Hi. My Name is Colleen, I'm a Food Addict

Phil (my husband) and Julyn (my college-age, baby-daughter who is just home for Thanksgiving)  just left.  They’ve gone into Logan to run some errands.  I stayed home and gratefully.  It’s very cold outside–about EIGHT degrees!  That’s what the MSN weather service says, anyway.  Even if it’s twice that or THREE times that, it would still be WAY below freezing!  No thanks.  And then there’s my stenosis and sciatic pain that ebbs and flows around every move I make.  One second it’s a 3 (0-10 scale of pain), and the next second with the slightest straightening or twisting of my lower back or hips and it’s a 8-9 and I’m yelping out loud.  The physical therapy isn’t helping much.  Meds (celebrex once a day and acetaminophen once or twice a day) keep it within bearable range most of the time.  Anything I do to help it is going to have to be a major life-experience.  Either surgery or a LOT of weight loss.  I think I’ll opt for the weight loss. 

I’ve seriously thought about resorting to some kind of surgery to facilitate the weight loss, but I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that doing that isn’t what will work the best for me and do me the most good in the most ways.  What will do me the most good in the most ways is for me to go back to treating my self-defeating, self-destructive, life-denying urge to eat in the same way the founders of AA treated their “relationship” with alcohol–as an addiction.

So, here I am.  It is the day before Thanksgiving and there will be nothing but weight-gain amounts and kinds of food and eating going on all around me for the next couple of days.  I don’t have the strength to go “cold turkey” (no pun intended) today or tomorrow.  I can’t say about the day after that (Saturday).  After all, there are all those left-overs.  It usually takes a couple of days to clear them out.  So, what does that make it?  Next Sunday.  November 28, 2010.  How’s that for a day to surrender to this reality?  What reality?  The reality (just in case I missed it) that I have to go back to taking my unhealthy eating so seriously that I’m willing to treat it as a life-threatening, life-robbing, life-denying addiction. 

So this is my first entry.  I keep thinking I should be blogging this, not just hiding it away in my journal.  But, then I’ll have to keep it up.  I’ll have to carry through with it.  I’ll have to admit that I’ve done this before (been in a state of spiritual awakening, just like Step 12 puts it) and then let it slip away.  Why?  How could I do that?  It’s taken me years to become willing to take a long, hard look at that ( i.e. – to do the inventory it needs), but I think I’m finally ready.  I guess I’ll blog that, too.  That way, I won’t be alone with the deal and I won’t be so prone to turn and run back into my food addiction again.  Why?  Because I will know that you’re reading along and hoping to hear from me again.

I’ll be back on Sunday.