I often write about emotional eating here at Fearless Fat Loss, in addition to writing about sugar addiction. I write about these topics because they have been my experience, and based on my experience, I’ve felt that the whole topic of food and weight are complex issues. I’ve felt that weight loss is a complex issue because I can’t tell you that there is only one reason that I’m overweight. (Update 2013: Read my updated story here.) I’ve felt that it’s a combination of emotional eating, food addiction (not all food, but mainly sugar addiction), negative thinking, and the processed and fast food environment that is considered to be “normal”.

Update 2013: Note the date on this article, 11/8/2007. This is an old article that I wrote 6 years ago. At that time I had the thought that I had a sugar addiction and today it’s not true. Nor am I overweight today, which is all due to my weight loss mindset. Fact:  90% of your problems with food and your weight are due to your Mindset. Only 10% are about how you eat and exercise.

Find out more by grabbing my FREE 5-Day E-course to discover the answer to, “Is Your Mindset Fit or F.A.T.?“. Get it while it’s still available!

Well, what if there really isn’t any such thing as emotional eating, and what if negative thinking can be spurred on by what you eat? What if all of this (overweight, compulsive eating, and what we think is emotional eating), all comes down to  the food that we are eating? What if by just eliminating the addictive ingredients from your diet (the  6 Week Body Makeover will do that for you), those ingredients and foods that cause you to overeat, you are able to solve your issues of emotional eating?

Many times I’ve recommended the book Sugar Blues by William Dufty to you. It’s a must read if you want to understand why you can’t stop with just one cookie, piece of cake, piece of bread, anything made with refined sugar. Sugar Blues is all about the wonderful world of refined sugar, the world of disease, brain fog, and why you eat uncontrollably. Just like we learned in my binge eating survey, you’re not out there binging on plain broccoli, but instead are binging on foods that contain refined sugar.

There’s another book that I also recommend you read, a book that cites Sugar Blues along with many other books I’ve read, and that is Sugar Shock! by Connie Bennett and Stephen T. Sinatra. There is a great deal of excellent information in the book, however a point I want to highlight is the topic of what you eat determines how much you eat. In fact, the food manufacturers know exactly what they are doing: they have created foods that are highly palatable, foods that you keep going back for, and foods that you cannot help but overeat on.

A British scientist, Robert Matthews, quoted in Sugar Shock! states, “They officially deny it, but food-industry researchers told me they now fear that they’ve created foods that undermine the body’s natural abilities to control food intake”, which has helped create today’ obesity epidemic. These foods are high in refined sugar, taste great, and bring in billions of dollars each year for their manufacturers.

Additionally, Dr. Neal Barnhard (author of Breaking the Food Seduction: The Hidden Reasons Behind Food Cravings—And 7 Steps to End Them Naturally) comments in Sugar Shock! about how so many people think they are emotional eaters because of childhood trauma, weak willpower, or an oral personality. He states that this is “Nonsense; Certain foods simply have physical properties that cause them to be addictive, more so than other foods”.

There is a great deal of more information in Sugar Shock!, but what I want to impress upon you in this post is this possibility: what if you get off the sugar (which includes not only the many forms of refined sugar, but also simple, refined carbs), and then you can actually release your emotional eating? Actually, this was the outcome of my experiment when I banned all refined sugar from my diet. I can attest to the fact that getting off of sugar leads to a life of peace from the sugar cravings, as well as a release from overeating.

I highly recommend picking up a copy of each of these books. I believe that there are more people who are addicted to refined sugar that aren’t; the human body just isn’t built to be immune to this chemical, the chemical of tasty, refined, sugar. But you know what that means if you’re addicted to sugar and just can’t stop eating? It means that it’s not your fault, it’s just the chemical reaction that your body is having to that addictive chemical, those innocent looking white crystals, and once you get off of the sugar, you’ll see a whole new world open up to you.