Tag Archive | Food Addict

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!

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.

Gimme Some Real Food!

Feb7

Where does your food come from? Do you know?

Throughout most of my life, I have eaten foods whose origin was easily determined. We had gardens and raised chickens, and bought milk from farmers in the area. We had apricot and peach trees. We raised strawberries and got apples from neighbors who bartered with us.

We canned and pickled, and kept frozen meat in a locker downtown. The vegetables from our garden were so delicious you could eat them raw right off the vine or stalk. Everything was prepared from scratch, and amazingly enough, it seemed very convenient at the time.

I have growing concerns about the prevalence of processed foods in schools and the ready acceptance of convenience foods in today’s households.

The power Monsanto wields over our food supply with their GM crops and patents is alarming. What the FDA considers good, nutritious food is not necessarily what I care to eat. Last year I planted an organic garden. This year, I will plant a larger one.

Here in the Tampa Bay Area, it is difficult to find Cod, Scrod, and shrimp that do not come from the coast of China. The seafood has no taste except for whatever flavor sauces add to it. Even then, it is mushy and has the consistency of a wet rag.

Why would anyone think it preferable to transport fish—everyday fish, at that—around the world for consumption by people who have lakes and/or oceans within 500-1000 miles of them?

Do they not take into consideration the polluted waters from which these fish are harvested and the amount of time it takes to get them from the source to the table of the consumer?

Eighteen months ago, I could buy fresh frozen Atlantic Cod Loins and Alaskan Salmon at my local Sam’s Club. It was expensive but it came from native waters and always tasted fresh and flavorful when I baked it with only lemon juice and balsamic vinegar.

No sauces or other seasonings were necessary. The tender fish flaked easily and almost melted in my mouth.

Most everything they sell now is fried, processed, sauced up, and greasy. Supposedly, that’s what the public wants these days. Cheeses are added to the already high fat content, and at least half the shoppers I see on any given trip are fifty to one-hundred pounds overweight.

Salmon is farm-raised, Cod is breaded, Cod loins are not available anymore, and frozen Mahi-Mahi has developed an unpleasant back taste.

Even Grouper, our “state fish” rarely has any flavor without breading and sauces. We haven’t had Halibut steak in this area for fifteen years or more. It is becoming a chore to find a nice place to eat out, and I rarely order fish anymore.

It is frightening to think that we could one day become the society depicted in Wall-E, one of the most telling movies I have ever seen.

But we had better wake up soon or that may become the fate of half the people in our beloved United States.

Not everyone is a food addict or an emotional eater but the stress is mounting and the ranks of the morbidly obese are swelling in a way that we can no longer ignore.

It’s time to wake up and do what you can. Plant some herbs or a small garden, a tomato plant, some parsley–something.

Refuse to put that garbage in your bloating stomach. Chicken, hamburgers, potatoes–those aren’t junk foods. It’s what is done to it before you buy it, and sometimes after you get it home, that makes it junk food.

You’re in control of this one, so make your demands.

Enough of this junk. GIMME SOME REAL FOOD!!!!!

Pucker Foods for Food Addicts

Jan31

Are you ready to pucker up and kiss some of that emotional overeating, food addiction fat good-bye? Well, these two foods will definitely help you in that department. And they’re good for you, but you probably don’t want to hear that.

Food addicts and over-eaters of all kinds often don’t care if a food is good for you or not–at least not in the addiction state. We just eat whatever is there, as long as it’s very salty or very sweet or very something to match the intense emotions we feel when we eat helplessly.

But hey, we have our sane moments when our emotions are okay. It is in those moments that we have the opportunity to do things that support our body’s needs. It’s a chance you don’t want to pass up.

Lemons and vinegar are two really effective fat-burners and here’s why. They help you get your body out of its acid state  into alkalinity.  That’s when healing takes place. You can’t heal anything in an acid state. When you’re dealing with too many plumped up fat cells, your body is under duress, and it needs to heal.

I have two lemon trees in my back yard. This year, I’m really making the most of them. Lemons are great. I use half a fresh lemon in a glass of iced tea a few times a day. I drink a lot of iced tea. And I use the pink stuff. I confess.

You can squeeze one or two lemons over chicken or fish before you put it in the oven or on the grill. You can also just use a slice of lemon in water if you’re not nuts about the blank flavor of water. It does make a difference in the taste. And your body will thank you for it.

Another great food is vinegar. My favorite is balsamic vinegar. I put it on fish when I bake it and use it in stews and baked beans, as well. Vinegar also takes the acid out of things.

If you use balsamic vinegar on meat and fish when you’re baking it, or even in a pot roast or chili, you will find that you won’t have gas or get heartburn.

There’s no need to stuff yourself with good food. It  defeats the purpose of eating angry panic foods to stuff down your feelings like we do when we are stressed and uncomfortable.

Good food is a treat. And while you may add one of these two liquids for damage control, you’ll love what it does for your food and your body.

If you like baked fish, like New England Scrod or Alaskan Salmon as I do, squeeze a generous amount of fresh lemon juice and balsamic vinegar over your fish before you put it in to bake. You will be amazed at the incredible sauce the combination makes. Of course, it makes any fish taste fabulous.

The combination also works well on sweet red and orange  peppers. Bake the pepper strips until they look like they’ve been fried.

No fat and so delicious, you can eat them as a snack if you bake them long enough. Pay attention to the aroma so you’ll know when to take them out. Imagine eating something that tastes as good as potato chips and doesn’t give you heartburn or gas.

I hope you’ll give it a try. Sometimes little changes in our daily meals can make all the difference in the world.