Many years ago I read Allen Carr’s Easy Way to Quit Smoking (available from Amazon – it is one of the few books to retain a 5 star rating, with over 1,000 reviews). This might not sound especially surprising, until you realise that I have never smoked a cigarette in my life. Allen Carr’s book appealed because I wanted to understand addiction – or, rather, find a cure for my own struggles with food and binge eating. I immediately recognised the wisdom of Allen Carr’s book and understood how it worked, but it took me many more years before I was able to apply the theory to our obesity epidemic (and no, it’s not an addiction to refined carbohydrates).
How Allen Carr’s method works
Throughout his books, audio tapes, videos and in-person sessions at clinics, Allen Carr systematically debunks the reasons people think they want to consume the addictive substance of choice, dismantling the brainwashing, until people realize there is only one reason: a mild physical addiction that has no more power over them than a common cold.
Allen Carr maintains that we feel compelled to overindulge because we feel as if we need the addictive item to alleviate stress or make social occasions enjoyable, for example – to provide a crutch to help with life. He explains that this is an illusion: that the very stresses, discomforts, and dissatisfaction we are attempting to alleviate are caused by the consumption of that same substance. In other words, we engage in the addictive behavior – not to bring joy – but to get rid of the discomfort that the behavior brings…to return us to how we felt before we ever started taking it.
We know that excessive junk food consumption is killing us; we know it has huge negative social and health side effects, yet we keep on eating it. Why? Once we expose the false reasons and see the real reason, ending an addiction is straightforward. Allen Carr makes a brilliant distinction: he says people think that addicts have no willpower, but that’s not true – what they have is a conflict of will.
Allen Carr reminds us that quitting is easy once the brainwashing is removed. Physical withdrawal pangs are minor – virtually non-existent in the case of junk food. Rather than tremors or violent headaches, we just have a faint restless hunger that prompts us to consume more. After absorbing the Allen Carr method, almost all readers stop cold turkey, with no willpower required. Rather than acting against their wishes: all parts of their brain pull together on the same team, thus, it is easy.
Applying Allen Carr’s method to weight loss
The difficulty with applying Allen Carr’s method to overeating is that we must first isolate the ‘addictive’ substance or behavior. In order to ‘quit’ something, we must identify what exactly is addictive about the myriad of edible foodstuffs and drinks that we consume and/or the behavior or style of eating. I was under no illusion that my overeating seemed addictive. One part of my brain wanted to stop eating junk food entirely; another seemed insistent upon consuming it at all costs. I had never suffered a ‘hard’ drug addiction, but this thing was costing me my self-confidence, my health, my fitness, my money, my time and my self-respect. It was also affecting my relationships with some of the most important people in my life. Despite all of this – and being utterly filled with misery about it – I somehow didn’t know how to stop. I knew, logically speaking, that I should throw dieting and binge eating to the wayside and go back to eating normally like a child, intuitively, without obsessing, worrying, counting calories, and obsessing over every crazy ridiculous thing, but somehow I couldn’t work out how.
When I first read Allen Carr’s books, I knew he had the answer; the magic pill. I realized that this man (described by many as a genius) held the information I had been searching for. When I first read his books, however, I made a mistake. It was the same mistake that vast quantities of the population are currently making: to blame refined carbohydrates. (I should note that he also published a book that applies his method to weight loss and sugar, however, unfortunately, in my view, this missed the mark and contains some fundamental errors, such as recommending avoidance of meat. I hesitate to say this, as without reading Allen Carr’s stop smoking and stop drinking books, I would not have the key necessary to escape.)
My first mistake: thinking the addictive agent was refined carbohydrates
Upon first reading of Allen Carr’s stop smoking book, I had such an illuminating mental shift that I instantly stopped eating refined carbohydrates, sugar, and almost all other processed food. I adopted what is these days marketed as the ‘Paleo diet’ (read the Paleo Solution by Robb Wolf and Loren Cordain, available from Amazon) and slowly and steadily became healthy, lean, and fit. I know exactly why all the Paleo supporters rave enthusiastically about their diet, however, I also know why they eventually begin to write blog posts such as Getting Back on the Boat – How to Recover from a Paleo Fallout and Falling off the Paleo Wagon.
This question, from a reader of Mark’s Daily Apple sums this up:
I have seen first hand how much better I feel after even just a short period of time eliminating grains, sugars, and processed foods from my diet. However, it seems as if I can get through a week or two of primal eating and then my conscious, intellectual mind shuts down and I find myself face down in a pile of donuts. What gives?
