Those two terms don’t seem to fit together, but they can. Overcoming a food addiction takes work. When you’re ready to do the work, you can make it happen for yourself.

I’ve talked about stuffing down your emotions, feeling compelled to eat certain foods at certain times in response to specific emotions. I cannot say enough about the importance of keeping a daily journal.

What every food addict wants more than anything in the world when they feel out of control is to feel in control again.

Wellness, oddly enough, is rarely an issue when we feel like we are in control of our lives. What is easy to forget sometimes is that we can be in control only in the present moment. Once the moment is past, we have no control over it. We cannot change anything by reliving it.

We have choices in every moment until that moment is gone. Food addicts  tend to eat in response to deep-seated emotional trauma that can surface at any given time to remind us of our victimization. Yes, usually a food addict has been victimized in some way at some point in their life.

It could be a lost love, the death of someone important to the person, a terrible decision that changed your life forever. Now the experience or fragments of it remain locked inside awaiting release.

The pain of remembering “how it used to be” or “what happened back then” is more than the food addict can bear sometimes. And so we eat, until we are able to release the pain. And then we’re okay again, back in the moment.

Wellness is a great goal for anyone. Freedom may seem distant, recovery long, but there is always now. Now is where freedom lives. Now is where wellness rests. Now is the best time to be alive, to be anything.

Now will never come again, and it doesn’t need to. When you fully experience each moment, now seems to last forever.