Are You Addicted to Carbs?

Thanks to the prevalence of obesity, and the resulting profitability of the weight-loss industry, you're bombarded with advice everywhere you look.  You've tried following some of it, and maybe it worked for a while, but not for long.  I'm dispensing some here too, though this blog isn't primarily about weight loss.  A lot of the advice is remarkably consistent - exercise and watch your calories.  But that doesn't work for you.  Why?

The prevailing theory is simple: you don't have enough willpower.  Me, I get skeptical when I hear about willpower.  It suggests that your body is telling you what it needs, and you need willpower to shut it up or ignore it.  With the important exception of addiction, I think this is a bad idea.

My favorite psychologist likes to say "trust the organism."  You are an amazing organism, and your body is very good at knowing what it needs and letting you know.  Hunger is no exception, and its messages should be heeded.  It's there for a reason.  And, importantly, eating when you're hungry isn't what's making you fat.  It's what you're eating.  And this is where addiction comes in.

 You eat a high-carb meal, possibly full of sugar.  This spikes your insulin levels, which signals your body to use all the glucose that's now in your blood.  If you've eaten this way for a long time, odds are your insulin signaling is somewhat impaired.  So eventually your blood sugar levels return to normal, but your blood is still full of insulin.

Now, insulin tells your cells to consume glucose exclusively.  It shuts down fat metabolism in order to regulate your blood sugar levels, but since your blood glucose has already been consumed, you have a problem.  You've become hypoglycemic.  This is only a problem in the presence of insulin, which is only in your blood because you ate the carbohydrates in the first place, or possibly because you put it there with a needle.  You probably have fat (which can normally be used for fuel) circulating in your blood as well, but thanks to the insulin it's doing you no good, so your cells have no usable fuel at all, and your body starts freaking out.

One of the symptoms of mild hypoglycemia is a craving for carbohydrates.  Caving in to this solves the problem by giving your cells more glucose, but it also perpetuates the problem: your pancreas still responds by secreting more insulin.

On and on it goes until you're fat, fully insulin resistant, and finally diabetic.  And the root cause could accurately be described as carbohydrate addiction.  The good news is, it's not as hard to beat as most other addictions.  If you give them up completely, as on a ketogenic diet, you'll have a few rough days.  Not nearly as bad as if you were, say, quitting smoking, but you'll feel it.  After those (usually) 3-5 days, you're free!  As one of my surprised friends put it after a week or two on the diet, when she saw a fabulous chocolate cake, "I felt nothing!"