Introducing "Reset"

Understanding Sugar/Carb Dependency: 

Emotional eating often intertwines with sugar and carbohydrate dependency, creating a complex picture. Sugar and carbs can cause dependency due to their impact on brain chemistry, particularly through the release of dopamine. This programme focuses on helping participants identify emotional triggers that lead to sugar and carb cravings, enabling them to address the root causes of their eating behaviours.

Identifying Personal Triggers:

For many, emotional eating is a learned behavior rooted in childhood experiences. For example, a child who is given food as comfort or reward may grow up associating eating with emotional relief. This could manifest as reaching for comfort foods when facing stress, disappointment, or even boredom. Take, for instance, a child who is given a sugary drink to calm down after a tantrum; as an adult, they may instinctively turn to that same sugary beverage after a frustrating day, using it as an emotional crutch.

Emotional eating often becomes an unconscious way to soothe difficult feelings, such as sadness, loneliness, or anxiety. It’s a quick fix that can create a cycle of dependence. Over time, this pattern can become deeply ingrained, especially when societal and familial pressures around body image and weight contribute to feelings of shame. This makes the cycle hard to break, and without support, overcoming the urge to use food as comfort can feel overwhelming and isolating.

‘Reset’ can provide invaluable support for those struggling with using food as a coping mechanism. Through a combination of group therapy, education, and group support, the programmme helps individuals understand the emotional triggers behind their eating habits and identify the root causes of their relationship with food. Participants learn how to recognize and manage their emotions in healthier ways, breaking the cycle of using food to cope with stress, sadness and loneliness as well as past trauma, societal pressures, or family dynamics around body image.

Weight Stigma:

Many people in society including the medical profession, nutritionists, fitness trainers and legislators can wrongly view obesity as a result of lack of willpower and poor self-discipline, perpetuating negative stereotypes. This perspective shifts the blame onto individuals instead of addressing the underlying biological, psychological, lifestyle and social factors.

This can lead to feelings of distress, shame, guilt and failure. Many cope with these emotions by using food to distract, soothe, or numb their discomfort, but this strategy often results in increased food consumption and weight gain. Evidence indicates that stress triggers biological, psychological, and social mechanisms that sustain weight gain, including increased appetite, altered eating behaviours, and subsequent weight increase.

We Live in an Obesogenic World:

This term describes an environment that promotes excessive weight gain and obesity.  Although the food industry is not solely responsible for the obesity epidemic, many experts argue that it plays a major role. Its marketing strategies, production of highly processed foods rich in sugar and bad fats, and influence on the broader food environment contribute significantly to the issue. Blaming individuals alone oversimplifies the situation and fails to consider the complex factors driving obesity.  In shops and supermarkets today, we find more and more sugary snacks, artificial ingredients, and ultra-processed packaged foods that have little to no nutritional value and that wreak havoc in the body and in turn compromise not only physical health but mental health too.  Several other factors that contribute to this issue: technology and sedentary lifestyle, stress, lack of work/life balance.  In this obesogenic environment, making healthy choices requires deliberate effort and awareness. It involves navigating a landscape that often seems designed to promote weight gain rather than support a healthy lifestyle.