Addiction

It finally sank in to me that I have a food addiction. I'm not sure I want to share all the gory (or cheesy?) details. But as I have lived my "no food rules" life here, I identified--several times--that my behavior was destructive and was leading me down a path I did not want to go.

Every night I would go to bed, vowing to do better the next day. I would wake up with new determination to follow some kind of guidelines. And then I'd go downstairs and real life would start, and I didn't have an ounce of discipline to stick to what I promised myself I'd do. I'd get the cereal down for the kids, and totally cave, eating 2 or 3 bowls myself. And after that, I was in no mood for "healthy" food the rest of the day. And then I'd go upstairs at night and wonder why in the world I did that, and make the same promises to myself that I'd made the night before.

Eventually I just stopped caring at all. My clothes would get tight and I'd just get more. I hated what I was doing to myself, so I stopped paying attention. No more mirrors--I did my makeup on a tiny little mirror in a compact. I stopped fixing my hair--I've been tight ponytail girl every day for longer than I care to admit. No pictures, no mirrors, no thinking about it. Because I didn't know what to think! I didn't know what kinds of rules to follow, because I was so terrified of working hard to lose it again if I was not losing it for good.

My main addiction is sugar, although I can't claim that all the other horribly bad food out there isn't part of it. I just love yummy food, and I love a lot of it. My portions are out of control, and sugar reigns supreme. It got to the point that no matter how much I wanted to change it, I couldn't.

I started wondering when I was going to have a heart attack, or when I was just going to drop dead because my body couldn't handle it anymore. And even that wasn't enough to make me stop. I thought about all the things I have to live for, and all the things I want to do with this life, and I thought about Jared and the kids and how much I really just want to be healthy enough to suck the marrow out of life. And still, day after day I kept choosing food instead.

I know what it's like to be addicted. Wanting to stop, but not being able to. Needing that next "fix" of sugar is not that different, I imagine, than someone who needs their next fix of drugs, or nicotine, or alcohol, or pornography. And although every other part of my life was awesome, and happy, and everything I wanted it to be, and I knew I was risking it all, I kept choosing sugar. And crap. I tried to ignore it, I tried to tell myself it wasn't a big deal.

But it is a big deal. I know enough to know that it is a big deal. I am not in denial that this is a major problem that needs some pretty hefty intervention. All those other times I lost massive amounts of weight, it was all about the weight--all on the surface. I have never dug in real deep to get to the heart of the issue.

If I was ever going to try and lose weight again, I knew it could not be a surface effort. I had no idea how in the world I would dig deep, because there is no trigger I can identify. I have just always, always been this way.

I spent years vowing that I would never go to an addiction recovery meeting. But this time I was so desperate that I knew I should do it, if I could. Unfortunately, for our stake those meetings are 40 minutes away, on a week night. At this point in my life, that is not even in the realm of possibility. But I do have a manual, and I decided it was time to pull it out and give it a go.