Real Talk: Food Addiction

Every day I see something, somewhere, commenting on some one's body. Typically, it revolves around the person's weight. You see a post about a celebrity on Facebook, a woman who would be categorized as overweight, and scroll through the comments to see a range of negativity and some support. Comments like "She needs to put down the pizza" or "Would it kill you to hit the gym every once in a while" seem to be the general theme of these internet suggestions. Here's the thing that I think we, as a society, have yet to grasp: food is as real an addiction as any drug. *GASP* "What? No way, the person just has no self control. They just need to try harder." In some cases, sure, maybe that's all it is. But as someone who has struggled for probably the majority of my life with using and abusing a substance that is so easily available, it's so much more than that. And I don't think I'm one of just a few people who deal with this. I think it's something that most people who have struggled with their weight can relate to. Some people turn to alcohol, some to sex, some to illegal substances. Then there are those of us who turn to ice cream (or whatever your "drug" of choice may be). I doubt its as easy to purchase any illegal drug as easily as one can walk into a supermarket and purchase whatever it is you need to make yourself feel better. We live in a world that still doesn't recognize mental illness as being as serious as cancer, and we live in a world where if someone is overweight, we automatically assume they're lazy, they have no self control, they don't care, etc; we recognize anorexia and bulimia as real disorders, yet someone who uses food to self-medicate is not taken seriously, or often times, not even regarded as having an eating disorder. Throughout my life I've relied on food to fill emotional voids, used food as a coping mechanism, both through over-eating and even periods of restricting what I ate to an extreme, simply because it was the only thing I had control over. After the death of my firstborn, I had many days where 5 o'clock would roll around, my husband would ask me if I had eaten anything, and I hadn't. Part of that was grief, but part of it was I felt so out of control of my life at that time, the only thing I felt I could control was what I put in my body. I also felt such a deep loathing for this body of mine that had, I felt, let me down to such an extreme. Why would I nourish something that I had no regard for? Flash forward two years later, and I'm realizing I still have some deep seeded feelings regarding this body of mine. What does this body deserve? What do I deserve? I'm still in the process of figuring that out, but I do know what my child deserves, what my husband deserves: they deserve a wife and a mother who cares enough about herself to make the changes necessary to be around for them for as long as possible. My child deserves to have a healthy upbringing. She deserves to have a mother who can teach her how to love and care for the body she has been given. And though I might not fully realize it yet, I deserve to be HAPPY and HEALTHY.