weight 2

Food is a real issue for me, like several members of my family in fact. I think my sister put it best when she said that we “really like bad food.” What She meant by that was that we love to eat, which is bad enough, but we love terrible things. Rather than having a taste for fancy deserts and high dining we tend to prefer things like double cheeseburgers and croisandwiches. I believe this is probably more true when it comes to me.

I hesitate to so far as to say I am/was addicted to food but it has some striking similarities to chain smokers. When you start to read up on the mindset of a smoker you tend to find a common theme, that being that they see the cigarettes as a little reward. Make it through the first two hours of work, reward. Make it to lunch, reward. Have a stressful conversation, reward. This is much the same approach I took to food. Except I felt the need to reward myself a lot, apparently I had a lot of achievements during a normal day. Starting with waking up. I probably packed 800 calories away before 10am most days. The sick part is how much I thought about that first fix before I got it. Basically from the moment I woke up I was fixated on when the first food break was coming, would it be BK, or McDonalds? Maybe even Steak n Shake, they have amazing hash browns. I would make sure that my stops that morning took me by the restaurant that won the war that day. The first bite of that food was so satisfying it was like a weight off my shoulders. A little bit of relief.

The real ridiculousness comes right after I finished eating, because I would crumble the bag, toss it to the side and immediately start planning on what I was going to get for lunch, the meal forgotten and the excitement of the next filling my mind. It really seems quite sick when I write it down like this, but the only thing I thought about was if I was going to have an energy drink, and how good that would be, or just have a soda and wait for that drink for lunch. What I am really struggling to put into words is just how satisfying eating that food was. Or when I got my hands on a Mexican coke, how the anticipation would make my mouth water, and how I would plan to make a stop in the area in the next few days just to get a few more. I could feel my stress bleed away for a minutes with the food or drink I chose.

I think what made it go from a problem to a borderline addiction was when I decided on an entire criterion for giving myself candy, soda, energy drinks, or fast food depending on what happened in a day. Sell something, food. Angry customer, food. Bad talk with boss, food. Small fight with wife, food. Completed job, food. Are you beginning to see a pattern? I didn’t. Not for a long time.

When I decided it was time to make a change in my life I realized it wasn’t something that could be done by half measures. I had to go all in or not try it all, I tried to do that several times, but as I mentioned earlier if I had something to blame, I did, but something my cousin and uncle did made sense to me, and that is what I am doing now. I haven’t stopped eating all the bad food, but I don’t have 3 Mexican Cokes in 10 minutes anymore.