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Love and Food Addiction

Sep22

There is a reason people are addicts. No one chooses an addiction, especially a food addiction. Why would they?

Obesity runs rampant in the United States because it has become so easy to eat unhealthy foods. The quest for instant gratification flies in the face of honoring these bodies we wear from the time we are born to the time we die.

Fast food is easy, not as cheap as it used to be but still cheap, over-processed, and unprepared to provide the body with nutrition.

Fast, over-processed food is not meant to provide you with nutrients. It is meant to taste good and fill you up and that is what it does.

There is no energy involved. In fact, most people feel like sleeping after they eat at a fast food restaurant.

There is no love in fast food. It is salty, often greasy, full of fats–that’s why it makes you feel full temporarily–and it ruins your health.

Where is the love you used to taste in homemade pot roast with mashed potatoes made from real potatoes and fresh vegetables that we didn’t call veggies and say you had to eat them because they were good for you?

Food is supposed to be good for you. Food was once a way to express love.

But something happened along the way. Instead of enjoying all the tastes, flavors, and sensual feelings a meal once provided, food has become a tool to stuff down feelings and pretend it’s okay to be alone, ignored, and undervalued.

Food doesn’t feel good anymore. And most of the time, it doesn’t make those eating it feel the pleasure or nutritional benefits food is meant to provide.

This is particularly true for people with a food addiction.

Food addicts are missing an important, life-enriching nutrient from their daily lives. It’s not food we hunger for. It is love.

Love is the feast that fills you up but not out. It fills up your senses and tames your wildest hungers.

I am not talking about sex. I am talking about love. Without love, one can not overcome a food addiction.

With love, you can. It’s as simple as that.

It’s Never Too Late to Be Great! ®

Self-Medicating With Food

Feb17

Stress is everywhere in our lives today. The digital age has us moving at the speed of light with our bodies trying desperately to keep up.

Growing up, I hardly remember hearing about stress. In fact, women were thought to have it so easy that for decades we were not even considered to be at risk for things like heart attack. What did we have to be stressed about? What, indeed?

The cost of going to a doctor has risen to the point that many will not seek medical help unless they believe they are dying. Fear is a big motivator.

And why should they go to the doctor when they can go to a local drugstore and get pills for just about anything? They take the pills and if the symptoms subside, they’re happy.

Food addicts self-medicate too. When you are lonely or feeling depressed, the stress of that loneliness or depression might send you off frantically in the direction of the refrigerator or a nearby store.

While food addicts sometimes have a stash, it’s not like the person who hides the bottle of Scotch in the clothes hamper.

Sometimes we have only healthy food in the house. When stress strikes, we might have to go out and buy something less healthy.

The stress of the moment and the use of food as a coping mechanism are joined but not in a planned way.

Like other addictions, no one wakes up in the morning and says, “I think I’ll be an addict today”. Stress makes it happen.

Unbridled, uncontrollable stress–even if it’s just for a short time–is the driving force behind self-medicating with food. You self-medicate long enough and you become an addict.

You break up with your boyfriend or girlfriend, you stress, you eat. The experience causes you to recall similar emotional predicaments and you feel like a real loser. You eat some more.

“Why does this always happen to me”? More crying, more stress, more eating. Sometimes you have to eat a lot before the feelings of loss, anger, failure, worthlessness, depression, and so on, disappear. They do eventually disappear and you stop eating.

That’s how it is for the person with a food addiction. It’s better than some things, or so we tell ourselves, but it isn’t really.

Eventually, it would be nice if our hearts would heal and the symptoms would go away.

“Self-medicating” is a label that somehow makes stuffing down our feelings with food okay because it has a name and therefore a legitimacy.

Unfortunately, it’s just a mental stopover on the journey to uncovering the source of the problem that put you on the path to food addiction in the first place.

Once you can identify that starting point, you can embrace self-discovery and learn to let things be what they are.

You will be able to release yourself from the stress of the past and there will be no further reason to self-medicate with food.

It’s Never Too Late to Be Great!

Sleep Deprivation Plays a Role in Food Addiction

Feb12

Why is it so hard for women to lose weight, and so easy to gain “emotional weight”? Well, it has a lot to do with hormones. And sleep.

