Episode 21 Transcript

Hello there. Welcome to episode 21 of the Fierce Fatty podcast. I'm your host, Victoria Welsby and in today's episode we're talking about whether you can be addicted to food and or to sugar. Juicy stuff. Let's do it.


You're listening to the Fierce Fatty podcast. I'm Victoria Welsby TEDx speaker, bestselling author and fat activist. I have transformed my life from hating my body with desperately low self esteem to being a courageous and confident first fatty who loves every inch of this jellied society teaches us living in a fat body is bad. But what if we spent less time, money, and energy on the pursuit of thinness and instead focused on the things that actually matter. Like if pineapple on pizza should be outlawed or if the mullet was the greatest haircut of the 20th century. So how do you stop a negative beliefs about your fat body controlling your life? It's the Fierce Fatty podcast. Let's begin.


Welcome to spring. So exciting. Well, it depends where in the world you are. It might not be spring yet if the clock's gone backwards or forwards, wherever you are. Something I realized is that US the clocks change at a different time from the UK and so the US in the beginning of March, the clocks go forward, backwards, forward, forward, forward. The clocks go forward at the beginning of the March and the UK and Ireland and presumably a lot of the rest of Europe don't do it until the end of March. How freaking annoying is that if you talk to people internationally like I do. And you didn't realize that, like I didn't realize that before someone messaged me and was like, Oh Hey, why is our appointment showing the wrong time on my calendar? And I was like, it's not, it's the right time and then magic worked out. But the clocks change at different times and the world needs to get on time schedule, and get rid of this daylight savings malarkey.


And just everyone got on the same page. Okay. In Ireland where am I live in rural Ireland as you know. And next door is my uncle, my uncle's farm. It was the family farm and my granddad's farm and he died. And now my uncle farms it and there are sheep being born little baby lambs. Oh my gosh, it's so cute. And I went round, when I say went round that she like 20 steps away. So you feed the lambs and it's so cute because some of the lambs, sometimes they have to be they're known as pet lambs because they have to be hand fed because their mom isn't producing milk. And so the mom, the milk hasn't dropped and so the mom will go off into the field and then the baby lambs will be fed by hand. And so I went to feed some of the baby lambs and eventually there'll be adopted by other moms whose milk have dropped. But at that point they were the first lambs. And so they had to wait until more lambs were born and then they would be adopted out into a litter of other lambs. Because sheep normally have one, two or three lambs. And so if a mama sheep has one lamb, then an orphan sheep will go and have go and hang with the other lamb and join their family.


So here we go. A little bit of lamb farming knowledge, therefore you, which is obviously very unbolted and why you're listening to today's podcast or rather you are listening because this really interesting question of do you think about food all the time? Can you be addicted to food? Can you be addicted to sugar? Are you thinking about it all the time? Are you counting down the minutes until you can eat? Are you really focused on sugar and getting sugar into you and you feel really out of control? Then this episode is going to be really interesting for you and even not and you don't know if he can be addicted to food and sugar then listen on in. Cause I got some breaking down of this stuff for you to see if we can be on the same page......


Now I used to feel and believe that I was addicted to food and the reason for that was very logical. And a totally right thing to conclude from my brain, my thoughts, my thinking and my behavior. I would wake up in the morning and the first thing that I would think about is food. I'd think, yes, I'm allowed to eat. I would be like, Oh my God, it's breakfast time. How exciting I can eat something. And then when breakfast was over, I'd be like, okay, it's X amount of hours and minutes until lunch time where I'm allowed to eat again and then it be counted down. What's for dinner? Oh my gosh, can I sneak some food? Where can I get food from? I want all these types of food and I would hide food and this type of behavior and this type of feeling and thinking started when I was very young.


And so I truly believed that there was something deeply flawed about me because I was behaving like this and I would see other people with food and they would just be behaving like normal, quote unquote normal people. So there was something wrong with me, right? There was something wrong with my brain. And I have addiction in my family. So my dad was an alcoholic, so I saw what addiction type behaviors looked like and the kind of lying and sneaking around and spending your money on the substance and all that type of stuff. At one point I thought it would be a really good idea for me to go to overeat anonymous if I wanted to cure this addiction that I had to food. But I was too scared and I was just like, Oh no, you know, whatever, for whatever reason I didn't but and I'm so pleased I didn't because it would have only made me even more disordered around food.


