I am completely 100% powerless to my current dietary choices. Everyday I tell myself tomorrow I will wake up and eat healthily but within hours I have failed without much fighting against the pull of what I recognize as an addiction. It is as if I am on autopilot or I am suffering from sleep paralysis and I cannot shake myself from this compulsion to act in a manner that is against my best interest.
When I graduated college I began having chest pains. After visiting a cardiologist there was no sign that this was heart related, but the fear of having a heart attack led me to develop orthorexia. I researched nutrition and how it impacts health and I decided to adopt a very strict plant based diet. I enjoyed eating that way and despite being scared of having negative health outcomes, I am grateful because for a time I had changed my perception and relationship with food and as a result I had lost 80 lbs without trying.
within a few years post graduation I became overwhelmed with the stress of life. I hated working full time and sitting in an office for most of my day, my fiancee's health was worsening, my mom was diagnosed with heart failure, I lost my car, and some other minor things happened which just compounded the stress and frustration with life I was experiencing.
I had a realization, why do I want to maintain my health when my partner and everyone else will most likely die before I do? Why am I leading this healthy life style when all I am going to do is prolong my own suffering. I gave up my healthy eating regimen and instead purposefully ate in a way which I was hoping would kill me, but it didn't, all it did was cause me to gain weight, over 100 lbs in the course of a few months.
My dependency on food started because I always viewed it as a comfort thing. It was a way to make an enjoyable or unenjoyable activity more pleasurable. If I was going to play a video game or watch a movie as a kid, having snacks would make it more fun. If I was driving, having something to snack on made it feel less tedious. If I had to study or complete a project for school ordering food so I could settle in and eat while I work would help me feel more excited about the task at hand. Celebrating an accomplishment or a milestone should be done with a feast. If food could make these activities more enjoyably, then I could virtually make any activity enjoyable by including food.
Being able to work from home the past couple years has given me a new lease on life. My relationship with my fiancee is stronger than ever, I am able to support her while she works on overcoming her own chronic health situation and I realize that we still have a chance in this life to manage her symptoms and make choices which do lead to better health outcomes, the issue is that I cannot shake this compulsion to make bad choices when it comes to food. When we first met we were both relatively active. We enjoyed hiking and being in nature. We drove through the Adirondacks recently and talked about how we wish we could be the kind of people that are able to hike to the top of the mountains there to enjoy the view. I know overcoming binge eating isn't about weight loss, but when I consider that my life involves sitting at home feeling embarrassed of myself because I dress like a slob and have poor hygiene and I'm not as active as I wish I was, I just want to change because the life I'm living right now is not the life I know I am capable of.
And this leads me to my final point, a thought I had yesterday. If I can recognize that my choices do not serve me positively, that shows that there is a spark of something in there, a mindset that does exist, it is just that I am letting the negative and defeatist mindset win.
So my main question is, how do I overcome this and become the person I want to be?
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from loseit - Lose the Fat https://ift.tt/3E9iMMT
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