Addiction has two components, physical and mental. Sugar and flour are physically addictive at a chemical and cellular level, and as with any addictive substance, it must be eliminated. By definition, if an addict could moderate they would not be an addict – abstinence is a must. But even if you find a perfect diet, like the Skinny Coach Diet, that eliminates these triggers you still have a system of neural pathways that represent learned associations, habits and reactions to stress and life. This must be addressed. The neural pathways in your brain are developed based on what you have done in the past making the breaking of a habit difficult. What are required are the development of new neural pathways and a deterioration of the old pathways. Food addiction is real and it is as real as heroin or alcohol addiction. Food, namely sugar and flour, affects the brain and the pleasure centers of the brain in exactly the same way as drugs. Dogaminergic pathways – reward pathways – in the brain are responsible for motivating food consumption and also feelings of pleasure that you get when you eat. These pathways also activate other circuits throughout the body that regulate hunger, satiety and weight control.

In order to properly heal and be free long term you have to rewire those pathways. The problem, of course, is that those pathways represent how you think – you can’t think differently because your brain is wired to say things like “one bite won’t hurt” and if I eat that cookie I will feel better.

I work with my clients daily and people mistakenly believe that they need this because they need accountability. In fact, it is only through daily conversations in a multitude of varying situations is it possible to teach an addict how to think differently. My work is to literally rewire their brain, over time, so that they internalize a healthy eating lifestyle which leads to life as a person that is natural thin. If you were allergic to strawberries you simply would not eat. Your brain would not be activated when you saw strawberry shortcake, you would not have to talk yourself out of eating a strawberry pie, it would be a non-issue. This is true for foods like sugar and flour which are usually the food of choice for addicts – over time the old addictive part of the brain that was alive and firing at the sight of a donut or baked bread is dead and the part that accepts easily that you don’t eat those things because they make you fat, sick and tired is alive and active.

Other diets fail because just following the diet does not make a “lifestyle change.” You must change the way you think, and someone has to give you that language every single day until that happens. Skinny Coach works because it addresses the physical addiction with a healthy hormonally balancing food plan and because you work with me, the L.A. Skinny Coach, to reprogram your brain as a Skinny Girl.