Not your conventional title, and certainly not a post that I'm jumping up and down to write. I mean, in all honesty, I don't have to write this at all - let alone share it with all of you lovely folks, but I feel it necessary to share my experience with you, to help anyone else who might be in a similar situation, and to shed some light on my own personal struggles, so that others can understand me better.
As the title implies, I have an unhealthy relationship with food. That being said, we're not talking about an unhealthy relationship with cake or chips or pizza, I'm referring to
all food. Now, a lot of people are going to be hugely uncomfortable with that overwhelming generalization that all food is problematic for me - in fact, most people are probably going to scoff at that preposterous thought. That's okay, you don't have to understand or even accept it about me, but it's true.
A while ago, God and I had a heart-to-heart. A real raw and emotional conversation about one of the "weeds in my backyard." It was just after I lost my first 80 lbs, stepping on the scale and weighing in under 200 lbs for the first time in... well, as long as I can remember. Just after that, I went hog-wild. I figured it was time I start living 'normally,' and eating like everyone else - even if it was "healthy" or paleo versions of regular food. I stopped counting my calories, I stopped caring about the quantity of food I was heaping on my plate. Everything went bad incredibly quickly. Right around the time that I hit rock-bottom emotionally, God spoke to me, in the still and quiet way He does. It was in this heartfelt and emotionally vulnerable moment that a realization, revelation or epiphany, came to me: I have an addiction - to food. Now a lot of you will be uncomfortable with calling me an addict, and if it really bothers you, you can use the biblical alternative, "glutton." If the bible talks about it, it's gotta be true, no?
My relationship with all foods is hugely unhealthy and not in the slightest bit 'normal.' I don't think about food or look at food the same way other people do. A regular person can spend their day thinking about work and people and special events, while I spend a large portion of my day thinking about food: how to avoid it, what I'd like to eat, how much of it I'd like to eat, what I should eat tomorrow, if I can afford to eat another apple, if my stomach is actually rumbling right now, if it's normal that I'm 'hungry' five minutes after eating that banana, if it's 9 o'clock yet so I can have my morning snack, if I should go to Superstore on my way home and pick up a melon snack tray for later, if I should go open a can of the zero-calorie, sugar free soda in my basement, if I should sweeten my tea with honey or Truvia... the list goes on and on. And honestly, this is no understatement. The degree to which I think about food on a daily basis is sickening, even for me. It's a non-stop parade of food-focused thinking. Even though my mind multitasks so I can be a productive and semi-functional individual, my subconscious is
always on food. I wish I could turn my brain off most days, because it's overwhelming and hugely distracting. Even trying to explain this is difficult, because I don't think people realize how much of a constant battle I go through every minute, trying to withstand temptation and stay on track. How incredibly difficult it is to go to someone's birthday party and deal with the regular barrage of food-focused thoughts, not to mention the extreme temptation and pressure from my environment to eat a ton of food that I can not have, but desperately desire to shove in my 'pie-hole.'
Take for instance, an incident a few weeks ago. I found myself in the middle of a binge - it came on suddenly, and somewhat unexpectedly. Now, the typical person will binge on guilty pleasures and things they've been depriving themselves of... I do not. I will binge on my supper, on apples, bananas, grapes, almond butter, rice cakes, liver sausage, turkey pepperoni, cheese... the list goes on and on. The specific day I'm referring to, I consumed 6+ apples, an entire bunch of bananas (about 8), several heaping spoonfuls of almond butter, three bowls of healthy taco salad, several mugs of tea sweetened with heaping tablespoons of honey (not to mention the tablespoons of honey that I 'snuck' in my mouth as I was portioning it into my mug), several hundred grams of grapes, a few rice cakes... the list goes on. Hopefully you can see the problem here. I can overindulge on anything... my mind and my stomach do not have the "off" switch that my husband's do. All food is seen as fair game, and if I can self-medicate with it, I will. And that's essentially my relationship with food - it's all about self-medication. Numbing feelings I don't want there, finding an all-encompassing distraction from my frustrations or anxieties... soothing my hurts and pains, feeling the rush and surge of desperation as I shovel food quickly into my mouth. It's an intoxicating thought to me.
