I was pondering this while eating a cinnamon and raisin bagel–Thomas’, buy one, get one free. Boy, are they good! I decided they would be a better snack to have around than popcorn.

Diets don’t work. Willpower doesn’t work. Why? Because food addicts eat when they are un-comfortable, when they cannot be comforted.

We don’t want to eat. We want to be comforted. We want support, someone to listen without judging, a confidant to care about us and tell us everything will be okay, when we are feeling overwhelmed.

We give food addictions way too much power, and ourselves way too little. Emotional eating is eating when your heart is restless or broken and you are not in control of your emotions.

Emotions put on scary faces and jump out at you from everywhere, like pranksters on Halloween. But you can’t think fear away. You have to fill up with love so there won’t be any room for fear.

I know it sounds corny but people need to be cared about, listened to, and comforted. You may not carry your “blanky” with you into adulthood but the need for a safe haven is always present.

That safe haven used to be called “home” but these days home can be a very empty place. So we resort to filling that void with food. To the food addict, food and shelter are the same thing.

Food is readily available and you can count on it. How often can you find that combination?

There is plenty of advice available to food addicts, facts and opinions alike. Some is helpful; some is not, depending on the problem the food addiction is causing.

One thing is certain. Food is not the problem. No diet in the world can cure a food addiction. But changing the way you eat can improve your physical and mental health and change the way you respond to stress.

Tomorrow, if I can figure out how to do it, I am going to share with you about a program that helped me tremendously. I didn’t know how to eat anymore. I gained weight no matter what I did.

The packaged food programs weren’t successful. Nothing worked. I was afraid to eat anything and so I panicked and ate everything. Then in 2001 I got healthy.

Food addiction is a real problem and there are some real solutions. You can change the way you think of yourself and your relationship with food. Get healthy again, one good habit at a time.

When you learn how to do this, you won’t have to worry about winning every battle with food, because the war will be over.

One of the best ways to begin to rid yourself of food addictions is to start eating in a more healthy manner. A great way to do that is with raw foods. You may lose weight from all that chewing alone.

When I say raw foods, I’m referring to fruit and vegetables, sprouts, and lots of other great, tasty foods that are, for the most part, still in a natural state.

“Raw” refers to unprocessed, fresh, and highly nutritious food, your body’s favorite kind. Just to be clear, this does not include foods that have been fried, salted to death, overcooked, boiled within an inch of their life, or covered with cream sauces or those acidic sauces that send you running for the pepto-bismal.

Raw food certainly does not mean that you would have to eat raw meat or anything like that. A raw food diet ( a word you won’t see me use very often) means you are eating foods full of energy because they are alive with nutrients.

While food addictions and emotional eating are the long- or short-term result of unresolved emotional trauma, you can still be a food addict and not be obese. You can be a food addict and lose unwanted fat while you are working on resolving those buried feelings.

Hardly anyone eats healthy food in the addictive, ravenous state, although some do. Most people eat “the good stuff” when they are overeating. When emotional eating occurs, the rough emotional experience seems to call for smooth foods like ice cream.

Overeating, food addictions, and emotional eating don’t just occur. We make them occur. The food at fault is what it is. We are the ones we need to work on. Overeating on white cheese rice cakes is no better than stuffing down your feelings with brownies. It just takes more rice cakes.

In any case, the food addict usually does not choose healthy foods. When the body gets food that is fresh and juicy, full of flavor and vitality, and refreshingly energizing, the food addict in you will head for the hills, at least temporarily.

It’s very hard to stuff yourself with raw, healthy, nutritious foods because when you eat those things, your body knows when to stop eating. Food addicts eat like they’re on a mission, and they are.

That mission is self-sabotage, but more on that at another time. For now, the food addiction needs a vacation. When it takes a vacation, you get a vacation. And eating for energy may just be your ticket.

If you want to start getting your life and your body back on track now, click on the link above and check out this program. Or click over there on the right under Natural Rescue Remedies. Take back  your life. Just point and click.

