Food addiction
Uncontrolled attraction to food can be easily compared with other types of addiction, such as smoking and alcoholism. From the viewpoint of unconscious desires, food addiction has the same origin as other its types. The main difference is that food addiction is relatively acceptable by our society and this fact makes it popular among different social groups including poor people, because they think that food is their main priority and they would rather spend all their money for food than for other important things. Poor people consider satiation as the main sign of sufficiency and they preserve this way of thinking even when they become financially secure.
Today many people eat not simply to satisfy their wants for food, but for pleasure, for removing strain, for diverting their attention from their urgent problems, etc.
People have many excuses for their overeating habit. Food becomes for them a substitute of friends, love, work and leisure.
Food addiction is extremely difficult to get rid of. We are accustomed to the truth that like curses like. If an excessive use of strong drinks is an extreme, then it should be fought by another extreme, i.e. by full giving up drinking. The same refers to smoking. We understand that here the most effective is the method of all or none. If we reduce the amount of smoked cigarettes per day, we don't solve the problem but deceive ourselves. Of course, when we smoke less than usual we cause less harm to our health, but thus we will never give up smoking. If we want to stop smoking we should stop it for good. Even those people, who are not so strong willed to venture this heroic deed, understand it. But let's return to food. We have mentioned that overeating is extremely difficult to get rid of. Now you understand that the main difference between gluttony and other types of addiction is that you can't but eat. Reasonable eating and gluttony have only quantitative differences but no qualitative ones. That is why in case with gluttony we have a large space for manoeuvre and self-deception. Therefore the majority of people, who once managed to cope with this problem and slim, regain their weight after two or three years of keeping to a diet.