I recently made a new friend who was gracious enough to confide that she used to sneak food as a child. She was heavy in grade school and high school and struggles to maintain her weight as an adult. She has an obese parent who has lost hope and she is desperately trying to help her children maintain a healthy body image and be nutritionally sound. She is a gift to me because so many people dare not talk about such things because of the associated shame. The National Eating Disorder Association quotes a national study that estimates half a million adolescents struggle with an eating disorder or disordered eating. They also state that 20 million women and 10 million men struggle or have struggled with an eating disorder in their lifetime. That's a lot of people! As a teenager I watched enough after school programs to know what bulimia and anorexia looked like, but I never considered for a moment that I had a problem with food. I just knew I liked to eat…a lot!
I am a binge eater and struggle to put food in its proper context: something that nourishes—not harms—the body. I am ashamed at my lack of control even as I tout living a healthy lifestyle. For me, binge eating is not a matter of "If" but rather, "when." When I chose to indulge my psychological need to consume vast quantities of food for the sole purpose of pleasure, I deeply wound myself. I feel I am no different than the cocaine addict who keeps chasing the high. I wonder what it is about my chemical makeup that my predisposition is to reach for food when I am sad, or happy, or breathing. I wish there was a way for me to enjoy certain foods and feel completely satisfied after consuming them, but there is not. This doesn't just apply to sugar or carb laden foods. I will overeat just about anything. In fact, you could say I am a compulsive eater. I love the feeling I get when I eat large quantities of food and if I do not exercise self-control, will continue to eat until I am sick.
I know this blog post is a little depressing but I want to offer hope to those who struggle. I will always struggle with my desire to eat but I have learned that my body can be mastered. I am no longer a slave to food or my desire for it. I have the freedom to walk away from things I really want (like ice cream, cookies and cake) because I have changed the way I view and consume food. I no longer look at ice cream with wide-eyed innocence. I know it is high in sugar and fat and will hurt my body even though I sometimes want to eat it anyway! Depending on my mood, a nibble can turn into an all-out feeding frenzy as I move from one unhealthy food product to the next. I won't pretend it's easy, but I have learned that the more I make healthy food choices, and the less I confuse my body with blood sugar fluctuations, the better I am equipped to combat my mental roadblocks in regards to processed foods. Knowledge really is power.
When all else fails, and I find myself at the end of the kitchen counter with a pile of containers and wrappers fanned out around me, I force myself not to despair. I found myself in just such a place Wednesday night. It hurts to give in to my food lust and realize, once again, how powerless I really am. I had to fight through a food hangover yesterday and the subsequent weight gain associated with binge eating. I forced myself to exercise and, I won't lie, it didn't feel great. When I overload my body with calories, it gets extremely sluggish. Funny how I don't think about that when I'm gobbling down my husband's gooey butter cake.
The point to all of this is—I could give up. I could, metaphorically speaking, throw in the towel and make a decision to eat myself back to misery. That's the easy lie of food addiction. Consume to numb the pain while I’m really making the pain worse. Food will never fill the holes in my heart as desperately as I want it too. I must resist the lies and cling to my personal truths. God loves me just as I am. My family loves me, flaws and all. I am a valuable person even when I slip up and binge. Yes, it feels better for a moment, but it will steal my hope and joy if I let it gain traction in my life. I am not defined by my clothing size, but my quality of life is important. There is no easy path when one is dealing with addiction. There is only sobriety or drunkenness and both are painful in their own way.
I remember watching a movie years ago about a man who decided to give into his alcoholism and drink himself to death. He gave up on his family, literally and symbolically, as he burned their pictures. He was tired of fighting. Someone came along during the movie and tried to save him but because of his deep despair, he rejected that help and died. It was a poignant reminder of what awaits all addicts who reject hope. I remember being horrified by someone who would walk away from the people who loved him because he "needed" to drink. I suppose that is why people call addiction a disease…those who suffer and struggle don't always understand why they keep going back—why it takes hold of a life and wrings the hope from it. The first step in fighting any addiction is to recognize the lie that there is no hope. We all make choices and no one promised us life would be easy. We all suffer with something, be it physical or mental infirmity, psychological torment, addiction or depression. To be human is to suffer in some capacity. But we must never stop hoping. Life is precious…much too precious to continue to make choices that only cause us pain.
