Food Addiction

I think I'm realizing that I have a food addiction. 

The process of writing this novel has, at times, been mentally exhausting, emotionally taxing, and just plain difficult. There are days when I'm working on a scene or chapter and it becomes glaringly obvious that the root of all my troubles is food. 

Lately, I've been planning my entire day around it. I'll wake up thinking about breakfast and be inwardly preparing for lunch; sometimes, I'll ask Tom six hours ahead of time what he wants for dinner just so I can plan for how much I want to eat and still hopefully be within my food budget. There's even a new app on my phone that helps me track my calorie intake and exercise; and, on the days when I'm actually trying to be intentional about what I'm eating, rather than avoiding the topic entirely, I obsess over documenting every single calorie. This earnest desire to change my life has turned into an obsession. 

Early last year, when I began seeing a therapist to tackle my weight gain, we seemed to arrive at the conclusion that my anxiety around food had developed from the trauma of the pandemic. Or perhaps it is fairer to say that the trauma of Covid triggered this food anxiety in me as it had existed already for years beyond my understanding, lurking in the background influencing my thoughts and choices. This global event was a looming terror around every corner because the possibility that I could die from the virus was on my doorstep. There was even a brief moment in the late March of that year when things had first really begun to shut down. Shelves were empty. Pantry staples like bread and flour and rice were gone before they could be restocked. Businesses everywhere were panicked about closing their doors and making ends meet like the rest of us. I had been sitting in my car trying to head into the grocery store for no less than 10 minutes just staring at the over-full parking lot and a woman with two full carts of groceries, pushing one in front of her and pulling one behind her while her daughter steered the rear buggy, both carts stacked high with packs and packs of toilet paper, passed in my rear-view mirror. And I fucking lost it. Heavy sobs tumbled down my cheeks with frantic abandon and I just couldn't stomach the idea of being in public when one single breath from a stranger could be my undoing. 

I called Tom, one of the extremely few occasions that we've ever spoken on the phone (because he just does not like to talk on the phone), and had him calm me down, soothing the overwrought raves coming from my mouth. That day ended up being the first and certainly not the last time I decided to have groceries delivered instead. From there, my anxiety around food only spiraled. I began hiding it, tucking little things away here and there, or lying about my food consumption altogether and eating four or five meals a day. 

It took a long time for some of those behaviors to calm down, for my nervousness about the world around me to still. Things have certainly gotten better, that much is true, but I'm still having my moments. I still wake up most days thinking about breakfast and wondering about lunch. I still annoy Tom by asking him hours in advance about dinner. In my head, I'm doing so in an effort to stick within my calorie budget but I'm beginning to wonder if it's also because I'm addicted to it.

For as long as I can remember, food has always felt like a reward. And there are about a thousand ways that our culture reiterates such. Pass a major test? Go out to dinner with your friends to celebrate. Just had a child? Guess what, you get a casserole from every family member for weeks. It's a coworker's birthday and the whole office gets donuts and cookies. 

Even now, it feels like I can't get away from it and I'm still using food as a reward for myself. Casey Sue and I have been running together for a while now and my pace continues to improve which is both incredibly awesome and incredibly frustrating. I so desperately want to run that way that Casey Sue does but I know it'll take time. And every single day after the gym, without fail, the first thing I'm thinking about when I cross the front door of my house is what I'll eat for breakfast. Despite all the work I've done to improve my mental health and address detrimental behaviors, I'm still rewarding myself with food. 

So, what can I do? No, seriously, I'm asking. This isn't a rhetorical question like I usually ask in my blogs. How the ass do I unlearn this kind of behavior? Do I journal how food makes me feel so I can begin to associate what I'm consuming with how it actually affects my energy? Do I meal prep everything so I cut out the "having to think about it" thing? What do I do? 

I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. 

Most frustratingly, I haven't lost any weight in two months. None. Nada. Zilch. I've been working out three to four days a week, eating between 1500 - 1800 calories a day (or at least pretty close to that. I thi...hope), and haven't seen the scale change AT ALL. 

Unsurprisingly, as seems to always be the case with this blog and my life in general, I have no answers.

BUT - here is what I do know: working out is awesome and it makes me feel awesome. A little progress is better than no progress at all. Because I am determined to build sustainable, long-term habits, I will be successful in reaching my goals. 

It's super easy to be cynical, and I am an expert, but I have to believe that things will get better by virtue of the fact that I'm doing something. That change may be little but a little change eventually snowballs into bigger changes and that snowball will help me to (eventually) lead the happiest, healthiest life I can. 

So, here is to my little snowball of change - one roll at a time.