In the last few weeks, I feel like the issues of weight are bombarding me on every side. In my attempt to get my weight back under control, I discovered an underlying health issue which I need to address and thankfully am able to do so with diet and vitamins. No matter what I ever do I life, I will always be a food addict. Alcohol and drug addictions are insidious, but the good thing with those addictions is that you can simply remove them from your life and do all within your power to avoid them and you may be able to keep your addiction under control. But food … that’s a whole different story. Here is something that you need to survive … For us food addicts, our issue is controlling volume, quantity, intake time and type of food consumed.
Many addictions, once under control can lead to others. Remember Kojak? He was always sucking on a lollipop – that was his secondary addiction to smoking. Many people who stop smoking gain weight. We seem to replace one addiction for another. For those of us who are food addicts – they often try to convince us to replace exercise for food. Hmmm, great idea, but so NOT fun. Anyway, for me, shopping replaced my food addiction. Thank the Lord, I’m a bargain shopper. However, the other secondary impact of my attempting to manage my food addiction is that my tongue which was sharp before has become rapier laserlike in its ability to slice through the various BS I encounter in life.
About two years ago in an argument with my hubby (you know the ones that when you are in the middle of it, you wonder how the hell you got here and what is the purpose of it? Yeah, that one!) I realized that my attempt to fix my addiction had given rise to yet one more side effect. For many years I’d used food to solve a number of issues. If I was sad, there was also a piece of cake, ice cream or chips that could solve my problem. If I was angry, there was always some piece of candy or pastry that could fix that issue. Now when I was sad or angry, food couldn’t solve the issue and I had to confront them one way or the other.
So what resulted was that I couldn’t push my feelings down any longer. WHOA .. and the person that erupted was a woman who I did not know. She was a brash, loud, in your face, cussing, no-nonsense, take no prisoner all-out Bit*h! And guess what? I liked her! It was surprising how often I’d allowed people to take advantage of me or how I’d bitten my tongue rather than stating my real feelings and opinions. I was the happy, jolly fat girl who didn’t want to do anything to rock the boat or upset anyone. Now I felt liberated and empowered. Now this didn’t mean I felt I had license to hurt anybody with my newfound independence, but it did mean that I didn’t feel like I had to take any and everything that was dished out to me. Who the heck knew that being unable to stuff my face into silence meant that a voice came up from out of inside me instead.
These changes gave me the voice needed to walk away from a job that I’d literally been hogtied to in fear of doing anything else and got me a new job that required me to have a voice and use it often and wisely. My poor husband, however, has been on the receiving end of this new woman I believe more often than he’d care to be. All wives “bite up dem jaw cawna feh nuh upset di apple” cart too often in their marriages. We pick our battles and decide which ones to fight on which day. However, most of us will use gentle persuasion to often accomplish our goal. But this new woman that my nip and tuck had created would come out swinging more often that the former me. I’m still not sure if I’m yielding any more positive results than I was before, but what I do know is that this new woman has irrevocably changed the face of my entire life and how I participate in it.