As with any restrictive diet, the willpower required to adhere in the face of a society that largely does not follow such a diet becomes exhausting and difficult. Abstaining from all processed carbohydrates at all times is very, very difficult. And once the line has been crossed, what then?
It is important to consider not just the difficulty in maintaining a diet that is completely free of refined carbohydrates – but also whether doing so is actually the best option. The purported addictive nature of sugar is a hot new dietary topic, now that the evils of saturated fat have been sufficiently discredited. Despite a growing wave of excitement about the Paleo diet in its various forms and the ardent anti-sugar supporters, including Sarah Wilson (I Quit Sugar) Damon Gameau (That Sugar Film) and Dr. Robert Lustig (The Bitter Truth), many others do not concur. Some very valid questions are raised, such as:
- If refined sugar is bad, what about the fructose in fruit? If fructose is indeed toxic, why do so many studies highlight the benefits of eating fruit?
- Why do our closest animal relatives eat diets high in fruit/carbohydrates?
- Why are some people slim and healthy, despite consuming many refined foods?
- If sugar were the equivalent of nicotine or alcohol, why do we not binge on sugar alone?
- How do you explain binges on whole food? Although rarer, there are many reports of people binge eating ordinary whole foods, such as this comment shared in the Active Low-Carber Forum:
Ever since I’ve gone Paleo, it just doesn’t seem like the quantity of food matters anymore. Because of this, I’ve become more and more fond of buffets, particularly ones that serve meat, and sometimes I might stuff myself with meat almost to the point of painful discomfort “just because I can”.
- Why has the obesity epidemic hit recently, when refined sugar and flour have been around for centuries?
- Why does binge eating and other eating disorders typically occur after dieting, and not before, despite similar food being available before and after these situations?
- If the addictive substance isn’t refined carbohydrates, then what is it?
- What on earth is addiction, anyway?
Detailed answers to these questions can be found within my book, Foods That Lie. Before we get to this, I want to explain something I learned when reading Addiction: A Disorder of Choice by Gene Heyman (available from Amazon) – something critical that I had overlooked thus far.
Addiction and satiety
Common knowledge has us believe that the most crucial factor in determining how addictive something is, is how rewarding it is. This makes sense, as when something feels awesome, we want to repeat it. This pattern has evolved to encourage us to do things that benefit our survival. For example, we enjoy a nourishing meal, but hate starving; we enjoy keeping warm and snug in a cozy shelter, but hate huddling outdoors in the mud and rain; we love receiving affection from others, but hate abandonment and rejection. What Gene Heyman’s book made clear, however, is that there is something else that must be present for something to become addictive: an absence of natural satiety.
In traditional situations where pleasure is felt, the ‘pleasure’ is replaced with satisfaction and then disinterest, as the benefit that the action delivers is received. For example, when you first take a bite of a nourishing meal, it tastes fantastic. As your belly fills, your hunger diminishes and satiety kicks in. A nourishing meal thus becomes less and less appealing, the more you eat of it. Similarly, an initial courtship might be thrilling, but endless night time ‘entertainment’ eventually becomes tiring as your need for sleep and other activities compete. Keeping snug and warm in a cave might seem appealing when you first enter from the cold outdoors; after a while it becomes tedious and boring and you want to brave the outdoors again in order to fulfill other needs and goals. In other words, behaviors that traditionally benefit us have inbuilt satiety mechanisms to prevent us from overindulging – leading us to engage in a range of activities that are benefit our survival.
Unfortunately, modern humans are presented with artificial substances and environments that allow us to engage in behaviors that offer a false sensation of pleasure (i.e. one that is not attached to the promised benefit) and then deliver long term pain (leaving the person worse off than before). As no benefit is received, there is no signal to stop. Addictive substances have no shutoff – nothing to provide a signal to the body that it has had enough, because there is nothing for it to have had enough of. Whatever need the substance was pretending to fulfil, it was a con – an illusion – and thus no satisfaction is ever received. Instead, the feeling of wanting more arises. Consumption may thus continue until the very physical upper constraints are forced into play (vomiting or passing out with alcohol or a stomach stretched to maximum capacity in the case of deceptive food). Stopping addictive consumption before this breaking point relies upon willpower alone: conscious intervention from the thinking part of our brain. This is not difficult, however, as the desire for more is a mild sensation that is easily dismissed: unless, of course, you have fallen for the false belief that you are powerless around this substance, in which case the sensation becomes a full-blown craving that cripples you unless you respond. Addiction is thus maintained by an ‘addict’ losing faith in themselves, as the decline into their excessive consumption takes hold. This lack of self-belief is caused by the deceptive nature of the substance itself, and the brainwashing held by society about the substance and addiction in general.
