Tag Archive | Addiction

Taking Time to Heal

Mar3

It is important to take the time necessary to heal the pain in your life. It’s hard to be patient in this new world where we want everything to happen now.

Hurt can come in the form of physical or emotional pain. Healing takes time and requires patience and trust. If you use food to cope with your pain, the pain will increase as the consequences of your actions present themselves.

Overeating only adds to the problem and causes you to see time as the enemy. Living in the moment and dealing with life’s upheavals as they come along will make it easier to let the pain run its course.

Daily life doesn’t stop because you overeat or feel shame or embarrassment about your food addiction. Life goes on with or without you.

You are too important to let time pass you by. The consequences of addictive behaviour take time to heal. You may want to set a time and say it will all end when that time arrives, but it may not work out that way.

One thing that is important to remember when you’re making a plan is that whatever else it may be, it has to be something that works for you. It’s all for you.

You do your part and let time do its part. Take time to heal. Make time to live. Food addictions and addictive behaviour of any kind isn’t planned.

It is what happens when we don’t have a plan. What is the simplest plan you can make so you can avoid being caught in the trap of your addiction?

Focus on each moment giving it your full attention with no distractions and no judgments. Observe and be present.

Show up for your moment and time will take care of the rest.

When You’re Ready to Leave Your Addiction Behind

Feb15

One of the real challenges in the fight to overcome an addiction is leaving your old life behind.

Food addiction, drug addiction and alcohol addiction have one thing in common. You have to leave a big part of your former self behind in order to move through your addiction and get on with your life.

I don’t drink except for a sip of Newcastle Brown Ale every now and then, and I have never “done drugs”. Getting drunk or high never appealed to me.

My parents didn’t drink or smoke or do drugs. Maybe that had something to do with it.

When I was growing up, there were lots of jokes about drunks and Jesus, people walking into a bar or driving off the side of the road. Every comedian told jokes about drunks.

No one joked about drugs but they weren’t popular then, and of course, alcohol wasn’t really perceived as a real drug.

I laughed along with everyone else when my brother did an imitation of our banker who we saw inebriated on more than one occasion. The impression was so hilarious and true to life that I would laugh until I cried. Forty years later, it’s not so funny.

I don’t know any jokes about drugs or drug addicts.  Lots of things that seem funny when you are under the influence lose their comedic value when you live sober.

Why can’t there be a place where you can go and specific things you can do to end your addiction once and for all? Then you could just leave your addiction behind, walk away and never look back. If only.

I can’t compare my food addiction to the horror of a drug or alcohol addiction, but I can see some parallels. As I move forward spiritually in my life, it becomes more and more necessary to leave people from my past behind. If you want to leave your addiction behind, that’s part of the deal.

When you make the commitment to begin recovering from your addiction, you have to give up the life that went with it.

You can’t go out with your former drinking buddies. When you do, you feel bad because there is nothing to say. You don’t fit in anymore.

I imagine it’s the same with the people you used to get high with. I can’t go out with some of the people whose company I used to enjoy. When I’m around them, I eat things that defeat my efforts to live healthy.

Being around them makes me want to eat. It makes me become that person whom I no longer wish to be. I am becoming someone else now and I like this me better. They don’t.

If I put myself in stressful situations, I know I will respond with food if I seek support from certain people.

Even though I have to leave my food addiction behind every day, it will continue to pop up. Sometimes I will win and other times I may not. Recovery is ongoing. I’ve learned to be okay with that.

If change is to occur, however, I cannot surround myself with people who will not allow me to change, no matter how much they love me or I them.

If your support team makes you want to overeat, get drunk, or get high, you have to leave them behind. That’s the only way you will be able to leave your addiction behind.

Do what you have to do. Make new healthier friends. Move on. Don’t ever give up.

It’s Never Too Late to Be Great!

Forget Fat! Get Healthy!

May20

I wasn’t sure if I would continue this blog or write another. I’m opting for the latter. One thing I’m absolutely sure about is that I will keep at the gym thing and make it work for me. I like exercising out of the house, even if it is inside a gym.

Being healthy is what I care about now. You can only say so much about fat and food addictions and then it’s time to take action. This is my time to take action.

What Scripps Research proved in March I have known since the first time I had a blackout from hypoglycemia brought on by eating too much candy. Now it’s time to live a new life.

You can’t fix an addiction, even if it is only a food addiction. You have to choose a new life and live it to the best of your ability.

I will check in from time to time until the new blog is ready. I’m ready to lose the weight so it’s time I put all the knowledge and information aside and do what I know to do.

Forget about fat and get healthy. Have a kickass healthy life. Healthy is better than anything. It makes everything else possible.

If you have a story you would like to share, step up and comment so you can inspire others as they have (hopefully) inspired you.

Later……………….

Your List of Addictive Foods Can Change

Dec13

Just because you’ve felt an addiction to a particular food doesn’t mean that it will always affect you in the same way.

In fact, foods that once comforted you in times of emotional crisis can lose their appeal and you may never crave them again.

This happened to me with frozen yogurt. When things felt bumpy, I craved something smooth. What worked best was Publix Blackjack Cherry frozen yogurt. When I traveled, I actually worried about what I would do if I had some emotional crisis when I was on the road.

Publix is a Florida company and I traveled outside the state. Can you imagine frozen yogurt being that much of a priority on a road trip? And you know what? It was never an issue, because when I was on a training assignment, I was doing something that fulfilled me.

When I got home though, it was a different story. All the paperwork and getting ready to leave town in two days–it was overwhelming.

I’d stop at Publix on my way back from the airport and pick up half a gallon of Blackjack Cherry. I’d eat the whole carton and then go to bed.

It became a ritual. That food topped my list of addictive foods for years and finally last year I lost my taste for it. I didn’t do anything. It just happened.

Some people think that once you’re addicted to a particular food, you never get over it. But you do. One day you just don’t want it anymore. You don’t really give it up. It’s more like it leaves you.

So don’t be too hard on yourself when you give in to your food addiction or go on an emotional eating binge. Adding guilt won’t make you feel any better.

Just know that everything has a life span, even food addiction. Never give up on yourself. Just keep working on letting go of things that no longer serve you.