Read The Blood Sugar Solution 10-Day Detox Diet: Activate Your Body's Natural Ability to Burn Fat and Lose Weight Fast for Free Online

dinosaurs and other reptiles. These automatic behaviors include eating, our fight-or-flight response, and reproduction. This explains why we have so much trouble with food and relationships! According to the primitive brain, survival depends on our avoiding pain (danger) and seeking pleasure (sustenance and safety). When we have a life trauma, this part of our brain is on high alert, making us hypervigilant and protecting us against future threats. This mechanism is so powerful that it can even trigger full-blown post-traumatic stress disorder.
    When our brains are bombarded with sugar, a potent pleasure inducer, we become addicted to that pleasure. Willpower and conscious choice are no match for these powerful, ancient drives for survival.

Food Addiction and Biology (aka Stop Blaming Yourself!)
    Here’s where things get interesting. A 2009 study by Dr. Serge H. Ahmed,
Is Sugar as Addictive as Cocaine?,
published in the journal
Food and Addiction,
proved that sugar was eight times as addictive as cocaine. When I first read this, it was hard for me to believe. But this carefully designed study found that when rats were offered intravenous cocaine or sugar (in the form of artificially sweetened water), they always went for the sugar. Even previously cocaine-addicted rats switched to the sweetened water. When higher and higher doses of cocaine were injected intravenously, just below the amount that would give them seizures, they still went for the sweetened water.
    Think about it. The rats preferred the equivalent of a Diet Coke to being shot up with intravenous cocaine. Sugary sweetness (in this case created by artificial sweeteners) has a stronger draw than even heroin, which is much more addictive than cocaine. Other studies comparing table sugar and cocaine found the same results, including one done at Connecticut College that showed that rats who were fed Oreo cookies had significantly greater activity in the pleasure center of their brains than those who were injected with cocaine or morphine. And yes, this is an animal study, and rats and humans are different, but the same types of results have been found in human studies.
    As I just explained, we are hardwired to seek pleasure and reward. It is a survival mechanism. Anytime we have access to hyperpalatable sweet or fatty foods, we are programmed to eat a lot of them and to store those excess calories as belly fat to sustain us through scarce times that may lie ahead. That’s what your body is supposed to do; the problem is that the scarcity we’re storing up for never comes. The diabesity epidemic is really just a normal biological response to the inputs from our abnormal environment. What saved us as hunter-gatherers is killing us now.
    You’re probably wondering why we don’t have a built-in control mechanism to tell the brain we have had enough food. We do. Your body’s natural brake on hunger is a hormone produced by your fat cells called
leptin
. Unfortunately, in many of us, that natural brake line has been tampered with.
    Two bad things happen when your biology is damaged by sugar and processed foods. First, your body becomes
insulin resistant,
so you have to pump out more and more insulin in an attempt to keep your blood sugar normal. Insulin is a powerful fat-storage hormone, one that encourages your body to pack on dangerous belly fat.
    Second, you become
leptin resistant
. That means that no matter how much of this fabulous appetite-suppressing hormone your body makes, your brain cannot read the signals. It is “resistant,” or numb, to the signals from leptin. But wait… it gets worse.
    High levels of insulin produced through all the sugar and fructose consumption (from high-fructose corn syrup and other sugars) block the leptin signals in your brain, so your body thinks it is starving even after a Big Mac, fries, and a large soda. Ever wonder how you can still be hungry right after a big meal? It is the insulin surge and the leptin resistance. This