Food addiction usually has some pretty deep roots. Here are five types of emotional trauma that contribute to creating a food addiction:

1. Shame. Shame is usually at the heart of a food addiction. Shame fans the flames of a food addiction like nothing else can. It makes you feel responsible for things you are not or were not responsible for, and that makes you feel helpless and not in control.

2. Parental Disapproval. Children want so much to please their parents. Children love unconditionally until they are taught differently. When children have to constantly guess at how to win their parents’ approval, they lose heart. They internalize the experience and embrace it as a failure on their part.

3. Perfectionism. Even though no one is perfect, there are those who find anything less than perfection unacceptable. If we are perfect, everything will be okay. Life changes. Things don’t stay as they are. Perfect moments change. It’s not your fault. It’s just life being life. You can’t control everything.

4. No Boundaries. Boundaries are like bridges with sides low enough to see over but high enough to keep you from toppling over if you get too close to the edge. Food addicts live on the edge. If you don’t have boundaries, for whatever reason, you will not feel safe. When food addicts do not feel safe, they eat until they do feel safe.

5. Revictimization. When a person has been victimized, there is a deep seated shame that accompanies the experience. Shame cannot be driven out. It has to be released. Repeatedly reliving the scenario, exploring possible different outcomes is futile. The event has passed. It must be faced, named, and let go of.

Food addictions don’t just happen. They are a response to emotional trauma that is still embraced and hidden away.

Food addicts stuff down their feelings with food. Eating is one thing we can control……………..until we can’t.

As long as there are feelings attached to an experience, positive or negative, it will continue to energize the food addiction.

When the experience becomes just an experience with no emotions attached to it, the food addiction associated with it will wither away.

All healing takes place in the present, not in the past and not in the future. We cannot control those moments, but we can be in control each moment as it is happening.

Every moment without judgment is a step toward freedom from your food addiction. Emotional eating may still occur but it need not be a threat to your well-being and sanity.

You don’t owe anyone an explanation as to why you eat or overeat. You will have no need to stuff down tired, old, hopeless feelings once you give them a name. It’s only shame till it has a name.

You can choose what you want to do, including how you want to eat.  Just like with anything else, the more information you have, the more choices you have and the more wisely you can choose.

What’s normal? If there is some pattern that every food addict can follow to get rid of food addictions forever, I’ve yet to see it– in print, anyway.

Everyone is unique. Food addiction is an affliction that plagues many women, and men as well. Since emotional eating or emotional anything is usually associated with women, it stands to reason that female food addicts are spoken of more often than male food addicts.

Because everyone is unique, their nutritional needs and patterns may not fit or even resemble those of others. Keeping the physical body in balance is a daunting task, and an ongoing one.

Our basic needs may be the same from day to day but the intricacies of each individual person’s needs cannot possibly be categorized and labeled as you would a can of peas.

Eating every couple of hours seems to be best for maintaining blood sugar and keeping the body in balance. However, there are obviously many opinions about what and how much a person should eat to attain and maintain one’s ideal weight.

What is one’s ideal weight? Who thought that up and how many people had to believe it for it to become the standard by which all people, especially those who are “over-weight” are measured?

The number of diets and weight-loss programs available today should be an indication of how well that measurement works. Goals have to be measurable if you are to know when you have reached yours.

Food addiction is not something that is impossible to overcome. It does, however, require a personal plan, one that is tailored to you and your body size and type.

Most important of all, you must have a support system in order to succeed in your endeavor to overcome habits like overeating, emotional eating, and food addictions, which sometimes develop over a lifetime.

Don’t ever underestimate the power of friendship in changing your life for the better. People who love and accept you for who you are now will love and respect you as you evolve into an even greater you.

Are you a food addict, or  are you a person with a food addiction? How do you see yourself?

One day you will learn the reason for your emotional eating. You will identify the source of your food addiction, the feelings you are stuffing down by overeating.

Be prepared for that day. When it comes, you won’t need your food addiction anymore. It will fall away because there will be no emotional pain to draw it to you. And you will be free.