For that reason I really struggle to have things in moderation - sugar-free gum and candies are completely off limits for me, even if they do fall within my diet guidelines, I can't have just one piece of gum, I've got to eat the whole pack in a day. I can't have a cup of tea with honey because then I want ten super-sweet mugs of honey flavored with tea (nope, I didn't screw that up...). My challenges don't only lie in loving to chew and swallow and taste food, but in the quantity I can get inside of me. If I'd let myself sit down with a 5 lb bag of apples, I'd eat every single one - no problem. In the same breath, you could hand me an entire pack of chicken wieners and I'd eat all of those too. And then I'd drink an entire six-pack of zero-calorie, sugar-free ginger ale. And I could still eat more. Sure I'd feel sick, but my body doesn't get repulsed at the thought of more food - it will handle the pain, so long as I keep feeding the addiction. Even on a day when I binge, I can still eat paste the point of being physically ill. Getting sick with the flu? No problem, I have told myself that even if I can't keep it down - eating is the right thing to do, especially in excess, because think of all the nutrients you just flushed down the toilet. There is virtually nothing that will keep me from eating.
A lot of people say there is no such thing as "food addiction," but it begs the question that if that were true, why isn't everyone losing weight on their diets? And in that regard, I feel this is very true of me.
I feel frustrated when people ask me when I'm going to go "back to normal." No one would ever ask an alcoholic when they were going to start stockpiling Jack Daniels again, or when they'd start having another drink at a social function. I realize a lot of people don't realize the severity of my situation, but it's a very real and active battle that I have to overcome single day. And to be honest, a lot of people can't relate to the way being trapped in a body with a brain obsessed with food feels like. It sounds extreme and crazy, and too far out, and for that reason I'm sure I'll get some flack for posting this.
But to say that this post is any less than the honest-to-goodness truth about my struggle with food would be a lie. I do suffer from an addiction to food - all food, not just the food that's 'bad' for you, not just the food that's 'good' for you, but for anything that I can physically stick in my mouth and consume. That also being said, some foods trigger a more severe reaction than others - especially desserts and junk food. If I eat a honey-sweetened, gluten-free, black-bean brownie, regardless of how 'healthy' it is for you in comparison to a regular brownie, my body is triggered by the habits, behaviors and memories that eating brownies used to illicit in me, and I need more. So I have to stay away from those 'dangerous' items that cause me to fall into sin.
This addiction to food is a part of me, but it doesn't define me. And that's where the title of this blog post is a little misleading - I may struggle with the problem of food addiction, but it doesn't dictate my life, or rather, I don't let it. I mean yes, I will deal with this my whole life, and that being said, my entire life is now different because I won't ever be able to go back to the way I approached food over a year ago. My outlook has to be completely different and I need a more regimented and restrictive approach to how I deal with food and what I allow inside my body. But I don't plan on letting my addiction rule my life - I can still eat, and eat the foods I like and the foods I crave, I just have to work on my approach and I have to lean heavily on others for support in tempting situations.
I don't blame God for this sin that I struggle with. It's a sad genetic inheritance from Adam and Eve - a product of sin and death in this fallen world. We all have our demons that we have to face and battle with, this just happens to be one of mine. While my relationship with Christ isn't everything I want it to be, or everything it should be (for that matter), I've been learning to take this cross to Him every day to ask Him to help me carry it. Most often, He'll take it right off my shoulders and carry it for me - although some days He walks with me, and we carry the burden together. In that way, I am frustrated that the past year was a more difficult journey than it had to be, because I was trying to do it on my own. I didn't lean on God for much of anything in the past year, and it made battling this addiction even harder than it had to be. Today I can proudly say that I need Christ's help to drag this ball-and-chain of food addiction. I can never truly be free of it, but I can learn to live with it with His help, and on the really tough days I know I'm not alone. And instead of identifying myself as a "food addict" or "glutton," I can confidently define myself as saved, redeemed, forgiven, and God's very own special project - a work-in-progress. Which, if you ask me, is a much happier outlook all around.
That being said, I'm sure people will have questions or concerns about my post. If you do, please come to me with them. Don't let them stew in your mind when I'm more than willing to clarify or answer what I can. I hope this sheds some light on how, despite the fact that I've lost over 100 lbs, I'm still a work-in-progress - both physically and spiritually. I am not perfect, and this journey has been far from a flawless execution. I'm an imperfect person, trying to salvage my mistreated, neglected body and working on understanding and learning how to cope with a frustrating, and often debilitating, addiction such as mine. Every day is a struggle, like I said earlier, but it's an obstacle that I don't have to deal with on my own anymore. And for that, I'm really happy :)
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