscuit is easier for me to stop at one, a packet a nightmare.
I definitely have a carb additiction.

 

[MrsA2]

As well as all the good resources mentioned above
Jen Unwins book Fork in the Road is a good introduction as to why we eat, as well as what we eat.

Home | Fork in the Road | Guide to Low Carb Eating

Welcome to Fork in the Road! A website dedicated to sharing resources and tips on low carb eating. Helping people recover from Sugar Addiction

forkintheroad.co.uk

If you can cope with the evangelism of Americans there are lots of on line courses and podcasts and YouTube videos from the likes of Florence Christopher's at Kick Sugar Coach https://www.rlmedicine.com/ and Michael Collins at Quit Sugar https://sugaraddiction.com/. Both of these run free online seminars at least once a year. They do charge if you want copies of the presentations or to watch them when you want, but are free otherwise.

If you'd prefer a gentler approach try the Australian lady doctors ar Real Life Medicine https://www.rlmedicine.com/. I particularly like their stories of the Woodshed and Driving your own wagon and calling the carb craving "Fluffy" after the dog in Harry Potter.

 

[catinahat]

For me getting rid of my sweet tooth was harder than giving up smoking.
The way I went about it was similar to how I stopped smoking but without any chocolate patches, I don't think there is any real help out there.
I just went cold turkey, stopped everything sweet, no alternatives like artificial sweetener or diet drinks.
Not going to lie, I was miserable for weeks, absolutely nothing tasted right especially drinks like tea and coffee. I really missed my morning cuppa, drank fruit tea instead but it's just not the same. Eventually I started to notice the sweetness in things I never associated with being sweet, tomatoes for example, no wonder people see their bs rise after eating them. Another suprise was coffee, I could actually taste the difference between brands, some are way too bitter, others quite sweet even without sugar.
It's tough but eventually your tastes change, it took a while but even my morning cuppa is back to being my favourite drink of the day.
Thing is I don't know how anyone could help with that unless they followed you around shouting "step away from the cake" It's something only you can do.
If you don't buy it, you can't eat it, there were whole sections of the supermarket's I had to avoid like the plague because biscuits, chocolate cakes and pastries would mysteriously find their way into my trolley.

 

[Le Duan]

I've got to the point where I am mindlessly grabbing a handful of the grandkids sweets and munching on them. I think 'mindlessly' is the key word. Is it more to do with being more mindful, having alternatives or just sheer willpower that helps cut down the intake of sugary items? Any tips? Thanks

 

[Le Duan]

For me getting rid of my sweet tooth was harder than giving up smoking.
The way I went about it was similar to how I stopped smoking but without any chocolate patches, I don't think there is any real help out there.
I just went cold turkey, stopped everything sweet, no alternatives like artificial sweetener or diet drinks.
Not going to lie, I was miserable for weeks, absolutely nothing tasted right especially drinks like tea and coffee. I really missed my morning cuppa, drank fruit tea instead but it's just not the same. Eventually I started to notice the sweetness in things I never associated with being sweet, tomatoes for example, no wonder people see their bs rise after eating them. Another suprise was coffee, I could actually taste the difference between brands, some are way too bitter, others quite sweet even without sugar.
It's tough but eventually your tastes change, it took a while but even my morning cuppa is back to being my favourite drink of the day.
Thing is I don't know how anyone could help with that unless they followed you around shouting "step away from the cake" It's something only you can do.
If you don't buy it, you can't eat it, there were whole sections of the supermarket's I had to avoid like the plague because biscuits, chocolate cakes and pastries would mysteriously find their way into my trolley.

I think I need to do this as well!