The breakthrough came when I realized that the danger in a substance is not just that it offers pleasure, or causes harm in excess, but that offers pleasure in error and hence generates no stop signal (due to mismatch between the benefit promised and what is delivered). The natural tendency is thus towards overconsumption. For example, when you are desperately thirsty, water seems like the best substance on earth. But as you drink, your thirst disappears and you feel satisfied – the desire to drink more water is gone. This is lucky, because if our thirst was not quenched and it continued to deliver the sensation of pleasure we first felt, we might drink water to excess. (Over-consumption of water, the essential, life-giving liquid can kill us.)
False pleasure (i.e. one attached to no benefit) comes with a lack of satiety that leads to overconsumption. This leaves you miserable, tired, weak, sick, and – due to the escalation of appetite and need caused by intermittent reinforcement – primed to seek the false pleasure again.
With this understanding, I could finally set about defining what exactly made certain foods addictive.
What makes a meal addictive?
For simplicity, let’s look at the following diagram:
In the case of eating, what tells our body to stop? It is clearly not just when we reach an adequate number of calories. If this was the case, no one would ever be fat (rather, we would die of malnourishment). Nor is it a simple matter of obtaining sufficient nutrients; our body and brain require energy to operate and move. Satiation arises, therefore, when our need for both calories and nutrients has been met. If we are lacking in either calories or nutrition, it makes no sense for our hunger to abate. Without these needs met, we don’t stop eating, because our body does not receive the signal that it has got what it needs, because it has not.
A good meal provides an abundant supple of both easily digestible calories and a tonne of nutrition. A meal is addictive when it is deceptive and misleading – providing a misleading flavor signal that promises to deliver nutrition that does not arrive.
What sort of food has nourishment + abundant calories? Nourishing, genuine, flavor-honest food – normal food, from all food groups, eaten until satiation –the kind of food people have been eating for millennia.
Seeing that it offers no benefit at all
Consuming a substance that has been stripped of nourishment and filled with artificial flavourings, sweeteners and taste enhancers misleads taste and smell receptors. It fools the body into interpreting these items as beneficial, because these flavors appear to signal the presence of nutrients that our bodies need, and thus your brain evaluates this as a reward.
However, once you recognize this exaggerated taste as a counterfeit signal – a lie – and understand completely what has happened – your actions change.
Let me say this a different way:
- If I walked up to you and gave you $100 and said you’d won it, you might be filled with elation. But if you recognised me as a con artist, and knew that while giving you $100, an armed accomplice was stealing your car from the parking lot behind you, the offer of $100 would fill you with fear.
- If you ate a piece of deceptive food, it might taste delicious and temporarily lift your mood, but if you knew that the item had been laced with arsenic and you would die in fifteen minutes, you would be filled with panic and terror.
It is not the physical sensation that drives emotion, but what we know or believe about it that influences our response.
This is how after reading Allen Carr’s books, extreme nicotine addicts can go from hating all previous ‘cold-turkey’ attempts and ‘white knuckling’ episodes, to stopping suddenly without any cravings at all. This is because the cravings are not a craving for the substance: they are a craving for happiness which you have incorrectly connected to the substance. A misleading and deceptive circumstance has beaten your happiness levels lower and lower, until your whole being is screaming for any way to escape the pain. But the moment you see that repeatedly consuming deceptive food is not the way to escape from pain, but rather the primary cause of your pain, there is an easy, straight forward path to escape and the solution is not only easy, but wonderful.
What happens when you eat deceptive food over and over again?
Addictive behaviours form a vicious loop. The more miserable we become, the more desirable the substance or behaviour seems (even if, paradoxically, this is the very thing that is responsible for the misery).
It is no mystery why a dieting person is particularly susceptible to the fake allure of deceptive food (just as those who have battered childhoods might be more susceptible to the false allure of drugs)…or why, when a dieting / binge eating cycle is repeated again and again, your belief in your ability to control this behavior erodes.
If you eat a normal, nourishing, flavor-honest food at every meal, your sensory mechanisms quickly reset, your hunger abates, and you have no desire to eat exorbitant quantities anymore. The moment you see that deceptive food gives you nothing: not a single benefit and, in the same breath, understand that you never lost your power, your eating issues are over.
Need more? Start here.