Emotional Eating is a Hoax: Part 2

Stop spiking your blood sugar! You have been on a blood sugar roller coaster for far too long. You eat a high sugar meal, which spikes your blood sugar and for a short time, you become hyper-glycemic (high blood sugar).

Then you come down off this high and your body drops into a low blood sugar range called hypo-glycemia. When this happens, your brain freaks out and starts to panic because it needs glucose (sugar) to function and so it starts screaming at you to eat more sugar.

When this happens, you feel terrible and it has nothing to do with emotional eating. You get cranky, feel faint, get headaches and feel like you are going to starve. But take a deep breath, because this is just your brain having a temper tantrum.

Remember when your child threw himself or herself down on the floor and started kicking his or her feet and screaming and crying. It's exactly the same thing. Your brain is throwing a hissy fit. It's behaving like a spoiled child.

However, just like with parenting, each time your child behaves this way, you have a choice as to how you will respond to your child, or in this case, respond to your brain's demand for glucose. Will you give it everything it seems to want, even if it means your child will grow up to be a spoiled rotten brat or will you give that child what he or she needs, which can sometimes be tough love and discipline.

Now, you don't want to completely ignore your brain, like you might a naughty child, but you also don't have to come running and give in to every single demand. If you see hyperphagia for what it is, which is not emotional eating at all, but rather a scientific problem, then you will be able to control your unruly toddler or your unruly brain and as a result you will be able to tackle the largest factor that is keeping you fat.

When your brain gets grumpy because it has dropped into the low glycemic range and begins to throws its daily, sometimes hourly, hissy fit or temper tantrum, you have the choice to give it more sugar or you can choose to give it protein and complex carbohydrates. If you give it more sugar, you just create the conditions for another hissy fit in a couple of hours, when you drop into the low blood sugar range again. If you give it protein and complex carbohydrates, then you will not spike your blood sugar, and you will not create the conditions for another temper tantrum in two or three hours.

You see, the brain does not care where the sugar comes from and all foods have some sugar. Your brain doesn't need a lot to be happy and it doesn't need the sugar to be simple or highly processed. If you give your body some protein or complex carbohydrates, your brain will be just as happy as if you gave it a double fudge, banana split sundae with caramel, nuts and colored sprinkles. Unlike children, your brain, in fact, likes broccoli and spinach.

Can you imagine living with a child, who can't communicate well because he or she is a toddler and having that child throw a temper tantrum every two or three hours every day and every night forever. My guess is that the parent would eventually want to get rid of the child.

The truth is that we don't stand for this with our children, so why do we stand for this with our bodies. Your brain screams for food and you instantly give it more sugar. Two hours go by and it screams again and you give it more sugar. Your brain, just like a defiant child, can be fairly crafty and manipulative, too. Your brain will actually try to make you believe that you will die if you don't get sugar.

Now you understand the bigger picture. Emotional eating and habitual eating are definitely part of the problem, but until we conquer hyperphagia or the brain's regular hissy fits, you can never truly get back control of your health and your life.

To help you understand the difference between emotional eating and insulin resistance a little better, just imagine the child with the terrible behavior again.

The temper tantrums example works well to help describe a growing problem with your pancreas too. Over time, the child's tantrums would have to get more creative or much stronger or much worse to have the same effect on the parent. In other words, the child would have to work harder each time to get the same response from the parent. The parent builds up a resistance to the behavior What may have started as light crying and whimpering, might have grown into extreme whining and eventually became all out screaming, yelling, crying, hitting and kicking - even biting. This same child, as a teenager, would be a scary force to deal with.

The same is true with your pancreas. You have been indulging the sugar cravings for so long that your pancreas must now work harder each time to produce the same amount of insulin and it must produce more insulin each time to deal with the same amount of sugar. That's because your brain has cried wolf so many times that your pancreas doesn't leap off the couch anymore to respond to the temper tantrum. It's like he or she doesn't care anymore what the child does or doesn't do.

This whole time, you've believed you have an emotional eating problem, when you really have a scientific, medical problem. Unfortunately, just like a worn out parent, you now have a worn out pancreas.

I know the information that I have laid out here seems like the situation is beyond your control, but it's not. The good news is that you may not be diabetic yet, instead you might only have gotten as far as Metabolic Syndrome.

Metabolic Syndrome isn't great, but it's not as bad as full on Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus. If you only have Metabolic Syndrome, then, at least, your pancreas still works, a little. Now that you know its probably not emotional eating that's keeping you fat, you still have a chance to reverse the damage. You still have a chance to get your unruly, demanding brain under control and you have a chance to neutralize the free radicals. If you do this, you can stop oxidative stress from getting worse and you can prevent diabetes.

For more information or to read the full article, go to Emotional Eating is a Hoax!

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