This is my very first blog entry and I am excited to chronicle the changes that have happened in my life over the past year. I want to talk about food, and how it is perceived. I guess I should start from the beginning.
I have struggled with my weight for most of my life. The pictures of me as a very young child I was thin, but after that overweight. I have often wondered why certain people fall into the patterns that lead to obesity. You might ask if its learned behavior, or if its a genetic predisposition like other addictions supposedly are. I think in my case it was a learned behavior.
The perception of food is the key.
What does that mean exactly? Well, it means that the way you think about food and what its purpose is in your life will impact how you eat. This may seem like a simple concept and thin people either understand this intuitively, or are taught. But for me, coming from a family with obesity it was a foreign idea. So the question becomes, what is the purpose of food for obese people?
Food is not unlike drugs. It is powerful in the way that it an affect your mood and behavior. When a person is eating a healthy diet, the cravings for the foods that are killing you disappear. I want to reiterate that last point. THE FOODS THAT ARE KILLING YOU. Cancer, obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and the list goes on, are all interconnected with our diet. Eating foods that make you obese are addictive. Which is why people continue to eat them, even when they know its killing them. The simple truth is that the business of food production has taken a higher priority than our health. But for now lets get some more details.
I have been able to lose 100 pounds in about 7 months. Most of it I lost in the first 5 months. I have about 30 more pounds to go to get to what I think will be an ideal weight for my body size. This is the second time I have done this. I feel that I learned some very valuable lessons from the process and by the grace of God, I will never have to do it again.
My next entry will get more into how that was done, both times. And why I pray this time with the new knowledge I have acquired I will be able to maintain a healthy eating plan and not relapse into abusing food. What I would like to bring up today is the psychological element of food addiction.
Depression, anxiety, fear, loneliness, anger, self destruction, boredom, and habit are some of the many reasons I have abused food in my life. Another common reason for abusing food is the association with celebration. In my family, food was always the center of every event. My family didn't drink, so food was the center of holidays, the reward for accomplishments, and the comfort in despair. Never did it occur to me as a child that food is fuel.
I never grasped in my young mind that the real purpose of eating is to supply your body with what it needs. It was not to feel better about your day, or to have a fun night out, or any other reason, but to give your body fuel. The reasons for why this perception of food as reward, is so powerful in our culture is for another post, but this realization was incredible for me. And it has changed my life.
When you stop thinking of food as something to give you pleasure, and start to see its real purpose, eating healthy is much easier. This is not to say that the food I eat now is not delicious, because I eat way better now than I ever did before. I do however think differently about what goes in my body. I think that this change in perception has been the key factor in my weight loss success.
What I hope to do with this blog is teach people how to free themselves from the bonds of their food addiction, and open dialog about food in America. Obesity is destroying America more than drugs, weapons and crime. It is effecting our children and needs to be changed.
Check back tomorrow and I will try to explain how I did what I did, and how you can do it too. Thanks for reading. Please comment.
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