And so what was going on there and if you have experienced this, if you are experiencing this obsession with food, this just needing it, just wanting it, desiring it, certain types of food have this way over you and you say things like, Oh, don't leave that around me. I'll eat it all up. Or you can't leave any biscuits in the cupboard with me around cause I lead them. If you are experienced in those types of things, this is what is happening. So I call it the Diet Land Swing, the diet land swing. So I want you to imagine a swing, a swing that you just swing on. You know, a swing like in the playground when you restrict and restriction is denying yourself certain things, whether it be one food group, eating less food on a whole mentally or physically denying yourself any type of restriction.


What you're doing in that moment is you're pulling the swing back as far as possible. And the more you restrict, the higher you're pulling that swing back. Now you cannot hold that swing up like that forever. It is physically impossible. I'll tell you why in a second. And so what happens when you let go of that swing is the natural thing to happen is it swings to the other side. And the other side is where you will binge, where you will feel out of control around. And that other side feels very scary. It feels very, you know, your behavior is upsetting you. It's upsetting to be in that place where you are bingeing, where you're allowing yourself food. Now, you might physically be allowing yourself certain food, but you're not necessarily emotionally allowing yourself because you're beating yourself up. And so the reaction from that and the higher the swing, one way of restriction means the higher the swing into bingeing.


And when you're at the very peak of the bingeing, there's only one way to go. And that's back into restriction. And this cycle of restriction binge will continue forever for as long as you're pulling up that swing into restriction. Now as soon as you stop pulling it back up and putting yourself on a diet saying, Oh, I mustn't eat the thing, I mustn't do this, I must not eat past this time, or whatever it is that you've decided that you shouldn't do or should do. It's making the swing higher. But as soon as you stopped doing that stuff, the swing loses its momentum. Now it's not immediately it'll lose its momentum because that's not the way swings work. It will slowly, you know, go into binge and then it will slow down a little bit of restriction because you still might be mentally restricting and slowly or rest in the middle. And the middle is food neutrality. The middle is where you would be intuitive eat, and that is what quote unquote normal is. I say quote unquote because you know who's normal, what's normal is all made up. And so that is what is happening in a analogy sense. When you feel like you are addicted to food now are you actually addicted to food? Well, maybe, if you see it depends what you think addiction is.


So addiction, let me give you the definition. According to Wikipedia, addiction is a brain disorder characterized by compulsive engagement in rewarding stimuli despite adverse consequences. Okay, let me read it again. Got into Wikipedia, addiction is a brain disorder characterized by compulsive engagement in rewarding stimuli despite adverse consequences. Okay, so are you addicted to food? My response is no. The way that I view what addiction is, because for many reasons I'm going to go into more in a second. You need to eat. So you might say with that definition, yeah I need to eat but I'm still addicted to it. Well what adverse consequences would you be experiencing from this food addiction that you perceive yourself to have? What are those adverse consequences? Are they actually as adverse as you think? Are they something that you have maybe made up something that you have been taught, which is not necessarily based in reality?


And think of that in comparison to another rewarding stimuli that has adverse consequences and what those adverse consequences look like. They look very different now. There is a lot that is going on in your body when you restrict. So when you are on a diet or any type of restriction, and I want to tell you what they are so you understand more that there is a chemical process that is happening in your brain, in your body, but is making you feel like this is even more extreme. This is a big problem for you. That this is an addiction. And once we understand that, we can say, okay, this is why I feel so out of control. So restriction makes you fixate on food. It makes food taste more delicious. So that food type, you know, whatever food is your craving, as soon as you put it in your mouth, things are happening in your brain to make that food tastes like the best fucking thing that anyone has ever created, right?


Think about when you're really, really hungry and someone puts food in front of you and you're just like, Oh my God, LA, LA, LA, LA, I need it. I need it, right? Your brain needs to help you increase those feelings of the food being delicious because it wants you to eat more. Because what is happening when you are restricting and your body is losing weight is in starvation mode. It doesn't know that you're just, you know, trying to lose five pounds or 50 pounds or whatever, and then you'll stop and then you'll eat .And again, all it knows is you have less fuel than your body needs and your body is losing weight. And so your body is like, fuck no, I don't like this. So it makes food taste more delicious. It makes food smell more delicious. And it grabs onto the calories that you consume with the food that you consume and it makes you hold onto those calories.


And another thing it does is it increases our appetite. So the hormones that make us feel hungry are increased. So that hormone one of them is ghrelin. So ghrelin is something that is made in the stomach and it will stimulate hunger by going to the brain and increasing the activity of the hunger causing nerve cells and reducing the activity of hunger inhibiting cells. So when you eat and your stomach becomes empty, the release of ghrelin increases. So ghrelin makes us feel hungry and when we're dieting, we have more ghrelin.


