Death to Junk Food Addiction
With the rise of diabetes and obesity in our society, it is not hard to imagine  that the eating of excess amounts of junk food is part of the blame. 

There are several factors that drive us to eat junk food. Junk food includes processed foods, French fries, sweets, candies, pastries, pizza, fried chicken,  tacos, hamburgers, and other fast foods. Maybe if we understand these factors, we can determine how to avoid poisoning our bodies with these dangerous foods.

The factors that influence our behaviors to buy and eat these toxic food include the following:

• Marketing (TV ads especially) plays a huge role in the access and distribution of junk food in our society.
• Cost: junk food is very inexpensive
• Convenience: junk food is very easy to obtain
• American lifestyle embraces a culture of eating junk food as part of normal recreational activity.
• Chemical addiction: there are chemicals in these junk foods that make us addicted to these foods
• Lack of Discipline: makes it difficult to change our poor eating habits
• The Education System has failed to adequately promote nutrition education alongside physical education.

 
Marketing
When traveling across major cities like New York, Minneapolis, San Diego, Chicago, and Atlanta, literally around every major street corner is a fast food restaurant.   Fast food is readily available for those of us who understand that time itself is money.  In our society, time is valuable.  When we all have to do lists and planners to help maximize our time, fast food seems to be the easiest way to get more accomplished.
 
In addition to the fact that fast food is readily available, the heavy use of commercial ads on all major stations makes it impossible to watch your favorite show on television without seeing a friendly ad with chipper addicting music and cute children.  Important to note, one thing missing from those ads are obese people.  I wonder, if these ads showed obese people enjoying an over-sized hamburger, would they have the same appeal?
 
Lifestyle
Besides marketing, the typical American lifestyle and culture has also played an important role in the obesity epidemic.  When going to the movie theatre or a sports event, it is acceptable for us to buy some of the unhealthiest food available.  Between the high levels of saturated fat and salt, we seem to think we’re invincible against hypertension and high cholesterol. Also part of our culture is the donating to charity by accepting something in return, like chocolate or cookies.  Sure, we all love the Girl Scout cause, but do we really have to indulge in 3 boxes of peanut butter cookies?
 
So, what about the poor in our society?  Not everyone in our society can afford to take part in recreational activities and accept cookies for donating to a good cause, yet we still see obese people.  For them, junk food is fast food and fast food is readily available and generally the cheapest in the sense that it does not require the use of a well stocked kitchen and fills you up in little time.  It is, shall we say, “cost efficient” for a poor person or family.  Why pay a few dollars for soup in a restaurant when you can buy chips, donuts, and pop for the same price and be full for longer?
 
Education
Finally, we examine education, or shall we say the LACK of education.  Despite being seen as global leaders, nutrition education is not valued as much as math or English.  It is very rare to find a school that requires all students to take nutrition or cooking classes.  Even physical education, which at a minimum encourages water over soda, doesn’t receive as much funding as the science or math departments.
 
Then there’s the lack of education children receive at home.  Just like parents explain in grave detail the importance of avoiding drugs and violence, they need to teach their children how to make positive eating choices like eating fruits more often than candy and buying a salad meal w/ milk instead of a double hamburger meal w/ fries.
 
Solution
Now it is clear how marketing, lifestyle, and education affect our ability to choose healthy food over junk food.  They are connected in many complex ways, but the most important thing to remember is that if you want to eat healthy, you have to address all of these areas.  Take the following steps to eating healthier and avoiding junk food:

• Try to plan your meals when going out.  Bring your own lunch, but if you can’t, buy a salad instead of hamburger.  You can add chicken to the salad for protein to help fill you up.
• Try to read about why junk food is so unhealthy and ways to add more healthy foods to your diet.  There are lots of free healthy recipes online.  Take advantages of a few.
• Read a book like Death to Diabetes to educate yourself and your family about healthy eating.
• Read the Death to Diabetes Cookbook to learn how to enjoy healthier versions of your favorite junk foods.
• Try donating to charities and good causes without accepting cookies in return.  If you want something back for your effort, try a tax deduction instead.

These steps can help you change your lifestyle to the point where you avoid junk food on a subconscious level, which is more ideal than counting calories.

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How To Kill Your Addictions to Junk Food

How can you kick junk food to the curb? Many of us have tried and failed, and tried and failed, and tried and ended up binging on Big Macs blended with ice cream, etc...

What we usually do is say, "After this bucket of KFC Chicken, I'm not eating this crap anymore!" Then we purge our house of all things sugary, we eat salads and whole wheat for about 3 days and then cave in the first time we drive past a Taco Bell. Where is the will power, the drive, the ambition you had a couple days ago?

