Withdrawal Symptoms From Food

Just like smoking, if you were to stop eating something that you were intolerant to (after eating it for weeks, months or years), your body will send you alarm signals in the form of withdrawal symptoms.

These occur because the body has got so used to the food, it now thinks it needs it to survive (even if that food is actually harming the body).

As a result, this withdrawal starts to create food cravings which can eventually lead to food addiction.

Withdrawal Symptoms & Food Cravings

The withdrawal symptoms from food can vary greatly depending on the type and amount of food normally consumed.

However in general most food withdrawal symptoms come in the form of headaches, irritability, lack of concentration, fatigue, nervousness or feeling depressed.

Food Cravings Lead To Food Addiction

When food withdrawal symptoms appear you begin to develop food cravings for different things. For example, if you start to feel nervous or anxious about something then you may eat some chocolate to make you feel better.

If this pattern continues long enough, you may develop a food addiction to chocolate.

However it is important to realise that these food cravings and ultimately the food addiction itself, in almost all cases comes as a result of the withdrawal symptoms that occur shortly after you stop eating that food.

In the case of chocolate, the food cravings you experience will come mainly from the sugar content of the chocolate, which itself is highly addictive.

Food Cravings Are Like Drug Addiction

A good way to understand food cravings, is to think of a nicotine addict.

If they don’t get nicotine in the form of a cigarette, they begin to develop withdrawal symptoms which makes them crave a cigarette. Once they have a smoke, those withdrawal symptoms go away and so do their cravings.

This makes them feel better, until the nicotine wears off and they begin another cigarette. Exactly the same thing happens when you become addicted to a food and start to crave that food.

Waking Up With Food Withdrawal Symptoms

By the time you eat breakfast it would have been around 12-14 hours since your last meal, and this is more than enough time for food withdrawal symptoms to appear.

As a result people typically wake up feeling tired, slow and grumpy. In other words, they wake up with food withdrawal symptoms and food cravings.    

When you eat breakfast and have your wheat, dairy, sugar or caffeine, it relieves the withdrawal symptoms and by doing so relieves your food cravings. As a result, you start to feel much better and your mood begins to improve.

What causes your food cravings will be different for everyone, although it is usually the things that you have often and on a regular basis.

For example, milk is something which commonly causes food withdrawal symptoms in people and they don’t even realise it.

The only accurate way to determine this however, is with a food allergy test.

Overcoming Food Addiction Is Difficult For Anyone

So even though a food may be bad for you once your body becomes used to it, eating the food again will make you feel better because it is relieving the withdrawal symptoms that occur in its absence.

This is why food addiction can be so difficult to overcome, because if you stop eating something you are addicted to you start to develop withdrawal symptoms which then causes food cravings.

Unless you are able to resist eating a particular food, those food cravings will cause you to keep on eating that food which only leads to the more serious food addiction.

Once you become addicted to a food it can be very difficult to overcome for this very reason, which is why so many food addicts develop obesity.

How Long Does It Take To Overcome Food Addiction?

Unfortunately it is extremely difficult to predict how long it will take someone to overcome a food addiction once they have developed it.

This is because it depends on the type of food you are addicted to, and also how long you have been eating that food.

Generally speaking, the longer you have been addicted to something the more withdrawal symptoms and food cravings you will experience, and the harder it will be to stop eating that food.

However if you are able to stop eating a particular food for at least one week, you will vastly increase your chances of overcoming that food addiction in the long term.