I did a search on "food addiction" and found some sites... I found some info that I found useful, even though I don't plan on buying the book. I think this revulsion theory would work. Warning, gross out ahead!!
"Imagine a dead animal at the side of the road crawling with thousands of white maggots. The image of maggot-ridden road kill will effectively stop you from eating a hamburger or anything else you were thinking of munching on.
Yuck power can shock you back to reality. Overeating greasy, salty, chemical-laden food is not normal. TV advertisers have associated toxic food with fun and enjoyment. We are told that we deserve it. Meanwhile, the followers of this golden message are riddled with disease from the effect of this modern-day diet. Even in the face of illness, we still associate salt, sugar and fat-filled foods with a pleasure that we deserve.
As a cure for emptiness, the pleasure of food can become drug-like in how it affects our thinking. It becomes distorted. We become obsessed with pleasure. Like an addict, we become fixed on that pleasure and forget the harmful effects. Pleasure becomes our god — a god who trades moments of comfort for control of our lives. We dance to its urges like puppets on a string. It’s a dance of death. Pimples, embarrassing gas, obesity, bloating and disease are signs on the road to oblivion. It is time to turn around.
Stuck on Replay
The closer we are to receiving pleasure, the more we think of it. We remember the pleasure and we want it again. We remember the enjoyment, and forget the negative effects.
When we want pleasure, we replay the best part of the experience. We build anticipation by remembering the pleasure over and over again, like listening to a favorite song without playing the rest of the tape. We rarely play the tape to the end. Who wants to see all the images of depression, sickness, obesity, guilt and all the other fun stuff that goes with indulgence?
When a drug addict thinks about a drug, he remembers the rush. Reliving the experience of pleasure builds anticipation. As he focuses on the rush, the more the anticipation increases the desire for pleasure. He ignores the loss of money and health, the pain of withdrawals, jail and all the negative consequences associated with drugs. Drug addicts and alcoholics have pleasure-centered thinking. If they forced themselves to look at the entire picture, they would not be using drugs.
We do the same with food. We become fixed on the pleasure. Instead, we need to force ourselves to look at the consequences of overindulging: greasy skin, pimples, cavities, rolls of ugly fat, and disease-rotted flesh from a body overloaded with food additives. Go ahead, have another piece of cake.
What Do You Really Want
Do you really want to eat junk food? An honest answer is ‘no’. But you have come to believe that 30 seconds of taste is really what you want. But that is a lie. Infatuation is to love an image. Addiction is to love an illusion. It is an illusion to think that a chocolate bar will satisfy you when, immediately afterward, you will feel unsatisfied.
Get rid of the illusion. It is 30 seconds of high-calorie, health-destroying taste pleasure that you don't need. If you think of the reasons why you hate chocolate bars, you will not eat them.
We try to fight the battle of compulsive eating during the moments just before eating, but that is the least effective time to fight. You need to fight the battle when you are walking, sitting or waiting in line. Ask yourself, what do you really want? Do you really want to be a chocolate eater? You need to go over the reasons for quitting chocolate again and again until it enters the subconscious. If you do this mental work, the next time you are offered a chocolate bar you will say "NO" without thinking. If you ask yourself why you said no, you would answer, "I just don't like them."
Revulsion Power
Remember the restaurant vegetable soup with the 4-inch long hair hanging off it? And what about the pizza? The black thing with legs didn't taste like an anchovy! Although bugs are naturally crunchy and high in protein, finding one in your food takes all the fun out of eating.
The interesting thing about the effect of revulsion is that it can be created and amplified to the point of nausea at will. Try it a few times. The first time you may have to think intently of the road kill or a hair in your soup, but after a few tries you will be able to create the effect of nausea at will.
The nausea effect is a powerful tool to help you stop overeating. It will shut off the pleasure tape and give you time to refocus on what you really want. It will cause you to jump out of the obsession cycle and give you a chance to look at the importance of your goals.
You can use the revulsion technique to stop overeating. Cultivate the feeling of revulsion and say to yourself "I don't feel like having any more food." Leave the food area and get moving. No battle of will, no fighting obsession, just one second of feeling nausea and off you go. Why wrestle with your thoughts when a simple technique will work? Feeling good about being disciplined will far outweigh the few seconds of feeling bad.
Here is an example of using revulsion. The church had decided to have donuts and coffee after the service. Dozens of donuts of every type were being laid out. During the service, I started thinking of the chocolate-covered ones with gooey cream filling. Halfway through the service, I wanted a donut. I can't remember the sermon, but I sure remembered which tray the chocolate donuts were on. It became a battle of will. Emotions were escalating. Now I really wanted a donut. "Hey, I'll try the revulsion thing. I'll just do it and hope it works.
Donuts . . . toxic oil, white flour, salt, sugar, no nutrition; it’s probably been in a five-gallon bucket for five months before they made it. Donuts give me headaches and make me feel awful." Then I created a feeling of revulsion and thought of the donut. I did it twice, then listened to the sermon. I never ate one donut. I was amazed that it was so easy.
