The Urge to Splurge

Imagine this conversation as you enter a supermarket to get a few groceries:

"Look at that new ice cream full of marshmallows, raspberry jellies and chocolate - I bet it tastes AMAZING."
  
"I'm sure it does taste great, but I don't need it and it is dangerous for me to get into foods like that.  Anyway, I am not hungry right now and it's just about time for dinner"

"I could get it for after dinner, and enjoy just a couple of spoonfuls.  That won't do me any harm.  I will count the calories in it. It's not like I am going to eat the whole tub..." 

That kind of internal monologue is endless in the mind of a food addict.  The intelligent, disciplined, self-honouring me knows that to have bought that ice cream would have been a fatal mistake. Yet the addict in me had me even consider buying it!! 

Yes I use the word fatal because that is what will happen if I get 'into the wrong food' for me. I will end up dead. That is what will happen if I listen to the addict in me.  

I'm sure you all read the recent news about the actor Philip Seymour's death due to a Heroin overdose.  Philip Seymour had 23 years clean and sober, and relapsed 8 months ago. Now he is dead.  That is how deadly addiction is. Addiction never sleeps, always has its own words of so called wisdom to impart and lulls the addict into a false sense of security over the amount of clean/sober/abstinent time accumulated. That is why it is essential for an addict to connect with their Higher Self/Higher Power so that is the voice that overrides the addict's deadly lies and poison sweet nothings.  Poor Philip Seymour was obviously disconnected from his Higher Self. 

Maybe you wonder why on earth I would compare a Heroin addict to a Food addict?   I do so because for me, when in the throes of a relapse from clean and abstinent eating,  the urge to 'use' food is overwhelming.  A classic example would be me standing looking in the fridge for something to eat after just finishing a large two course meal. I am not even hungry. Or me crying as I sit and shovel another 400 gram bar of chocolate in my mouth, the whole time saying to myself.. "why are you doing this Karen, what on earth are you doing?? You are going to kill yourself one day."  That is the truth.  

I have suffered from this dis-ease since I was 7 years old. Sweet food was my comfort, my friend, my stress relief, my happy time, my sad time - you name it, I could eat over it.  

I have found help over the years and learned a whole lot about the disease of addiction and what makes it tick.  I have had periods of abstinence and clean eating, only to relapse when my ego got in the way.  Relapse has happened to me on and off my whole life, hence the apparent Yo Yo dieting! 

Today, I am in a very different headspace.  When you have a serious health scare, and your body's joints scream in pain even when turning over in bed and your mortality is thrown in your face at the age of only 50, you either get REAL about this disease or die.  Start talking about it.  Don't hide it.  I am NOT my disease.  I am a likeable, intelligent, good woman who knows right from wrong, good from bad, sensible healthy eating from insane unhealthy eating.  I just have a disease that needs treated.  Today I treat my disease one day at a time. 

I am sure everybody gets the urge to splurge now and then, but when a Food Addict or Compulsive Overeater gets the urge to splurge it is a life or death situation.  

Today I chose life!  I hope you do too. 

By the way, I would have eaten the whole tub!!!!