Like any addictive substance, there are problems associated with eating junk food that can affect your mental and physical health. These negative impacts on your health are often gradual, but eventually, they can overtake your life and can make you fat, sick, and depressed. Fortunately, many of the issues that are associated with junk food addiction are also reversible. In fact, once you are able to successfully get the junk food monkey off your back, you will find that you are experiencing benefits that are often seen very quickly. This chapter lists some of those benefits that you can enjoy.
Nutritional Benefits
One of the issues that is associated with junk food is that it does not have any nutritional value. In fact, it is often what could be considered anti-nutrition, in that it actually takes away from the ability of your body to absorb the vitamins and nutrients from any healthy food that you are eating. There are many different types of junk food that may have this effect on the body. One that is often considered, however, is the fact that wheat causes sensitivities for many individuals, not only those who are known to have celiac disease. It can affect the lining of the digestive tract, through which nutrients are absorbed. As a result of eating the wheat of today, your body is no longer able to absorb those nutrients and you become deficient. This is true, even though you may be eating plenty of healthy foods along with the junk food that you are consuming.
Weight Loss
In a previous chapter, we discussed how the consumption of sugar can cause obesity, and for a fact, is causing obesity for millions of individuals who consume it. Fortunately, the issues that are often associated with sugar consumption are reversible. All that is necessary for you to do is to stop eating sugar and you will begin to recognize the benefits, including weight loss that occur gradually. Although there are many ways for you to experience weight loss when you cut sugar from your diet, the best way for you to do so is to go on a low carbohydrate diet. This not only removes sugary snack foods from your diet altogether, it also removes other foods from your diet that cause a carbohydrate load in your bloodstream. It causes your body to stop burning glucose for fuel, but rather, to burn fat for fuel, and you lose weight quickly.
Better Physical Health
Many of the chemicals in junk food can lead to health problems, some of which are as serious as strokes, heart attacks, and high blood pressure. These issues tend to creep up on us over time, and at first, we may not recognize that they are a difficulty, but before we know it, we have severe health issues. Most people who eat junk food find that it happened so gradually that they do not notice the connection between junk food and poor health. They end up taking prescription medications which may help to alleviate the symptoms but do not cure the disease.
Better Mental Health
If you have been following the information in this book, you already recognize that junk food can wreak havoc on our brain chemicals. It affects many neurotransmitters, along with having a direct effect on the receptor sites on our brain cells. The issues associated with your mental health when you are eating junk food can be as severe as depression, anxiety, and stress. You feel a need to continue to consume junk food, not because it makes you feel better on a permanent basis, but because it causes the dopamine rush that makes you feel good temporarily. It is an evil cycle, and once you are in the middle of it, it is difficult to break. Fortunately, the mental issues that are associated with junk food are often reversible. There may be some damage that is unable to be corrected, but for the most part, you will find that you are feeling much clearer and happier when you overcome junk food addiction than during the time that you were addicted.
These are only a few of the primary benefits that you can experience when you are able to overcome your junk food addiction. More than likely, you will experience some benefits that are specific to you, depending upon your chemical makeup and the type of junk food that you are eating. Continue to enjoy those benefits and to remember the fact that they only happened after you were able to give up junk food.