Now, another hormone is leptin. Leptin is an appetite suppressing hormone. So when you have had enough food, your body will release leptin to say, I'm cool. That's enough. Thank you. And other things are going on when you, when you have enough food. But leptin is released and it says, we've got enough storage here. It's like, you know, the light on your car that says we've got enough y'all. And so leptin is like, we're cool, we've got enough. Leptin goes down and so you feel more hungry and then when you eat, you are less satiated. You don't feel full. So that's what's happening when you restrict. Now, would that not drive you bananas? Would that not make you feel like something is wrong? You are just so fucking all the time. And when you eat, you don't feel as satiated as something that you might eat before maybe whatever it is you might have for dinner before you would have the same amount and feel satiated. Whereas now you're eating the same amount and you don't, and you have more food and you just don't feel satiated and you're just, you know, all these other things going on.


Other things that go on your metabolism slows down. So there is an incredible article from the New York times. I'm going to link to it in the show notes about that TV show, The Biggest Loser. I might have mentioned this before, but I'm gonna read a quote about what happens to your metabolism. So this is a quote from the article, the New York times article about the biggest loser which I will link to in the show notes. Kevin Hall, a scientist as a federal research center who admits to a weakness reality TV as we all do had the idea to follow the Biggest Loser contestants for six years. After that Victoria's night, the Victoria's night, I think he's talking about his watching the finale. The project was the first to measure what happened to people over as long as six years after they had lost large amounts of weight with intensive diet and exercise, the results of researchers said were stunning. They showed just how hard the body fights back against weight loss. It is frightening and amazing. said Dr. Hall, an expert on metabolism at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney diseases, which is part of the National Institute of Health. I am just blown away. It has to do with resting metabolism, which determines how many calories a person burns when at rest. When the show began, the contestants though fat had judgment, had normal metabolisms for their size, meaning they were burning a normal number of calories for people off their weight. When it ended, their metabolisms had slowed radically and their bodies were not burning enough calories to maintain their thinner sizes. Researchers knew that just about anyone who deliberately loses weight, even if they started quote unquote normal weight or even quote unquote underweight, will have a slower metabolism when the diet ends. So they were not surprised to see that the biggest loser contestants had slow metabolisms when the show ended.


What shocked the researchers was what happened next. As the years went by and the number on the scale climb, the contestants metabolisms did not recover. They became even slower and the pounds kept piling on. It was as if their bodies were intensifying their effort to put the contestants to pull the contestants back to the original weight. So that is an excerpt from the article in the New York times about the biggest loser. Content warning there. There are O words and there is a little bit of a judgment in regards to size. There was a bit in there where I said fat, but they actually use an O word. But it's very, very interesting. Anyway, so with a slow metabolism, other things happen too.


Another thing is that your muscle mass decreases and your fat mass increases because muscle uses more energy. And we don't need our burning body to be burning energy if we are starving, right? Your body is trying to keep you alive and so it's not like, right, okay, let's burn some more energy so that we burn more calories and then we die quicker. We need to be burning less energy because we are literally starving. And because of that as well, you do not want to move your body. And so on top of that, you will feel like you're lazy because you do not have a massive desire to go out and run a marathon because your body's like, listen up. Hey, hello, we're dying. Just have a rest, grab a rest, eat something. Oh my God. If you eat something, then I'm gonna just, you know, I'm gonna love it. Please. and then you're, you know, if you're forcing yourself to go out and you're like, why do I, why don't I want to do it? It's so hard for me to do it. Well, it's because your body is begging you to stop with this regime. So I was addicted to food in the same way that I am addicted to breathing. I was addicted to food and the same way I'm addicted to drinking, I'm the same way. I am addicted to sleeping the same way I am addicted to doing a poop, just I can't stop myself every day all I'm doing is breathing in and out all the time. And no matter what I do, I can't stop myself and if I try and hold my breath for as long as possible, when I eventually have to breathe again, I take a massive gasp. And that is what's happening is when you restrict yourself, it's like you're holding your breath and it can't go on forever. It just simply cannot.


