Archives

It’s a Brand New Day

Oct29

Every day is another opportunity to learn more about yourself. The more we learn about who we are and what makes us tick, the sooner we can escape from the mental anguish that led us into the world of food addiction.

The secret is this: the way in is the way out. Get inside yourself. Notice and take heart with what you learn. Accept and love who you are.

Don’t psychoanalyze yourself. That will only lead to judgments. Judging yourself or trying to justify a problem with emotional or compulsive eating won’t solve it. That only leads to more stress.

Instead, keep a journal. Observe yourself and write it down. Write down your panicky feelings before you eat. It will change the way you respond to the stress that triggers the panic that fuels your food addiction.

Life does not have to be as stressful as most humans tend to make it. We decide how we feel about things. When we feel anger or despair or sadness, we are feeling emotions. Something is making us feel them. What is it? Not why, but what? There is rarely a “why” but always a “what”.

How do you want to respond the next time you feel that way, which you certainly will? If there is a plan in place, you can be prepared the next time you are caught off guard, like a fire drill prepares you for a fire.

Something as simple as writing your feelings down in a journal before acting on them can mean the difference between giving in to your food addiction and walking away. You deserve a chance to choose a brand new day.

Food Addicts Need Plenty of Rest

Oct4

Going without sleep can seriously impair your ability to ward off the temptations of seasonal candy and social treats.

I’ve been sick from food poisoning the past few days days and I’m not out of the woods yet. Needless to say, I am not thinking of food addictions at the moment.

Rest seems to be the most attractive thing on the menu for the time being.

It’s easy to forget that a simple necessity like sleep can have such a positive effect on one’s health. Sleep can heal so many things, including the negative effects of overeating associated with food addictions.

Stock up on ZZZZZZZ’s and nap when you can. The brain loves it and those hormones that make you want to eat everything in sight are nowhere to be found.

Emotional eaters need to be pampered with non-food warm fuzzies. Sleep is right up there at the top of the list when it comes to results.

So good night, sleep tight, and don’t let the bedbugs bite.

Food Addicts, Don’t Forget The Love

Sep21

I was reading Darya Pino’s column in the Huffington Post yesterday. It focused on a book written by former FDA commissioner, Dr. David Kessler.

According to the article, Kessler’s book, The End of Overeating, outlines the basic steps of habit reversal and advocates, among other things, “developing positive associations with healthier foods while demonizing the hyperpalatable foods we have been conditioned to crave…”.

Dr. Kessler uses two terms, hypereating and hyperpalatable, that I had never heard before. At first sound, hypereating sounds like overeating, eating quickly, or an eating disorder that makes you eat faster than the rules allow.

Hyperpalatable foods can only be those very tasty, fat-, salt-, or sugar-laden foods that seem to be the first ones food addicts grab when an emotional trigger clicks.

I can’t in all fairness take exception to Dr. Kessler’s opinions and suggestions without reading his book in its entirety. Out of context, you can make the spoken or written word mean anything you want.

I’m not so sure, however, that  using the same techniques that make you loathe cigarettes work when it comes to comfort food. I am an ex-smoker and I will never feel about my comfort foods the way I feel about tobacco.

The article caught my attention so I decided to mention it here. To read the entire article, click here.

Not everybody who is fat has a food addiction, this is true. And no professional wants to label people without first categorizing them or their ailment.

Nevertheless, a food addict has a food addiction, or multiple ones depending on how you look at things, and that’s just the way it is.

Only someone who has a food addiction, or has had one and healed it can be an expert on how it feels, what it does to your life, and how you live with it while learning how to heal it.

I say “heal it” because a food addiction is caused by unresolved emotional trauma that stays with you until your heart heals and the pain is banished.

While the brain circuits may respond in similar ways to certain stimuli, the underlying cause of a food addiction is what must be discovered and understood in order for true healing to take place.

You can’t think your way out of a food addiction. Mind control and reprogramming will not succeed unless your goal is to ignore and forget.

True, food addicts may eat foods that aren’t good for them, and in unhealthy amounts. But understand that we are eating for comfort, for that moment of peace when the emotional, and sometimes physical, pain is gone.

We don’t eat to forget. We eat to be free, and we pay a high price for that moment of freedom.

The sooner we get to the bottom of what is causing the addiction, the sooner we can string together those moments of freedom until we have a life again.

No diet in the world will ever work until the heart is healed. There is only one way to heal the heart and that is with love.

Food Addiction and Obesity

Sep14

Everywhere you look there are men, women, and children who are overweight to the point of being obese. Obesity is a crisis in America.

But is everyone who is obese a food addict? Not necessarily. Remember that food addiction is caused by an unresolved emotional conflict that manifests itself in the form of compulsive eating.

The food addict eats because panic causes a hormonal imbalance in the body and there is an overwhelming urgency to eat as much and as fast as you can until the feeling goes away. Food is the drug of choice for the food addict.

A person can become obese by eating when bored, or just because something tastes really good so they just keep eating. Obesity for many is the result of habitual overeating for no particular reason.

It need not be connected with trauma, as it is in the case of a food addiction. It may be a case of consuming more calories than the body can burn as energy.

Emotional eating and food addiction can start when a person realizes that they are unable to lose a large amount of weight as quickly as they gained it.

Unable to deal with the excess fat and the humiliation that often accompanies it, emotional eating can easily become a coping mechanism.

When you’re fat, does it really matter to you if you have a food addiction? Do you care about your health? Or do you just want to not be fat anymore?

A person who knows why they eat compulsively may be in a better position than one who doesn’t know how they gained all that weight.

Food addicts are driven. When the addiction kicks in, we are on a mission. We eat uncontrollably for indefinite periods of time and then, as suddenly as it started, the urge just stops.

It’s kind of like a seizure. You know what’s going on but you can’t do anything about it. You just have to wait until it’s over.

Knowing what causes you to stuff yourself when something sets off an emotional trigger gives you a chance to deal with the emotion and possibly avoid the compulsive eating binge.

The more you can recognize what is happening when the panic feelings start to escalate, the more you will be able to confront the person or thing that is causing the panic.

When we can name our fear, it loses its power over us. Once you know what you’re dealing with, you can deal with it.

While not all food addicts are obese, and not all people who are obese are food addicts, the tables could certainly turn either way.

Perhaps the best way to confront your personal situation is by accepting yourself in your present state without judgment. Keep an open mind and heart.

Don’t label the symptoms. Identify the causes and go from there.