Hello, it's me...

I used to imagine that I looked like the woman on the left, but what I really looked like was the woman on the right. Denial is an enormous part of food addiction.

And I've thought about this for a long, long time,(props to Todd Rungren and the Isley Brothers) which has been creating a blog that is dedicated to my addiction issues. Food is my most deadly and persistent addiction, but there are most definitely others, as I have discovered the hard way. I've heard in 12 step programs for years that "the fat on my body was only the outward symptom of a much deep problem". I heard it, but I had no idea what that meant in practical terms, and even more to the point, how that term applied directly to me. I just wanted to lose weight; I didn't care about any psychobabble BS. Life, however, taught me otherwise. Because of my resistance to change and defiance of anything that remotely appeared to be accepting help from others, it took twenty years and a weight gain up to approximately 400 pounds before I began to glimpse a slight understanding of my fat body being a symptom of a much deeper problem. I have a living problem; I don't do well with accepting "life on life's terms". Like any other self-centered addict, I want what I want when I want it. And I better get it right now or else I will soothe my rage/frustration/disappointment/anxiety with an apricot croissant, or fresh baked chocolate chip cookies and a glass of cold milk. Or a pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream. Or my Mom's homemade meat loaf and macaroni and cheese(this past tense, my Mom passed away on New Year's Eve 2008, and I'm missing her and her cooking). See what I mean? I used food to get through the ups and downs of life. And there are a lot of those in any given day. I created plenty of reasons to stuff myself with large quantities of food of the most dangerously fattening kind. And I didn't stop using food, even though my eating nearly cost me life on three different occasions.

I used to blog about these issues on my other blog, which is called "Yeah...and so, anyway..." (http://angelfly72.blogspot.com/), but I decided to dedicate that blog to my thoughts about my journey as a member of the Baha'i Faith. Here, I'm going to talk about the stuff that I am learning through my recovery from food addiction. There is definitely overlap because my religion and my recovery are a vital and inseparable part of my life. But I found that I needed to create two different blogs because the posts were too long. I guess I have a lot to write about!

Anyway, this is the beginning. I'll start out tomorrow with some of my addiction posts from the other blog, and eventually work into where I am now in recovery. As Stan Lee says, "Excelsior!"