And then you take a big gasp and that big gasp is that addictive type behaviors that binge, that eating the foods that you've decided are bad. And when you're holding your breath, when you're getting to that point where you're just like, I need to breathe, I need to breathe. All you're thinking about is breathing, right? You're not thinking about what to, you know, what to watch on Netflix later. You're thinking about breathing because if you don't, then you'll die. And so you're thinking about food so much because if you don't, then you'll die. You don't eat, you will die. So all of that is enough to make you feel a rational, desperate and unbalanced and have the feeling that you are addicted to food. So you might want to say, yeah, I'm addicted to food because there's negative consequences. If I eat food because if I eat food then I get fat.


Or if I eat food, some other consequences. And that is something for you to explore in regards to fatphobia because is it a negative consequence if you happen to put on a little bit of weight or a lot of weight? Is it, is, does that make you a bad person? What's going on there? So let's talk about sugar because you might say, okay well food, okay whatever I get that we need to eat food but sugar, I am definitely addicted to sugar. Sugar, don't leave me around. Sugar, don't leave me around chocolate cause I'm just going to eat it all. I'm just crave it all the time. So if that's you, let's talk about that. Now studies have shown no conclusive evidence when looking at human brain that sugar is addictive to humans. There is no scientific evidence what so ever. People love in the diet world saying and pathologizing people by saying you have a sugar addiction.


You don't, you don't have a sugar addiction unless there's some very, very rare medical case at cases where something very strange is going on. You don't have a sugar addiction. So I mentioned this before, what behaviors of addicts, actual addicts what behaviors do they display? Are you displaying the same behaviors with addicts? So how many times have they had on that show intervention? You know, intervention when they, where they get addicts and the whole family comes around and say, if you don't change your life, then we're all going to leave you and blah, blah, blah. How many times have you seen someone on there with a sugar addiction? Never. Never. Right? Because suppose that sugar addicts don't act in the same way as people who are actual addicts, right? You're not like, Oh my God, I just need one more hit of sugar.


And if I don't get another hit or sugar, then I'm going to rob my grandma. I'm going to you know, take money from my mom's purse. I am going to destroy my life in the search of sugar. I'm going to probably lose my job because all I do all day long is eat sugar. My bag is filled with hundreds of pounds of pure sugar and I go searching for sugar late at night. And you might go searching for like chocolate late at night because you might want some and this behavior like, Oh my God, I'm such an addict because I'm going late at night shopping to get some chocolate. But it's not the same at all. Right? What happens to addicts if the behavior goes, uncheck, they hit rock bottom, they lose their families, they lose their jobs, they lose their homes.


They end up in terrible situation and of course it's absolutely not their fault. That's just what happens, right? And not always, sometimes I was functioning addicts. But you know, you're not a functioning sugar addict. And so if you were really addicted to sugar, you would be addicted to sugar in any way that it came, right? You would be guzzling bananas left, right and center because bananas have sugar. You'd be searching out ketchup cause ketchup has sugar and you'd be squatting ketchup in your mouth, bathing and ketchup. You'd be like, Oh my fucking God, mangoes, Oh, mangoes, Oh, can't get enough of mangoes and you know, lusting after them and being like mangoes, mangoes. What about like unknown ice tea? Even like, Oh my God, ice tea. I said, but are you or are you feeling like you are addicted to the foods that you have decided are bad?


That happened to have sugar. And chocolate is an example because a lot of times people will like, you know, say they're addicted to chocolate. Are you behaving indiscriminately? Any type of sugar? Because if you were really a sugar addict, you empty your cupboards for every single thing that had sugar in and would consume it until there was no sugar left in the house in any way, shape or form. But you know, addicts alcoholics will often drink mouthwash because they're addicted. And so they know where they can find alcohol in any form and because you're not addicted to sugar, you don't engage in that behavior.


So you don't necessarily need to drugs, right? So people who or alcohol or other substances that you might be addicted to, you don't need that to survive unless you have like a prescription. But I mean like the abuse of substances, you do need sugar. Your brain needs sugar to function glucose, a form of sugar is the number one source of energy for every single cell in your body. If you don't have sugar, you will die, okay? And the less sugar that you eat, the more you crave it. The fact that you're denying yourself sugar is the reason why you want it so much. Symptoms of addiction increase with more access to the substance you're addicted to. So if you are addicted to a substance, let's say a drug, the more you have, the more addicted, the more your life spirals out of control.


