TL;DR - I love food so much that I've only been able to lose weight with the help of diet pills (I AM NOT CONDONING THE USE OF DIET PILLS). Without them I feverishly consume. How do you break the addiction?
*This might be long but hopefully it'll entertain you at the very least. I doubt many normal people have these habits. I'm going to try to explain it without sounding like a complete psycho. I am not exaggerating in any way and am 100% serious about this.*
In the past I've joked about having food addiction but now that some of my habits have been pointed out, I don't think it's much of a joke anymore. I struggle with losing weight because I love food so much and have some arguably disturbing habits when it comes to consuming. Habits I've never been able to break. Food is basically a sacred/ritualistic thing that gives me such pleasure I can't get away from it. I want to give you examples of what I do so you can determine if I have an addiction (or some kind of mental illness) or not. Or if you've gone through the a similar situation, how you got past it.
FLAVOR COMBOS AND SIDES
One thing that has been the foundation of my food consumption is flavor combos. My favorite flavor profiles are savory, salty, meaty, cheesy. Foods with these flavors are probably the most damaging to your waist line. But I love them so much that I will always try to incorporate all of these flavors into one dish or meal. ALWAYS. If I have one single flavor profile in a meal then it just wont work. It will in fact make me even more hungry.
For example, if I just have a steak on my plate, I will eat it (reluctantly) but it will in no way satisfy me. Keep in mind that I love steak. The problem is there NEEDS to be sides to complete the flavor combo. Mashed potatoes and mac and cheese on the side and maybe some vegetables to balance it out. Otherwise the steak, no matter how massive or delicious, won't satisfy me. And lets say I eat the steak and then am presented with all the sides. Well that won't work either. If I eat them all separately then I will still be hungry. They all need to be consumed at once for that perfect flavor combo. Which brings us to our next section...
THE ORDER OF CONSUMPTION
This part is kind of gross now that I see it typed out.
So we have our flavor combo meal ready. Steak, mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, and broccoli. Well now I need to take a bite of each and a drink and chew that all together. Every time. Every bite is a collection of everything on the plate plus my drink. It's always been like that and it gives me the most pleasure while eating. It's a cycle. Steak, potatoes, mac and cheese, broccoli, drink, chew, swallow, repeat. If I run out of one of those foods I just pile on more. Otherwise, the flavor combo won't be complete and I'll slowly get more hungry as I eat.
This causes an issue with late night snacking with me. Say I open a box of crackers and start eating them. I'll just have a few crackers before bed. Well wait... that goes good with cheese. Break out the cheese. Well hold on...I need pepperoni with cheese and crackers. Add that on. Wait now I need something sweet because I just overloaded on cheesy/meaty/savory. But not too sweet. Okay lets have some cereal. Well I can't eat just cereal because that's only sweet. Let me have a peanut butter sandwich on the side...
So basically it leads to me standing in front of an open fridge for an hour, feverishly ripping food out of it and eating it on the counter.
TEASING
Alright so we've gotten past that. Now what about when I order food to take home? You better believe I'm not touching that shit while I'm the car driving back. Even thinking of that pisses me off (more on that in the next section). Instead I'll wait until I get home. Then maybe I'll let it sit just a little more before tearing into it.
What I begin to do is "tease" myself with the food. I know it's going to be so fucking good but the longer I wait, the better it will taste. Sometimes I might wait an hour before eating it.
I remember telling one of my friends that I do this to which he responded, "...that's the most fucked up thing I've ever heard."
THE IMPORTANCE OF SETUP AND LOCATION
Remember how I said that eating in the car pisses me off? I rage pretty hard just thinking about it. I have to be comfortable and clean when I eat my food. Not in a disgusting car getting crumbs everywhere and drinks sitting in disgusting ass cup holders with sticky shit in them. My heart rate is actually rising as I type this. It actively grosses me out and turns me off to eating which is probably why I get so mad about it.
I NEED to be sitting down in a comfortable and clean environment with my eating station set up. Eating station? You're probably asking, "What in the fuck is that?". That's what I call the table and set up I have when I sit down to eat. Let me explain.
Say I ordered pizza. I will get 2 dips, usually wing sauce and blue cheese (flavor balance). Then I will also have a cheese steak hoagie. Top it all off with chips. All of this is laid in front of me in an order where I can easily perform my order of consumption. Essentially it's like an efficient lineup so I can stuff it all into my mouth to get that flavor combo I'm after. It would be (from left to right), cheese steak, chips, pizza, wing dip, blue cheese dip, drink. Then I take a bite of each and finish off with the drink.
CUTTING DOWN
The silver lining to all of this is that I'm not over 300lbs...yet. I try to stay active because I know if I don't then I will eventually become a bed-ridden obese monster. The amount of food I can consume because of the need for flavor combos is pretty immense. I can sit and feed for hours on end, continuously combining flavors and moving back and forth between flavor combos. So all of this has led to me being stuck at 235lbs for a while. My weight slowly creeps up as my metabolism deteriorates further.
If I try to eat healthy foods or foods with one flavor profile I will literally get headaches. I remember one of the hundreds of times I've tried to eat a salad with chicken for lunch instead a hoagie/chip/mac salad/soda combo. It will make me hungrier and crave other foods even more. Once I'm done eating the salad I usually get headaches until I eat whatever it was that I was craving at the time.
The one and only time I've been successful at weight loss is with the use of diet pills (I AM NOT CONDONING THE USE OF DIET PILLS). I don't want to use them anymore. While it killed my appetite it also gave me heart palpitations. Scary shit.
So what do you think? Do I have an addiction? Can you beat a food addiction? Or do I just like food a lot? Or maybe OCD? I'm not asking fro a professional diagnosis. Just some idea of what I have or how I can beat it. Thanks.
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