Hello - my name is Margaret and I am a carbohydrate addict!
I have the healthy eating knowledge on what to do to loose weight and eat healthy balanced meals. I have the cooking skills and kitchen tools to do what I need to do easily and in a time effective manner. I sought out accountability groups and partners and diet challenges to try to keep myself motivated and on track cause I do have a competitive streak to me. I even created this blog as an additional form of accountability to myself and reflective option for my journey and yet time after time I find myself riding the weight loss journey roller coaster!
I get going and I do really well sticking to my plan, using my tools and seeing success that I want and then inevitably I SABOTAGE my efforts and not just in little ways but in horrible ways that see myself regaining any success I have had in a VERY short time.
This is literally ME over and over again .... I will be doing great spend 4 months working it really hard with clean eating and going to the gym regularly and will loose anywhere from 30-40 pounds and than I will have a day where I succumb to social pressure and reward myself with a treat that is 'off plan and BAM the next thing I know I have not only gained back the 30-40 pounds I lost but sometimes a few of their friends they made while they were gone tag along and I weigh more than I did when I started again!
It is infuriating and very hard not to keep beating myself up at my failures. To try to be reflective and learn by rereading my food journal and now the blog option to see what went wrong and why and to dig deeper into the why I am so afraid of success that I sabotage myself by self medicating with FOOD even though it is not what I claim I want for myself!
I know I want and need to be healthier and stronger - I am so exhausted living in chronic pain and the extra weight only makes the chronic pain WORSE having to carry around that extra weight on a body full of pain but the reality is that the high carb diet actually seems to feed my inflammation and pain so it is a double edge sword of I get an adrenaline rush that helps with pain from eating crap but it is than short lived because it quickly feeds the inflammation making my pain worse again! I know in my heart I WANT better for myself!
One of the things I am beginning to realize is that for me carbohydrates are an addiction and as a result are not one of those things I can manage with the 'everything in moderation.' mantra I normally try to live by. When it comes to my relationship with high carb foods it is really no different than my prior addiction to nicotine and drugs. I have an addiction disorder so for me it has to be an all or nothing because like other addicts my down fall is always rooted in telling myself "I can have just one treat because its a special occasion" and the next thing I know I am hiding in shame parked in my van because I do not want anyone to see because I know it is wrong but the one side of brain does not care to listen and it is woofing down a bag of Doritos and chasing it with a McDonald's Milkshake like my life depending on it while the other side of my brain is arguing why are you doing things you do not want this for yourself!
Than the dance of binge followed by guilt and shame begins and decline follows ... I stop recording in my food journal because I am ashamed to record that I ate a whole bag of Doritos and chased it down with a huge milkshakes while hiding in my van and I hate 'lying' not recording everything that goes in my mouth so because I know I will likely cheat again cause the one side of my brain is insistent it wakes me up in middle of night and it fights me every step at the grocery store putting crap in my cart I do not need and should not buy, I stop participating in the challenges and dodging accountability partners because I am ashamed, I stop blogging because who wants to read about my failures! Than a few weeks of decline I am so far gone in the cycle that I stop even hiding and just eat whatever whenever where ever cause I am just to tired and mad at myself to care.
So from yet another failure I definitely know I just cannot do moderation at all but the challenge remains is that unlike with my smoking and drug challenges I had in my youth I cannot just wall myself off from others who smoke or engage in doing drugs while I get clean of the substances and than just avoid situations where I am around people who smoke or do drugs so I can remain clean of that addiction behavior ... and it has been over 20 years since I have done either and I can tell you that even now when I do find myself around those temptations it is SO HARD not to cave in and you do not face the same pressure to engage in those things as you do when it comes to FOOD. People do not tend to 'offer cigarettes or drugs to people and if they do they tend to respect the first 'no thank you' that most addicts try to have so that they are not faced with the continued pressure of saying no before falling off the wagon.
Unfortunately I cannot just stop eating or avoid food or eating situations so the challenge is learning how to navigate my addiciton while still engaging in the addictive behavior of eating ... something one has to do several times a day and as a caregiver I am also faced with preparing food for others who are NOT food addicts and want to have access to sugar and are young and still need to have high carb grains in their life.
How does a food addict better advocate for themselves in social settings when faced with temptations? It can be so frustrating in those settings when people say 'oh come on you are doing so well on your diet, you look great, you deserve a piece of cake.' and even when we have the will power to say "no thank you" the first time we continue to be faced with social pressure in those settings to 'come on do not be a party pooper just join us in eating the treat's like if you do not partake in the tradition of binge eating at a party you are ruining their fun of the occasion!
As I sit here reflecting I am honestly at the point that I am tempted to start telling people who do this to me in social settings 'Actually I am not on a diet I am a food addict and if I eat that sugar laden devil treat I will find myself in the back alley of the gluten free bakery binge eating donuts like their are air while I mentally chastise myself for being so weak of willpower to just say NO in the first place. So thank you but offering me that when you know I am avoiding sugar/grains is like offering a crack addict a pipe and telling him he deserves a puff because he has worked so hard" because sadly society does not seem to respect that initial 'no thank you.' of willpower and seems to prod and push and in some experiences actually tease and make fun of you if you continue to say no to partaking in the treat foods.
Perhaps it is going to take the courage of being 'in your face.' about our dietary needs so that people can, like other addictions, learn to accept that sometimes moderation is just not a choice for some people because their brain is not wired to have that kind of willpower to say NO the next time. For the addict that one puff of tobacco, one drag of the crack bong or one brownie bite and as soon as their brain gets a snoot it it will just keep at them day and night with the cravings and the whisper of the brain of just once more until they give in again and again and again to those cravings and that little voice until they either hit rock bottom to try get help to get clean AGAIN or they die of their addiction! So the only way to prevent that is to NEVER let their brain get access to the addictive agent again!
Honestly in my experience quitting the smoking and drugs was WAY easier than trying to maintain control of what goes into my mouth!
So they say the first step is admitting you have a problem the next step is finding the find the courage to once again start over and once again risk failure.
Margaret
Live Well, Laugh Often, Love Much
Be Totallyawake4-life
