Ultra-processed foods meet the established criteria for addiction, similar to substances like drugs or tobacco, as they are consumed despite known health harms.

“for many of us ultr processed food isn't just harmful it is addictive and it makes all the criteria for addiction and it has there's so much evidence that for some people these products are as addictive as tobacco products drugs of abuse alcohol gambling”

She acknowledges that she is addicted to food and uses it to medicate her emotions.

“I'm addicted to food. I have tried 100 different diets. I'm a compulsive overeater because even after I've eaten and I'm full, I'm physically not hungry. I'm still reaching for my table for something else.”

Loren views her past eating disorder as an addiction rooted in a desire for control rather than simply a desire to be thin.

“it was like the one thing that I could control and I think for a lot of people it's not just about being skinny it's all the other things that go into it of like I need to feel like this is something that you know I do and there's a result”

Food can be as addictive as drugs, and struggling with eating often stems from a lack of control and unresolved psychological issues.

“it's hard to have it's like an addiction food is just as much of an addiction as a drug can be at certain points that's definitely the way I describe it for myself like once I would start eating it's like I couldn't stop”

Eating disorders, like anorexia, involve a need for control and can function as an addiction.

“I feel like having an eating disorder can become an addiction in itself it's like that addiction of like wanting to look a certain way or feeling like you have to stick to a certain way of eating or you know what I mean”

Strict restrictions on food intake are damaging to individuals in recovery from an eating disorder.

“There was a period of my life where I was had a team that wouldn't allow me to eat certain foods and that ultimately was very detrimental to my eating disorder recovery. In fact, I relapsed in my eating disorder with that because I wasn't allowed to have desserts without them calling it a binge.”

She believes it is essential to be healthy and to move past unhealthy coping mechanisms like controlling one's eating habits.

“I learned that I had no choice but to be healthy. And that's where I started to talk more about health and that's when I really started to lean on what I was and what gave me purpose and what made me happy”

Recovery from an eating disorder involves learning to sit with uncomfortable feelings and anxiety rather than using food-related compulsions as a defense mechanism.

“Recovery is about as you said sitting in it and realizing as much like because when it comes up you literally feel like you're gonna die right it's it's like life-threatening and to learn that feelings are just feelings and even though it might feel like it's going to kill you the one thing you can ”

Starving oneself creates a physical and psychological imbalance that inevitably results in overeating.

“One thing I would say is that when the pendulum is all the way over here of starving, it's always going to swing back over here to needing to overeat.”