Addiction...

When you see that word, I bet you think of so many things.  Drugs.  Alcohol.  Sex.  Gambling.  Shopping.

This is not about any of those things.

This is about being addicted to food.

I was touched off by this article.  Where most people would be like, "EW, GROSS!  Why would he do that?!", I just felt pain.  I know what he went through.  I lived it.  I'm still living it.

I was never as big as this gentleman was, but I know the pain and the despair that are coupled with compulsive eating.  You just eat and eat and eat to cover up any number of problems or feelings.  Then after you eat yourself sick, you just feel even more horrible about yourself.  You watch the weight pile on, but eat more because you're disgusted with your body.  You cry because you want to do something about it, but can't because you are too heavy and too lethargic to exercise.  Then you eat and give up hope.  Your life basically revolves around food, and, much like any other addiction, you have to have the willpower to break it.

I don't have that willpower.

For most of my life, I have been morbidly obese.  For most of my life, I have had a food addiction.  It is not something that you can bring up like other addictions, mainly because people think that you can't be addicted to something that you need to live.  How wrong they are.  As I sit here thinking about my life, I can recall so many instances of eating because I felt ashamed or heartbroken or disgusted with myself.  I can recall secret midnight trips to the kitchen to eat until I was bloated.  I can recall the self-loathing, the promises of, "I will never do this again", and the memories of the next day and starting the cycle over.

I still sometimes do that.  And I hate myself so damned much for it.

That's not to say I'm gaining weight at an alarming rate.  I'm actually not gaining at all.  I have a Lap-Band, although it hasn't been filled in a good long while because I lack money or insurance to get it done.  So I do have some restriction.  However, I am still able to eat crap foods and whatever else my heart desires, but in a much smaller amount.  Couple that with complete apathy about exercising, and you have the makings of not losing weight.  So I'm just sort of on an unhealthy plateau of my own making.....and it is miserable and scary.

The worst part of all of this is that I know I should be eating better.  I said that after I had a sort of heart attack scare at the end of August.  I almost kept that promise.  Then it just fell away like all of the other BS promises that I made in my life.  Now I'm just standing at the point where I wonder if this addiction will kill me.  After every bite of food I know I shouldn't eat, I wonder if this will be the night that food does me in.  It is a horrifying thought, but still I eat.  And eat.

I don't know what the point of writing this is.  Maybe it was just something I needed to get out because I literally felt pain after reading the gentleman's story of his own struggle.  Maybe I'm hoping that other people out there with a food addiction will not feel so alone.  I honestly think that compulsive eating does not get enough help, time, or attention because it just seems like such a phony thing to "normal" people.  It is NOT.  I am living (for now) proof of that.

So as the old saying goes.....

My name is Jessica and I am addicted to food.