Food Addiction Quiz Results
Now that you’ve totaled your assessment, let’s have a look at what it all means. If you scored between 25 and 35 you have what we would call a good relationship with food. Your food habits are generally positive, healthy and well adhered to and your choices reflect confidence in your food decisions. You are at the lowest risk for food addiction and for other applicable diet-related health concerns in general.
From time to time anyone—even those at the least risk—may falter, so we have provided some resources to help you remain on the right track.
For when you’re dining in…
- Cooking Light: Healthy recipes, cooking tips and resources for healthy living.
- Allrecipes.com – Healthy Recipes: Part of the larger Allrecipes.com, specifically geared toward healthier dietary choices.
- 101 Cookbooks: Many healthy choices including an entire section on vegan cooking for those inclined to give it a try.
…or going out.
- Healthy Dining Finder: Search by zip code against a database of tested and approved healthy restaurants from Healthy Dining.
- Eating Out & Staying Healthy- A Restaurant Guide To Healthy Eating: Naturally Intense High Intensity Personal Training’s compilation of excellent tips for dining out.
- Healthy Fast Food: A practical guide to the most common and accessible fare that surrounds us daily from Helpguide.org.
In addition to the tips offered at these resources we would also remind readers when preparing food at home to follow safe handling guidelines and that it’s best to discard takeout after 24 hours to help minimize your risks for foodborne illness.
For those of you who scored between 36 and 50 on our assessment, you find yourselves in the middle of “at risk land”. You’re not in the worst place from a nutritional and dietary standpoint, however you’ve developed some habits that would benefit you to change, or omit. These habits can be difficult to change though so it’s a good idea to get off on the right foot by identifying your problem areas. Consider keeping a food journal and be as honest and complete as possible – remember, any fudging in this area is merely cheating yourself.
Nutrition.gov, a joint venture of the FDA and USDA, offers many resources useful for anyone, but particularly for those in borderline or at risk categories. Be sure to check out the new MyPlate program, a replacement to the food pyramid of days gone by and this set of guidelines, updated at the end of 2010.
It would also benefit you to check into ways to eat healthy, self-prepared meals while out and about rather than succumbing to the fast paced fast food lifestyle. Nutrition Fitness Life offers many great ideas for quick meals that keep your intake in healthy ranges and keep you away from easy, but often unhealthy, fast food.
Those who arrive at scores of 51 and above, I’ve got some bad news for you. You are at the greatest risk and, at the risk of coming off blunt, you need help. Your answers reflect a psychological relationship with food that is in dire need of repair. This relationship prevents you from pursuing a healthy lifestyle and more nutritional choices. Food addiction in all likelihood plays a significant role in your relationship with food.
All is not lost, however, you stand a great chance of making a recovery if you first acknowledge and define the characteristics of your food addiction. Signs of food addiction include (but are not limited to):
- Feeling guilty after eating.
- Hiding food and bingeing in secret.
- Emotional eating.
Though there are many options for treatment and control of food addiction, victims face several possibly related disorders including anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. Regardless of the severity of your particular case, it is important to keep in mind that you have the ability to get into a healthy, balanced dietary routine and there are resources to help you regain control. There is even an organization, called Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous or FA, set up specifically to provide support and recovery resources for those suffering from this and associated disorders.