Go Away You stinking Funk!

SO I am off the wagon and the only thing saving me is I don't have a lot of cruddy food in the house. BUt I want it! I know I will fail over and over again. But I didn't even go a week! I can make a ton of excuses... bad timing (financial stress, work stress, TOM) but there is always timing issues. So I have decided this is my last day and I am going to commit to the BFL thing. 12 weeks that is all. And I am going to use this epic fail to learn something. I read a little more of the When Food is Love book. Here are some quotes that really hit home.

Page three of introduction, "Eating is a metaphor for the way we live; it is also a metaphor for the way we love. Excessive fantasizing, creating drama, the need to be in control, and wanting what is forbidden are behaviors that block us from finding joy in food or relationships. And some of the same guidlines that enable us to break free from compulsive behavior -- leraning to stay in the present, beginning to value ourselves now, giving the huntry child wihinus a voice trusting our physical and emotional hungers, and teaching ourselves to receive pleasure -- enable us to be intimate with another person."

Page four of introduction, "Diets don't work because food and weight are the syptoms not the problems." This is a money shot as so true. Isn't it sad how we know these things but it takes some third party person/book to make it hit home!

It then says. "The focus on weight provides a convenient and culturally reinforced distraction from the reasons why so many people use food when they are not hungry. These reasons are more complex than -- and will never be solved with -- willpower, counting calories, and excercise. They have to do with neglect, lack of trust, lack of love, sexual abuse, physical abuse, unexpressed rage, grief, being the object of discrimination protenction from getting hurt again. People abuse themselves with food because they dont' know they deserve better!" This sentence in red is another money shot and so true to me. I tell my friends who come to me for advice -- don't you want better! -- now why can't I do this for myself? Why is it always easier to defend and stick up for other people we care for and love but NOT ourselves???

Just a couple more as I haven't gotten that far in the book. Here is another sentence that feels so true from chapter 1 page 15. "Compulsion is despair on an emotional level." I get this and it clicks. I am an emtional eater because I despair and I feel this will fill that void BUT IT NEVER DOES! so the despair goes on.

So one more Money shot sentence for today on page 19 of chapter 1. "Compulsive behavior, at its most fundamental, is a lack of self-love; it is an expression of a belief that we are not good enough." Wow... this is all so true but now the struggle is to take it in and improve myself on it. I can say i get it and it clicks but I have to absorb it!

The thing I realized this morning after a rough night of dreams of someone in my past is I am lonely. I am either compulsively thinking of food or a situation from the past that I can't control and the continued guilt I feel from it. I know this is vague but this does go out over the airwaves so I have to be vague. BUt I also think everyone has these situations. And they haunt us. It makes me realize that even in a house full of people who do love me. I am lonely. I grew up lonely and I learned at a young age to think of myself as always lonely. How do I overcome this lonliness that is eating me alive on the inside and making me show it on the outside with my unhealthy eating habits? So I will leave it at that and let that be my question of the day.