"Carbohydrate addiction?" Pffffffft.

So someone who is a pusher of the concept of "carbohydrate addiction", as he/she calls it, left this comment in my blog detailing various emotional issues and self-destructive behaviors:

If you were taking speed could it cause all these problems? -- Carbohydrates ARE speed!

This is how I responded:


Speed would cause my heart to race and probably get palpitations, my hands to shake, my blood pressure to increase, and my mood to swing wildly into insane mania. Carbohydrates -- even straight sugar from the box -- would not do THAT. And, actually, I think that speed's effects would be much more similar to drinking too much coffee than to eating a lot of sugar.

Look, I admit that high GI carbs do have a strange effect on the body sometimes, and they do often cause my blood sugar to swing and me to get strange and insistent hunger pangs when I am not actually hungry. HOWEVER, clearly I am aware of the effect high GI foods have on my body. If I do eat them, I can anticipate the physiological changes and act accordingly. As in, I know that when a hunger pang hits me really hard half an hour after I eat something filling that was very high on the GI, it's probably not a true hunger pang, so I should wait a little while for it to go away.

And, you know, I do limit my high GI carbs for this reason. However, high GI carbs do not CAUSE my eating disorder, nor do they CAUSE the states of mind that make me engage in bulimic (or anorexic) behaviors. In fact, sometimes high GI carbs are more like a punishment, because I know my body hates them and doesn't process them evenly and well as it does with other foods.

PS: You may be interested to know that I eat lower GI carbs without any blood sugar problems whatsoever (whole wheat bread, for example), and can usually tolerate the occasional fruit (and, actually, I find that fruits agree with me very well).

Can you see now why your theory does not really do me that much good? I can eat carbs -- just not the high GI ones (often). And even when I am eating very mindfully, my eating disorder rears its ugly head anyway, because it's EMOTIONAL, not just physiological. No psychologist or psychiatrist would ever agree that a clinically diagnosable eating disorder is solely physiological anyway, because it's a load of crap to try and claim that. Eating disorders are what they call "biopsychosocial", which means they are multifaceted. They don't come from just one cause (like eating carbs).

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I'm tired of people going around claiming that this or that ONE SPECIAL THING!!! will suddenly magically cure every problem I have. Even IF I did decide to do a zero-carb diet, that would only fix the food aspect of things. I would probably still end up going to other self-destructive coping mechanisms, like cutting, and I would still have all the emotional issues that built up over the course of my life to deal with.

So, no, stopping all carbs is not a quick fix. It's a nice idea, and wouldn't it be lovely if we could cure all the world's ills with one tiny diet change? but it just isn't true at all. I mean, god, people have been eating carbohydrates for thousands of years, and only in the last, say, 30 or 40 have we even had this "obesity epidemic". Where were all the poor carbohydrate addicts a thousand years ago? Seriously. People just ate to survive then -- which is what WE should do. If we actually did do that, we wouldn't get as fat as we do. This is why I am a firm believer in true intuitive eating -- eating what our biology requires and desires to stay healthy, with wiggle room for food as pleasure or food as part of socialization. THAT's what I strive for... not low-carb, not low-fat, and not some other diet. I am sick of diets, and sick of "gurus" claiming they will cure your every ill, when they really, truly won't.

Okay, I'm done.