A Realistic Look at Fighting Food cravings
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Every day as we walk around our world we see food addiction. We hear people proclaiming that whenever they eat pasta, or home-baked bread, or chocolate cake they just can’t stop. People are even prone to laugh at themselves and tell you flat out, they are addicted to something. But perhaps, when you really look at it, food addiction is not a funny thing. Perhaps if you look closely, you might even call food addiction a debilitating disease.
‘Debilitating,’ you might say. ‘That’s a bit extreme, isn’t it?’ Well maybe not.
It is often said that society favors thin people, and that the model for beauty is skin-and-bones. Now this is probably true and I don’t deny it. But you may be a size 14, and you want to be a size 8, and you know this is your ideal size, as well as very achievable. And yet you can’t get there because of all the cookies, pasta, and bread you eat, even as you say you don’t want to. Then you have a problem. And the problem is that you are fighting food cravings.
Now you’re in a pickle, and your self esteem plummets. You ask yourself, ‘Do I have no will power? Am I a weak-willed glutton?’ Now you go on crash diets. You begin to starve yourself. Your blood sugar becomes sporadic. You begin to snap at the kids and growl at your husband. Perhaps you spend 2 weeks doing this before finally giving it up. Now you go out and eat. For two weeks you eat whatever you want, whenever you want. On come the pounds you lost, plus a few more. And your self-esteem plummets even more.
All of this is what I would call a low-level food addiction, or the onset of more serious problems. Later down the line the cycles often get worse and worse. Your relatively harmless binging may turn life-threatening and bulimic. If not, your binges may become so extreme as to cause obesity. This in turn has you lethargic all day long, as well as lackluster and prone to sleeping. Your disposition is grouchy because your blood sugar is constantly shooting up and shooting down. And after a while your metabolism is destroyed, along with your self-esteem, and no diets will work any more.
You may now cross over into the anorexic spectrum. You might decide it is better not to eat at all, than to live like you do. This is when food addiction becomes truly perilous. If you continue the cycle, but without the bulimic/anorexic behavior, then by the age of 60 you will have adult onset diabetes. Your body will deteriorate from the over abundance of sugar producing carbohydrates. It will be worn out from all of that sugar, and you will have completely depleted your life-time’s supply of insulin. It’s not a pretty picture to paint, I know. But it is nevertheless accurate.
And this is the direction in which we are headed, even as we joke about being addicted to chocolates.
Fighting food cravings is no laughing matter for a lot of people. But there are sources of help. There is a program called Overeaters Anonymous, which I attended for many years. There is also a program called Food Addicts Anonymous. Both of these will give you the support of other people on a similar path, as well as their experience strength and hope. You will also need a food plan that deals with food as an addictive substance. And there are many other tools I will give you in subsequent articles. But to those of you who suffer, I will just say, yes you can live a healthy happy life with food addiction. But you need to reach out.
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