control issues written sept 10, 2008

Food is an easy control issue for me- I want it, I can eat, I don't have to have boundaries because I am in control. Am I? Or is the food in control of me? Often times I have thought that my food obsession is due to the fact that I am a food addict, perhaps because I am. "Hi, my name is Allen and I am a compulsive overeater"!
Compulsive overeater’s have these trigger foods that will spawn them into a feeding Firenze like they are crazed! All is well in life until they surcome to the urge to pick up the wrong food- then they find themselves in a whirlwind eating anything in their path! My trigger foods- easy: raw sugar, chocolate, and breads. My inner-self will become a person that is unidentifiable to people me so well know. Moodiness, grumpiness, and hatefulness are at the forefront of the descriptive terms of me during this craze!
Why does a person do that? Why do they return to the things that put them in craze? It's called an addiction- compulsive overeating. Only through the grace of God can HE help me say no to the things that obsess me. I can't do it- it doesn't matter how much control I like to have the fact of the matter is food has control over me. Interesting that when I discovered that cigarettes had that control over me I was able, after the third time, to quit. I learned that I had to take control over the cigarettes and never let one pass over my lips again; not for a special time, not for my birthday, NOT NEVER! This is a control that needed to happen! Smoking is not essential to living- perhaps helps us die younger but not living! But food isn't so much that way; I have to continue to eat. Recently since starting this journey I have came to this point of reconciliation with food. I no longer hate food, but rather I understand what food isn't good for me. God has given us some awesome, non-processed food to eat on this earth!
As I sit down and enter my calories and my activity for the day I am overwhelmed by the amount of control that I have, with His help, over what I have eaten and the activity I have completed for the day! God has helped me to think about what I eat before I put it in my mouth- ‘why am I eating this’, ‘is this quality food’, ‘am I more thirsty or hungry?’ Processing what I'm about to eat is a huge battle that is becoming daily more a victory as I have been a compulsive eater for so long.
Life is becoming more serene thinking about it and enjoying the taste of good food and how it makes me feel after eating it; and I'm controlling it and not it me!