Creating revulsion is simple. After a while, you will be able to create the feeling of revulsion quickly and easily. Practice using it. Open the refrigerator door, create revulsion then do something else. Use it when you are battling the munchies or getting past the bakery section of the grocery store. Use it several times a day, for two or three days and it will become a powerful tool in controlling compulsive eating.
Revulsion can work on bad habits. Repeat the habit, then create the revulsion. It works on obsessive love. Create the repulsion as strong as possible, then visualize the person you are obsessed with. It works on depression caused by loss. For example, you were to buy an amazing house but the deal fell through. You can become depressed for days because you lost something special to you or erase the desire from your mind by thinking about the house, ridden with termites, with a leaky roof caving in. The feeling of loss will evaporate as you visualize the dilapidated house while creating a feeling of revulsion and thinking of all the negatives about the house. Becoming thankful that you didn't buy it is to put the loss behind you.
When to Use Repulsion
When you are not hungry and you are thinking about food.
When you are overeating.
While visualizing the foods you are trying to quit.
To help deal with loss.
Exceptionally-Revolting Thoughts:
Donuts: Fat, salt, white flour and sugar. The hole is the most nutritious part.
French fries: Sponges dripping with 14-day-old grease.
Cereal: Styrofoam with artificial flavor.
Margarine: Spreadable plastic.
White bread: Great for colon cancer.
Bacon: Pig fat to human fat.
Coke: Teeth-dissolving and stomach-dissolving fluid.
Milk: A glass of animal fat sucked from a cow udder. (50% of its calories are fat.)
Use revulsion to reaffirm your desire to eat healthier. Imagine yourself in the chair watching TV and gorging on junk food. See yourself getting fatter and fatter. You are getting sick. A tumor is developing. Your arteries are clogging with fat and sticky cholesterol. You have diabetes from eating too much sugar. Your colon has a tumor bulging from it, and you need a colostomy. Imagine a fat, wrinkled, sick person on his deathbed. It is you. After that, be thankful that you have made the decision to eat nutritiously. Feel good about what you have accomplished. Imagine yourself eating healthy and feeling great.
This is a really good idea. Reminds me of being unable to eat certain foods 3 years later because i had a bad vomiting experience with them during pregnancy. (never again, cocoa krispies. never again)
I also associate pizza (at least the delivery kind) with grease seeping from all my pores. If you don't eat it for several months, and then eat 3 pieces, you feel absolutely disgusting. I remind myself of that feeling any time I think I might like to eat something greasy.
Wow. Thanks for sharing that. I tried something like that before with the whole maggot thing. It worked when I consciously thought of that image, but, there were always those times that I didn't want to stop myself from eating, so I gradually stopped I guess. I need to get back to this sort of thinking though. I'd much rather choose healthful things than to eat crap!
Yep. Totally agree! Our eyes were opened to this concept a couple years ago watching a british show called "You Are What You Eat" w. Doctor Gillian McKeith. She would take the person's foods consumed in week & lay it all out on a table - disgusting - processed & junk foods have no color, just brown & yellow and then pull the cover off of another table with fruits, vegs, whole grains - absolutely beautiful & so 'alive' looking!
My favorite (& most disgusting visual image that has stuck w. me) is when the person loved sausages, hot dogs, baloney, she took the cover off of a container of pig snouts, animal ears w. hair on them, intestines, garbage meats & then said that this is what sausages & hot dogs are made of!!!! Gross!!!!
She now has a new show called "Supersize vs. Superskinny" where she swaps people's meals to fatten-up the superskinny & slim-down the supersized. Anyways, at one point she puts the week's food in a giant see-through tube - like a really disgusting looking milkshake - same thing, brown, yellow & fatty!!
Changes to our eating habits, starting small or big, are a good thing! Whatever works helps!
The images don't really seem to work for me; or i don't try hard enough. I think I just can't imagine all the details. I should Google gross images to get all the details into my head and then try agin!
Paul McKenna teaches a technique similar to this also.
If you're craving one of your favorite foods, imagine it covered with something that's totally disgusting-like maggots, worms, hair, spit, etc..
as you do this, you press your thumb and middle finger together on your left hand. After you've done it enough, it gets to where when you press your fingers together, you get that gross out feeling about the food.
This worked for me, but I've quit using it for some reason.
I need to start again
Location: Louisville, KY (though really I'm a Michigander)
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Another thing is to imagine what may have happened to that food before it ended up in front of you. Anyone who's ever worked fast food knows what I'm talking about. How old the grease can be, how the teenagers don't care enough to wash their hands, or don't care enough to throw away food that's fallen on the floor. You can think this way about candy or any other food. You don't know where it's been in the factory. Not all factories are up to code, all the time. Maybe they had a rat problem one month, and they got into the food. Think about all the nasty things it may have been through, and you won't want to eat whatever it is anymore.
I totally agree with you Athendta! We avoid going to restaurants unless we know the owners. A general rule of thumb is if the bathrooms aren't clean, then the kitchen definitely is not! Has anyone ever watched "Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares"? It's quite the eye opener.
As well, we try to buy locally prepared meat (pref. organic, kosher butchered) - thankfully, living in a small town, we can do that!
Revulsion theory work for anyone??