That's because we try to stop eating junk food without thinking about it - without planning our escape. What we should do is worry about changing our habits. Forging new habits takes time and energy. If you want to kick your junk food habits you'll have to give both time and energy.

Consequently, you should:

   1. Only change one habit at a time
   2. Give each change at least 2 weeks to become ingrained

After all, we've spent years building up these habits, we can't expect to take them down overnight. We'll do it smart, slow and consistent and we'll kick junk food to the curb.

Let's separate the tasks into kicking bad snacks, kicking fast food and kicking soda pop. Pick whichever will be easiest for you and do that first. A taste of success is incredibly motivating. Then do the one that will be hardest second while you're on an upswing.

Kick the Soda Pop Habit
This one's probably the simplest. Not the easiest, but the simplest. You just keep downgrading every 2-4 weeks. Essentially switching terrible habits for bad and then switching bad for good.

• Regular -to- Diet: First switch from regular to diet pop and leave it at that for at least 2 weeks. I know that some people say diet is just as bad as regular but we don't want to be fighting our caffeine addiction at the same time we're fighting our sugar addiction. Remember we want to change habits in stages to have the highest chance of success.
• Diet -to- Caffeine Free Diet: If you do have a caffeine addiction this is where you'll find out. You're going to have about 3 days of feeling like a hangover mouth tastes while your body breaks the physical addiction. But stay on it for the full 2 weeks, we don't want to change too much too fast.
• Caffeine Free Diet -to- Flavored Water/Water: If you can't stand drinking water I'm not going to lecture you. Just drink the flavored water with 0 calories they have now, it's just as good (if you don't mind paying for it).
• Flavored Water -to- Filtered Water: Now we're moving into healthy territory. Now you can move to regular water but  filtered, not tap water. Eventually you should be losing weight and feeling better than when you were drinking pop.

Kick Fast Food
How do we beat crack for the single male? Yes, that's how hooked people are on this. How about this:

•   Start by saving all your fast food receipts for one week
•   Now, place a jar by your bed
•   Each night, empty your pants, wallet, or purse of all the fast food receipts.

At the end of one week, you can add them all up and get a pretty good idea of how much you're spending on this junk. Round that up to the nearest $10 and cut it in half. That's how much you'll spend a week from now on.

Take that money and put it in a ziplock bag that you keep in your car. All your fast food will be paid for out of this fund, and when it dries up, that's it until next week. This will force you to ration and make choices.

Let it sink in for 2 weeks and don't forget to plan this out. Something has to replace all that fast food you're suddenly not eating. I suggest:

• Keep something in your car to eat on the way home from work, like an apple or some nuts - something filling and always ready.
• Have some frozen meals ready at home so you never wonder what you're going to eat tonight. If you can't make them yourself on the weekend, try those frozen skillets - something balanced and quick.

Then, when this new habit is a part of you, cut that dollar amount again, and again, and again until you're happy with how much (how little) fast food you're eating. I think under $10 a week is OK for most people.

Kick Bad Snacks
The first step to kicking bad snack foods is doing a food inventory. What do you have in your kitchen? Cookies, chips, candy? And what are you eating them for? Which are your comfort food? Stress foods?

Then we're going to make a chart of all these snacks and for each one list a replacement snack. For example instead of potato chips you could eat tortilla chips with salsa. Now you can switch a crappy snack for it's healthier replacement. But no more than one every two weeks (pacing). Make yourself eat the new food daily so it becomes a part of your lifestyle and remember to snack before you get hungry.

It's a pretty straight forward process but here's a few tips to make it go smoother:

• If you have a craving for a bad snack that you absolutely have to give in to, buy an individual portion or eat just enough to satisfy your craving and throw out the rest. Keeping it around is crap-snack sabotage.
• If you have a sweet tooth, proportion something into bites and eat them after a healthy snack. For example cut a snickers bar into 8ths and keep each individually wrapped in the freezer, then eat one after you've filled up on popcorn. That gives you that sweet taste without having to fill up that sweet crap.
• Get the Death to Diabetes cookbook or Food Tips PDF for healthy, tasty snacks.
• Get the Food Cravings PDF to learn how to beat the two types of cravings and overcome junk food addictions.
• Get the Juicing & Smoothies ebook to learn how to drink tasty smoothies that will reduce and eventually eliminate your cravings for junk food and fast food.

The four keys to kicking junk food are super foods, planning, pacing and sticking to it. Remember to take as long as you need to get these new habits ingrained, 2 weeks is a minimum. Better junk food free in 1 year than relapsing in 6 months.

In addition, don't forget that the super meals and snacks will help your body detoxify and remove the chemicals that are causing the addiction.