But the thing is with sugar symptoms of sugar addiction, decrease and disappear with access to more sugar. Okay? So if you allow yourself sugar and you allow yourself sugar in any way that you wanted in any amounts, of course at the beginning you're going to be like, Oh my God, sugar and just sugar everything. And in whatever way you want sugar, you're going to just be just having so much of it and you're going to like, see, I knew it, I'm addicted. But it's that swing again so you are going from a place of deep restriction to letting let in that swing go when you're going to go swing and the other direction where you will you binge, where you'll eat a lot of the food. But as long as you're not pulling yourself back with the judgment that you have a sugar addiction and are allow yourself all of the foods that you need, that you need, you need these foods, then slowly you become to a place of neutrality where you might, you know, really enjoy things that have sugar but you don't feel out of control.

Speaker 1: (31:54)
So in conclusion, no, you are not addicted to food unless the way that you define addiction, but then you're also addicted to having a pass. You're also addicted to sleeping. You're big sleep addict. You're also addicted to breathing. And there's no scientific evidence to show that sugar addiction is real. It doesn't mimic any other type of addiction. You need sugar to live and if you have any doubt about it, I just think about just change any type of substance that people do get addicted to and change it with sugar and you're just like, okay, it's ridiculous. People are not like, Oh my God, give me one more sugar. You know, people are not going to jail because the trying to get sugar, you know, people are not out on the street selling sugar even though some health authorities are like, we should ban sugar and we should only let you know, they have ridiculous ideas about only letting sugar being in the back of the store and all shit like that.


Oh my God. So, maddening, which is just going to make people think that they're more out of control with food and any type of substance. So, you know when I say substance, I mean chemical, which is everything is a chemical, you know, any type of food stuff. Imagine if they did that. Imagine if all of a sudden we decided, I don't know, apples, apples were elicit. Oh my God, we're all just so obsessed with apples. And then really like, we're going to keep apples at the back of the store or you can only buy a certain amount of apples or apples attacks super heavily. And people are like, Oh my God, I just don't leave me around an apple cause I'll just eat all of the apples soon to stop being like, Oh yeah, apples are delicious. Oh, maybe I'll go and see what apple selection they've got and when someone brings an apple into the house, you're like, Oh, they've got an apple. Oh my smells so good. Oh, right. It just normal by human behavior. The things that we can't have, we're telling ourselves, we kind of have, we so desperately want, like when I had braces, I couldn't buy into an Apple and the whole time I was just like, Oh, I can't wait to buy into an Apple. And that was the first thing I did when I got my braces off was a 15 year old was bite into a big, juicy apple. And then I was like, eh. And that's another thing is when you start allowing yourself all of these foods, because all of those chemical things that are happening in your body and your body is no longer needing to force you to eat and force you to stop moving, you'll start eating food and you be like, Oh, this wasn't as good as I remembered. How disappointing. Oh, I used to always deny myself this thing and it's pretty rare, you know?


Yeah. So, Hey, I haven't told you they seen a good few podcasts, but if you leave me a review on Stitcher, on Apple podcasts when I get back to North America, I'm gonna perch the show on Google. Google podcasts part is a Google podcast, but you can't access it in Europe. I didn't know this anyway, so if you're thinking I want to get onto Google, I don't know if Google do reviews anyway. But anyway, all of that rambling for me to say, leave me a review before you submit the review. Take a screenshot and email me victoria@fiercefatty.com and I will send you a digital and audio version of my bestselling book called Fierce Fatty: Love Your Body and Live Like the Queen You Already Are, which is great. And if you don't want the book and you just want to leave a review, then you get good fatty kudos points. You get a good deed, good deed points in your brain, in your life.


Hey, there's a song I'm really digging at the moment. I'm gonna play a snippet for you. It's called Tonight You Belong to Me and the version that I really like is Patience and Prudence from like 1950s. So really super sweet song. I think it might be big on Tiktok, I heard in someone's Instagram story. They were like dancing to it and I was like, Oh, that's a really pretty song. And then I found it and I've been just been listened to it like for 50,000 times and then the last two weeks so I'll leave a link to that song so you can get, if you want some, you know, old, it was actually originally written in like the 20s, and it's been covered a few times and there's been a recent cover for like falling asleep baby songs, but it's really sweet song. Yeah. So I check it out. I like it.


Yeah. So remember if you have a question that you want me to answer in the show, then in the show notes that there will be a link for you to submit your question and you can do it anonymously or you can tell me your name. And the questions which are most relevant to the show, I will absolutely answer for you because yeah, you, you'll ask some great questions and some questions, which are they might be just more suggestions and so then I will make a show out of your suggestions as well. So, yes. Okay, well, thanks for hanging out with me today. It was amazing, and I will see you next time on the Fierce Fatty podcast. Good bye.