My Life's Biggest Project: Food = Meth

My Life's Biggest Project: Food = Meth: "No I do not believe that food and methamphetamines are the same thing, but there are some similarities between a food addiction and a drug a..."

Food = Meth

No I do not believe that food and methamphetamines are the same thing, but there are some similarities between a food addiction and a drug addiction. One of the differences between these two is that food makes you fat and meth makes you skinny. I remember sitting in my college health class my freshmen year and a woman came to the front to talk to us about her former meth addiction. She wasn't some speaker who had come in she was one of the students who felt compelled to share her story. Why did she start taking meth? She wanted to be thin and she knew it would help her lose weight fast. She thought that she could quit once she'd lost the weight because she wasn't going to get addicted. Well, that's not how it worked, several years later, several lost teeth and a couple of rehab stints later this woman stood in front of her freshmen college classroom and she was overweight. All that for nothing.

That’s right. We are in fact our own worst enemy. We are the reason that we became over weight to begin with. I am the reason I look the way I do because instead of making good food choices I made bad ones. One thing that I’ve truly noticed is that one’s relationship with food is much like a drug addiction. It’s not healthy. I mean me personally I try to justify eating certain things even though I know that I shouldn’t. I don’t understand why I’m self sabotaging. If one of my biggest wants is to fit into a size five then why can I not resist eating that bowl of ice cream?

Since I’ve had surgery I continue to try to justify eating bad (even though when it comes right down to it I haven’t done it yet). I say to myself it’s OK if I eat this thing I haven’t eaten in a month because I don’t feel good. Where is the logic? Do I really truly believe that those fried chicken strips are going to make me feel better? No I know better, but somewhere in my mind I do believe that. This weight issue is deeper than I thought and one that I really need to get to the core of changing.

I’ve said a million times it is a lifestyle change and it’s true. Food really is like a drug addiction. I say things like, “If I can have this now it’ll be the last time I just need it one more time.” Or since my mom has been staying with me I keep begging her to go get something from Sonic or Wal-mart (like chocolate or ice cream). I tell her how much better it will make me feel. My mom is a softy, but lucky for me she doesn’t do it right away. After begging and pleading with her she says, “are you sure you want me to go get that for you?” and by that time I think I’ve used up all my energy begging so I say never mind.

I’ve been around drug addicts and I see some of the same things in my association to food that they saw in meth and that is sad and scary. I also think of some of my friends who struggle with their weight and when I think about some of the things that they say it is also very similar to things that my ex would say regarding his drug addiction. Obviously there is a need for change if food is equal to methamphetamines.

I was reading an article by Ashley Wisniewski, a woman who is about half way through a year long weight loss blog, she talks about how she is self sabotaging and that she needs to work on her relationship with food. She says that sadly she has only lost 10 pounds since she began the blog and thought she would be much thinner by now, but after Thanksgiving she realized that a lot of the same problems she had with food five months ago are the same problems she’s having now. Everything she said was exactly what I had said or thought and it made me start thinking. Was I reading one of my own posts? At least I’m not the one suffering these problems, but I do need to be the one to overcome them. To check out Ashley’s blog click here.