A Food Addicts Confessions

“Come, eat!”
“No, thank you, I am not hungry.”
“Only dogs eat when they are hungry, people eat to celebrate!”
(Dialogue from a Bollywood Movie)

I am a food addict. I discovered I was a food addict three years ago when I was unable to eat what I wanted, when I wanted. The separation from food was excruciating. I didn’t know who I was without it and I couldn’t think or better yet, I couldn’t stop thinking of food. Finding out you are a food addict is like looking in the mirror one day and realizing you are not the nationality you thought you were or that you actually have brown eyes instead of blue. What!  I am Mexican and I am FAT!  When did that happen?

When I was alone and eating, I didn’t see the fat gathering around me. I just knew that for a moment in time I was happy. For a moment, there weren’t any bills to pay, any tests to study for, any family problems to figure out or any sadness that could hurt me (because everyone knows you take a ‘time-out’ from life when you are eating). It was when I was with others that I was made very aware of my fat, because I saw it reflected in their looks. One day when my friend (who is very pretty and thin) and I were walking towards a picnic her family was having, her father looked up and saw us coming from the parking lot. When we arrived to where he was, he looked at us both and said “There is no comparison.” You can’t imagine how much those words hurt me. You would think that at that moment I would reach my hands to the heavens and proclaim that I was no longer going to be fat just to spite him….but instead I had a couple of plates of food and ran, like I always did, to my ‘safe place’ to my ‘time-out from life’, to bliss in a taco.

I guess I could sit here and blame my parents for my addiction (and believe me, I would be justified), but now that I am an adult, I understand that they didn’t have an easy life either. Besides, I am no longer that little girl who loved to sneak food into her room late at night (after hearing her parents fighting), or that teenager whose heart broke when her friends were all asked out to dance and she was left behind (every single time) and I am no longer that young twenty year old trying to make everyone like her. Yet, the little girl, the teenager and the young woman looking for her life are always with me. I carry them inside and protect them the best I can as I forge on ahead and live my life as a food addict. (Why couldn’t I get a good addiction like sex or shopping….whatever!!).

So, what’s the difference between a food addict and a drug addict, smoker, or alcoholic? Well, I am not sure because (thank God) I only have one addiction. But the way I see it, drug addicts don’t need drugs to live, smokers don’t need smoke to live and alcoholics don’t need alcohol to live. If any of them quit ‘cold turkey’, they would be fine. If a food addict quits ‘cold turkey’, then we would be Anorexic….(not to mention we would probably eat the turkey..No matter if it was cold). Food addicts have to learn how to walk the middle road when it comes to food because we can’t avoid it. Have you seen how many food commercials there are? Or how many restaurant and fast food places you come across during a short drive……thousands…millions!!! (Okay I am exaggerating for special effects..especially here in my small rinky-dink town) Cigarette commercials are few and far between, alcohol commercials are a little more prevalent but When have you ever seen a commercial offering 2 crack pipes for $3 and you can ‘Super Size’ them for an extra 95 cents?

The bottom line is this, even though the Food Network channel is my porn and I am possibly less of a food addict and more of a ‘Turrets Eater’ and I will never be a size 5, I now know that I am more than my addiction. I am more than all the sadness in my childhood; I am more than dumb comments made by mean people. So I will continue to fight my food compulsions as I make peace with the fact that I have them. I will continue to try and follow the road to health and even though I might falter and fall, I know how to get up now. I know that I am meant to get up and live a healthy and happy life.