My Addiction to Food

My desire is to only eat food that is healthy and helps my body. I say that but what is evidenced in 26 years is that I do not want to eat healthily. I am guessing this is because I want my mother to feel validated in taking care of me. Or maybe it’s because I want to have something to complain to other people about so that people feel sorry for me so that I get attention.

Perhaps I should try not complaining to anyone about my problems and see what emotions come out of me when I do that.

So maybe I am lying to myself. I would like to say that I don't want to be addicted to food. But if I keep acting out my addiction, then the truth is I want to be addicted to food.

But I can say the following. Somewhere inside of me, I do not want to engage in the fevered cycle of addiction that I have with food: eating while driving, scarfing down food without enjoying it, feeling fearful over what I can eat around friends, trying to please people around me by eating things they would like me to eat, eating massive amounts of something to avoid painful emotions, eating stimulating food to avoid painful emotions, filling my stomach beyond capacity so that I feel sick instead of feeling the sickness associated with painful emotions… and so on.

Now, if only in little ways, I am definitely trying to know and I am praying to God for help on how I can cure myself of this addiction.

I want this physical addiction out of my life. At this point, I don’t want to cure it halfway or partway. I want it to be gone. If possible, I want it to leave and never come back. I want to know why I was addicted in the way that I was and I want to realize what Jesus calls the causal emotions that underlie the addict and feel through causal emotions. I want to feel the shame and the guilt and the sadness and the fear that is beneath my addictions. Jesus says that when you deal with the cause, you will no longer have to deal with the effects.

The way I will know that the addiction is gone for good and the core emotion has been processed is if the following three things occur:

1. I have not stopped myself from engaging in my addiction through sheer force or willpower
2. I make sure I have not begun a new addiction that covers over my fear.
3. The addiction is completely removed from my life which is evidenced by a desire to not engage in the same behavior and a lack of desire to cover over any emotional pain using the addiction. In other words, I would rather feel pain than cover it up with the addiction. I can, in effect, walk by the favorite foods I used to eat and not feel an addictive urge toward them but be completely emotionally uninterested in them. I would also have a desire to eat delicious food that I know would boost me and make me vibrant