A Realistic Look at Fighting Food cravings
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How many times have you heard people say that they can’t stop eating cookies, or bread, or pasta, or candy? They may even laugh and say they are addicted to chocolate, as they pop the 10th truffle in their mouth. Well it’s time we faced the facts. We are addicted to many of the foods we eat. And when you really look at it, it’s not so very funny. You might even say, food addiction is a debilitating phenomenon.
‘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.
At this point you may wonder what it wrong with you. You may wonder why you have no will power. You might try diets and feel your mood swing, as you starve yourself and your blood sugar goes down. You may become irritable and grouchy as you ‘white-knuckle it’ with your family. Then you might give up and go eat all you want for a few weeks. You then might watch the pounds you lost come back on, with extra pounds as interest. And once again you are bound to feel there is something wrong with you.
This is what a low-level food addiction looks like, before it becomes full-blown. As it progresses, obesity and binge eating often set in. The binge eating causes extreme waves in blood sugar, and a feeling of exhaustion and lethargy. This feeling follows food addicts through their entire lives. Binge eating will sometimes lead to bulimia, as the ‘fight to handle’ extreme cravings rages on. And this, of course, is a perilous place to be. Either way, most food addicts’ metabolisms are destroyed and diets no longer work, and self-esteem becomes next to nil.
If you’re lucky, at this point you will just continue your cycle of irritability, obesity, and carbohydrate abuse until your body depletes its insulin supply. At this point you will become diabetic and sentence yourself to a shortened life-span, and an old age of pain and misery. If you’re not so lucky, you will convince yourself that it is better ‘not to eat at all’ than to fight the cravings, or to be fat. You will then become anorexic. If this is the case, judging by statistics, you probably won’t make it.
And this is the thing about which we joke at parties as we eat our 10th cookie.
I want you to know that it is possible to stop fighting food cravings. There are various programs of help for food addicts. The one I have attended is called Overeaters Anonymous. If your addiction is very extreme, you may want to attend a program called Food Addicts Anonymous. You will also need a food plan that does not include the foods that you are addicted to. And there are many other tools I can tell you about in later articles. But for now, suffice it to say, there are sources of help. And you can find them. You just need to you look.
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