Like there was any doubt that I’d get this. Still don’t get the cover art, though.
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With apologies to Mark Pilgrim’s original list:
There’s a gulf between liking to eat—overeating from time to time—and a true food addiction. It’s the difference between having a hangover on Saturday morning after a little too much fun on Friday night to having that hangover every day of the week—but nobody notices, because you’re a functioning alcoholic. What I’m slowly learning in recovery is that it’s not really a matter of willpower. I’ve got a lot of willpower: and my self-will is to eat until the cows come home. I have to redirect that self-will with a better will that keeps me from bingeing. I’ve chosen to do that through a dozen steps and reliance on a higher power. You may find other methods that work for you, and more power to you if they work. But man, everything I’ve tried to-date just leaves me worse off.
I dropped about 25 pounds over the course of a couple months late last year. Nowhere near enough, of course, but a good start. I have gained all that back and then some since, even at a time when the worst of my depression issues were behind me. In fact, I’d argue that my eating habits got worse because I was feeling better about myself—things were good, so why did I need to diligently check my weight and see where things were every day? Screw it, I’d dropped the 25lbs and it wasn’t even that hard. I was done eating to soothe the bi-polar, right? Just keep up with the diet and the exercise …
Yeah, right.
As long as I look at it as a process of recovery, of small steps along a larger path, of forgiving myself and others and making amends to myself and others, of recognizing that I could fall back in that hole at any time if I stop working at it, I’ll be okay. I didn’t get fat overnight, and I won’t get to a healthy weight overnight, either.
One day at a time.
… when you look at the theme on your site and go, “Man, that text is too small.” Anyhow, new theme installed and all that. That header comes from a photo I took back last March. I’ve used that as a background on my site before. A 940×198 crop of Andy O playing his guitar last March was my runner up; guess I’d have to crop that to just the body of the guitar, though.
My vision’s fine, though. It’ll go downhill around the time I hit 40, but hey, I’m not even 32 yet. There’s still time for me to revel in my better-than-20/20 vision before those decades of mocking the other nerds for their glasses come back to bite me in the ass. [Hey, we needed some levity around here.]
I couldn’t really leave you hanging there, could I?
Remember where I dropped that life-is-a-rope-we-weave-together business? I am also influenced by the concept of the Hegelian dialectic: thesis and antithesis meet, and gradually, synthesis occurs. I find that nature and nurture are synthesized—a reason that I’m an Open Theist who buys that there are some who are elect and some who choose to believe, but that is an argument for an entirely other day, right?—into a new whole. In my case, I’m sure that I was always going to have the propensity to be bi-polar, or to be addicted to food, or any number of my other personality quirks. The environment I’ve had around me, though, has certainly had an influence on how my life has happened to date, and how it’ll go forward. [I am not a determinist.]
In a way, I guess I’ve long known that I’ve got a food addiction, just as I’ve long suspected that I had some mental health issues to address. In both areas, I was convinced that I Could Handle My Shit, but addiction is something you’re powerless to control. In my case, I used the addiction to self-medicate. It’s an effective measure, of course: go read neuroscientific studies about the effects of food on the brain, especially with the pleasure centers. When your brain has you convinced that Life Is Really Kicking You in the Balls, you might be tempted to eat yourself out of that hole. You’re eating yourself into another hole, of course, but that doesn’t occur to you at the time—your whole goal is to Make It Stop Right Now.
Even if you’ve got a problem, you still have to admit that you have one. For me, there was a confluence of factors that brought the topic to mind again and again and forced me to confront the ugly reality. Loosely:
@gfmorris If he knows anything about addiction, he hides it masterfully in a sea of bullshit. Get your own word, PG. This one’s taken.
I eat when I’m happy. I eat when I’m sad. I eat for entertainment. I eat to celebrate with friends. I eat when I need something to do with my hands. I eat because it tastes good. I eat because I like food. I eat. I eat. I eat…I eat too much.
All this came to a head on Tuesday morning. I’m to the point with EMDR that we’re working on future templates: taking plausible situations and working on cognition to reverse negative behaviors and replace them with positive ones. Last weekend, I’d come to realize something: I didn’t want to grocery shop for a week at a time, because I didn’t want to have that much food in the house. Why? Well, because … I’d eat it in half the time. Then I said the words, “And I guess that makes me an addict.” Therapists use the term breakthrough a lot, and it was one, but it’s still a bit tender.
I think the realization and the admission are the key things here. The first of the twelve steps: “We admitted we were powerless over our addiction – that our lives had become unmanageable.” I would call being near four bills unmanageable. I would call not wanting to keep food in the house, for fear that I’d eat it, unmanageable. I’d call the 20 Chicken McNuggets I ate last night on the way home from Stephen and Misty’s, when I wasn’t even really that hungry, unmanageable. That, after Misty and I’d had a good conversation about how this is a struggle that we both share. I’d also call this evening unmanageable, where I’ve not wanted to eat because I didn’t want to give in to whatever my inner addict would have me eat tonight—now I’m writing on an empty stomach.
So, what now? Treat this as an addiction. Admit that I can’t handle it, which is the only way to begin to handle it. The hell of being addicted to food is that you can’t abstain from it. It’s damnably hard to abstain from alcohol if you’re an alcoholic, but you can do it one day at a time, making the conscious decision each day to not take that drink no matter how much your body may want it.
As always, I don’t share this out of some desire for self-aggrandizement or -flagellation. I share because it never hurts to know that you’re alone. I share because I believe in honesty, even if I don’t practice it enough. I’m not asking you to hold me accountable—unless you’re local to me, you really can’t even begin to do that. The most important audience for this site is me, because I have to face up to the words that I write.
One day at a time.
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