Are bad eating habits harder to break than other habits, like smoking, etc.?

I think so. We are bombarded every day to buy crap food; since we know it tastes “good” we buy it any way. I myself am trying to change; been going to the gym and change what and how much I eat. But it’s tough.

I’m not sure. I think giving up less nutritious food completely would be difficult, if not impossible. Most of us feel like a biscuit or a piece of cake occasionally. I think eating healthy food routinely is not that hard. If you don’t put the crap food in your basket, it isn’t there to eat. You can make sure you’ve eaten before you go shopping to avoid eating while in the supermarket. You can take your lunch to work to avoid going to the snack bar and the like. However, I think your point about not being able to give up food in the same way you can cigarettes or drinking alcohol is a pertinent one @Dutchess_III.

The woman you describe might have underlying emotional problems if she was constantly eating. Her issues might go beyond the ability to say no to a bag of chips.

I do think some foods are deliberately designed to be addictive. Have you watched that documentary The Men Who Made Us Fat? The link is to the first part. There are three. It’s fascinating and horrible. Also, convenience foods are often cheaper than quality meat and veg, which is just terrible and makes it hard for families with limited incomes to make healthy choices.

No, I personally think it’s easier to eat healthier food. I’ll eat whatever is in front of me healthy or not so I just put healthy food in front of me.

Had she not noshed on the chips while shopping she probably would have eaten twice the amount of chips when she got home. I cannot judge the issues this lady is facing or her state of mind. People cope with stress and depression with means that are in arms reach….whether it is food, alcohol, drugs both illicit and OTC, sex…which all can be put under the umbrella of a self medicating coping mechanism.

A breaking moment is what has to happen that the abuser finally sees/experiences a cathartic moment that if a change is not immediately made…death is inevitable. Unfortunately it often ends up being a much shorter consequence than the abuser will ever realize before it is too late.

Well, I was wondering if, like, they go to work and someone has brought a box of donuts, do they get anxious if they deny themselves a donut? Or deny themselves a second donut? How do they feel when they they get a single hamburger instead of a triple decker hamburger?

What many people don’t realize is it really only takes a few days to lose the cravings for sugar and carbs. But those carvings are more insidious than nicotine or heroin, because people can connect the craving with the drug, but don’t realize the body dumps insulin and craves glucose to balance out the blood sugar.

I think it’s almost impossible to compare smoking to eating, because for each person, the cravings and how they feel and how they deal with it and how easy or hard it is is so up to the individual. Each person may have different coping mechanisms, and may also be influenced by their life events, genetics, etc.

They say nicotine addiction is so tough and I believe it is. Probably extremely tough to beat. However, I have a good friend who did this “21 day cold turkey” thing about 30 years ago and has not smoked once, since. I know other people who have smoked on and off and struggle with it to this day.

Food, some are very strong and others struggle. It’s so hard to compare apples to oranges and equally hard to get inside someone’s head and say “are they anxious if they deny themselves this.” Maybe their anxious, maybe they’re starving, maybe they were raised on sugar, maybe they don’t know any better, maybe they only have a dollar to eat and don’t have the willpower to buy an apple instead of a donut.

Also, the person may be obese and may be eating for the ten or fifteen minutes while they’re seen in the store, but who knows if maybe they haven’t eaten all day or something. .

Everyone is different. I started my habits early, but for those that haven’t, if you are dedicated enough, things like chicken rice vegetables and beans become the best meal you’ve ever had.

I broke two major habits over 40 years ago—smoking and nail biting. I had smoked for years and it was tough stopping (I failed once, and then stopped it for good and forever a year later.), but tougher still was nail-biting. Having done it since I was a young child, it was deeply ingrained, so much so that even now, so many decades later, I still slip once in a while.

@Blackberry yes, when you’re really, really hungry whatever food winds up in front of you tastes like heaven. I’d probably even love chipped beef in cheese sauce if I was that hungry, and chipped beef in cheese sauce normally makes me gag.
I once went to a new Mexican place in Wichita when I was that hungry. Probably hadn’t eaten in a couple of days, which wasn’t unusual for me back then. I swore it was the best Mexican food I’d ever eaten.
Ate there again about a year later. Pretty sure it was the same food, and tasted the same way, but it wasn’t as WOW as it was the first time because I wasn’t as hungry the second time.

@jca You’re right. Overeating is probably more an emotional thing than the others, and each person has their own reasons, their own memories. Smoking and such are more of a physical thing and everyone’s body reacts pretty much the same way. But once you’ve gotten in the habit of over eating does your body start to depend on having that many calories and lets you know if it doesn’t? Does everyone who over eat experience the same physical reactions when they quit?

@zenvelo I’ve noticed that if I have something sweet early in the day, I tend to eat more sweets through the rest of the day than I normally do….which is why I rarely have stuff like that in the house.