Addiction, Food Cravings & Weight Control

Julia Ross, M.A.

After founding six counseling treatment programs for addictions and/or weight control, Julia Ross is now working on her second book. That’s an indication of her success. As a counselor Julia soon discovered that people suffering from addictions and food cravings with the resulting mood swings had no more psychological problems than the rest of the population. She did discover they had basic physiological imbalances. For the past several years she has devoted herself to discovering how to help people find relief from their addictions and cravings using nutritional therapies. She has made amazing progress and is now helping not only those with addictions but individuals suffering from severe eating disorders to regain control of their lives.

Julia was naturally drawn to the helping professions but it wasn’t until her college years that she made the choice to pursue a career in psychology. While working at a part-time job at a psychiatric house she discovered she had a natural ability to help people deal with their emotional problems.

She soon learned that the success rate with counseling was not high in helping people to overcome addictions. The relapse rate, with chemical dependencies especially, is usually about 90%. In other words, only 10% overcome their addiction. Julia wasn’t willing to accept such a high failure rate nor was she willing to blame it on the clients. She was frustrated by a seeming brick wall and desperately wanted to offer something that would better help her clients. She turned to nutrition and started hiring nutritionists to help with the programs she offered. The addition of nutritional programs did help her clients and improved their success in kicking addictions.

She had been expanding and refining her nutritional programs for six years when she read a research paper about the use of amino acids. Julia is open to truth and guidance from a power beyond each of us. She feels it was this openness or her intuition that made the information in that research paper stand out for her. She knew this was information she must pursue.

The addition of amino acids proved to be an overnight sensation. Her success rate in helping clients overcome addictions and eating disorders jumped from about 30 percent to 70–80 percent. "People with addictions, food cravings and mood disorders," says Ross, "are addicted to alcohol, drugs and/or junk food which causes the mood swings. It’s a vicious circle." Her attention turned to eating disorders and weight loss early in her programs as she noticed most addicts who overcome their alcohol or drug addiction started using food as a drug. They craved chocolate, sugar, and desserts. This soon led to weight gain. As a result many, especially women, returned to alcohol or drugs.

Ross was open enough to acknowledge the shortcomings of counseling when she discovered addicts didn’t have any more psychological problems than anyone else. While counseling does help, her programs are highly successful because she helps her clients with their physiological imbalances. They needed something to reprogram the mood and appetite chemistry in the brain. Amino acids were the software needed for the reprogramming. Fortunately, it is not necessary to take the specific amino acids and other aspects of the nutritional supplement program forever. The special supplement program is taken only until the brain chemistry is balanced and the vicious cycle is stopped.

In 1996, the success of her program attracted the attention of a Native American community experiencing an epidemic of alcohol and drug addiction. The group was so impressed with the help Julia gave them in overcoming their addictions that the Indian Health Service for the state of California gave her an award.

Ross’ book The Diet Cure offers 8 steps to rebalance body chemistry to end food cravings, weight problems, moods swings and addictions. The introduction to the book says, "This is not going to be like any diet book you have ever read. I won’t mention calories except to forbid you to eat too few! I won’t tell you to tune in to your "real" appetite because I know that if you could have you would have long ago. I won’t tell you to discipline yourself because I know that your weight and eating habits are not the result of laziness, gluttony, or because you don’t want to exercise or eat well."

Ross’ program offers a lifeline to those who are suffering from severe eating disorders and addictions. Her program also provides answers for those of us looking for more balance in our eating habits, our moods and our energy level. As an added benefit if we’re too skinny, we gain weight and if we’re carrying too many pounds, we lose weight.