Tuesday, March 25, 2014

When eating too much Isn't enough.

Food has always attracted me, but as something more than a means of sustenance. Sweet foods especially have been this way. I was raised, practically, on sugar food. I ate candy bars, donuts, pastry and pancakes.

A daily habit I had when in high school was to buy a cinnamon roll and eat it before the first class. It didn’t take long to discover by doing such eating I could sooth myself. Sweets produced a relief that felt like amelioration. I could depend on the feeling if I ate sweets. And always, the pleasure of eating sweet tasting food itself was a primary factor in the simple quest to feel better.


I was never overweight until I reached my thirties. When I got a job as a newspaper reporter, especially, I found the pressures of reporting and writing under deadline hard to handle. Everyday I’d eat big lunches at McDonald’s. I may have seemed ravenous on account of hunger, but this eating was not a response to hunger. I was eating to cope with the stress of the job. My stomach expanded into a pot belly.

What emerged with food in my life became troublesome. I didn’t want to be fat, but simultaneously, I wanted to eat without restriction. I could lose weight. I went to Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, Herbal life; I always lost weight. The catch for me was I couldn’t maintain the weight loss over the long term. I began to feel discouraged and said to myself, “Well buddy, get over it, you’re just going to have to be fat.”

So for years I ate in the clutches of what I now call an eating disease. It’s an addiction like the other addictions we hear about---alcohol, drug, gambling and sex addictions. This is food addiction and it causes food binges---eating for the sake of eating.

I still struggle today with eating. But I’ve found a solution that is always there for me. It’s to associate with people like me who have the same condition. It’s a program developed by people with the condition to arrest it with the use of spiritual aids. It works to achieve long term, lasting weight loss. It’s also a trek into the self to determine and to have the root causes of the illness healed.

I’m not going to disclose the name of the program in which I’m involved. However, if you are troubled by the way you eat, I encourage you to google something like “ways to solve eating problems.” Do some browsing about the matter---this thankfully is a problem with solutions.

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