Latest study on the eating patterns of obese people has revealed that their tendency to eat non stop to could resemble the addiction of a drug addict. It was also observed that people who lost weight were not able to maintain the same for more than five years.

The above phenomena can be attributed to the fact that women, as they age, tend to worry less about their looks and weight as compared to their younger counter parts. The same applies to men, who after a period of getting back into shape; let the stress of work and life take over. Remaining fit and maintaining the weight is no more a priority to them. Post the abstinence from their favorite food, they tend to get back to eating with a vengeance. The same behavior is also observed in the case of drugs addicts, where they tend to get back to the addiction post a period of rehabilitation.

It’s also been noticed by doctors that most obese people tend to suffer from some kind of mental sickness, depression or self denial. Their only solace turns out to be junk food. The junk food has the same gratifying effect on the brain that sex or drug addiction has and provides them solace from the normal day to day happenings.

Also post the phase of obese people shedding the excess flab; they seem far more affected from “food reinforcement” as compared to the non obese who also had been on a diet. Hunger is not the motivating factor in obese people to make them run to food. They tend to eat more when depressed, anxious, worried or angry. Some obese people also complain of depression, anxiety and insomnia, after being deprived of their favorite food reflecting the some symptoms of drug addictions.

Also, the same food can have different effects on obese and non obese people. Researchers put obese and non obese women on similar diets comprising of having potato chips, candy bars, and aerated drinks and they noticed that though the non obese women tend to get tired of the snack within two weeks, the obese could have more of it and said that they felt “sick” of eating the same thing over and over again.

Jennifer Temple, lead author of the study, which appears in the August issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition said "Obese and non-obese women respond to high-energy, high-density snacks in different ways." She further elaborates "For us, this underscores a need for really doing detailed studies comparing obese and non-obese women in terms of how they respond to food to try to understand things that work better to improve healthy eating."

Post the study, Jennifer Temple concluded by saying “ I stop short of calling overeating an addiction. I don't think it has all of the same properties, but I think we can learn something about overeating behavior from the drug world. We're applying the same experimental paradigms to food and trying to see if obese people might be more susceptible to having an increased response to repeated food administration."

This kind of study can help us plan different diet for different people.