If you don’t get enough sleep, you will have a problem with two very important hormores: Leptin and Ghrelin.

Leptin makes you feel satisfied. It’s the shutoff valve that tells your brain you’re not hungry anymore. Ghrelin, on the other hand, stimulates hunger.

Our physical bodies live on energy. When the body is hungry, it needs food. Food gives energy. When the body is tired, it needs sleep. Sleep gives energy, too.

Sleep allows the body to recuperate from the stress of the day. When you go for days without sufficient sleep, hormones become imbalanced and brain signals get mixed up.

The body needs energy, plain and simple. Sleep deprivation, the prolonged absence of deep healing sleep, puts an incredible amount of strain on the body.

Energy is in motion all the time, inflow and outflow. If the body can’t get the energy it needs from one source, it will get it from another.

When you have too much Ghrelin in your system due to a consistent lack of sleep, you will feel real hunger and crave food, while not being able to satisfy your appetite, no matter how much you eat.

That’s because the body doesn’t want food. It wants sleep.

There are hormones in your body you probably have never heard of. When our hormones are all in balance, there are no blood sugar problems, no hunger, no stress, no food addictions, and no destructive emotions.

Nothing takes the place of sleep. No anxiety drug will do the trick, and it doesn’t matter if “it’s not your fault”. It’s not anybody’s fault, It’s just how things work.

You need the energy you get from sleep, and lowering your Ghrelin levels will help you lose fat and maintain a healthier lifestyle.

Recently, I have begun to stop evaluating my day at night. Instead, I evaluate it the following morning when I am much clearer and more prepared to take action, rather than allowing the process to disturb my sleep.

I practice recognizing when I am tired. As bedtime nears, the moment I feel tired, I close up whatever I am doing, run a hot bath and prepare for bed.

This small ritual has allowed me to sleep for five and sometimes even six uninterrupted hours on some nights–not every night, but more often than before.

My health is improving and the fat is gradually disappearing. It kind of gives the phrase, “sleeping it off” a whole new meaning.

It’s Never Too Late to Be Great!

Stress is a Food Addict’s Worst Nightmare

Feb11

Stress is what gets a food addict going. Plain and simple. That’s what emotional eating is all about. That’s how you get hooked. That’s how you get fat.

Getting fat makes you more stressed and so you eat as a coping mechanism. The stress gets worse as you lie to yourself about how much better you feel and tell yourself that things will be better now that you are calm.

But they aren’t. And they never will be until you learn to let go. Learn to let things be what they are, no matter what that may be. And learn that you don’t need to control everything to make your life work.

Food addictions aren’t like drug addictions and other types of addictions. You get second chances and third chances. In fact, you get chances all the time to get over your addiction. You can make friends with food. You can never make friends with drugs or alcohol, or sex if you allow it to control your life.

That’s what an addiction does. It controls your life. With a food addiction, you can take back control. You don’t need pills. You may need therapy.

You definitely need love , especially self-love, and support from people who accept you for who you are but allow you to change and are willing to be uncomfortable while you do it.

Food addictions and emotional eating–they are coping mechanisms, that’s all. When you learn to cope in other ways, you won’t need to stuff down your feelings with junk food.

You will respect your body because it is where the Authentic You lives, and you when respect yourself, you take care of You. Only then will others respect you.

What do you want the outcome of your life to be? For today? For this week? For this month? For this year?

Who do you want you to be? That’s all you have to think about. Not what others think you should do. Not what they approve of or don’t. Your life is about you. You are the star of your life.

Stress will always be present in good forms and not so good forms. Change is uncomfortable but it moves us forward.

Whatever you need to reach your goal or achieve the outcome you desire, be it short term or long term, the Universe will give you the resources to get there.

Your best life is one big leap of faith. Sometimes we make it to the other side and sometimes we don’t. But it’s nothing to be afraid of. Things have a way of working out.

Take the leap. Follow your heart. You’ll find that your stress will fall away and joy will creep back into your heart.

And you won’t crave food. You’ll crave life.

It’s never too late to be great.