Growing Into You

“After half a century in psychiatric practice, I know without a doubt that the source of addiction is spiritual deficiency. Irrespective of whether we are religious or atheist, all human being are spiritual by nature, and spirituality is the cornerstone of our recovery.” –Abraham Twerski

As I have now gone through Day 3 of my 40 day abstinence of solid food (the first 3 days are suppose to be the hardest), I have come to the realization that most of the “hunger” you or I feel is not really hunger at all. Ninety-five percent of the time, when we feel like eating, it is our mind that is “hungry”; or in other words you are just craving the food you are about to eat.

The Difference: Hunger vs. Cravings

It is very important to understand the difference between hunger and cravings. When you are truly hungry, it is a signal from your body telling you that it needs nourishment. Without the nutrients your body receives from healthy food, it would not be able to function properly. It would begin to wither like a flower from lack of water and soil.

Craving food is something completely different. When you crave something, it is your mind’s boredom or addiction to the food that you eat at work. Your mind is a very powerful, and many times destructive, tool. It is constantly working; rambling away while you listen to it. When your body is at rest, your mind becomes restless. It makes you feel as if you are hungry. Almost every time you feel hungry, you will crave junk food.

Your mind also can become addicted to the food you eat. As I have posted before, research has shown that foods high in fats and sugar allow your mind to become addicted. After eating these foods (mainly fast food or other junk foods) for a long period of time, your mind constantly craves them. If you then abstain from these foods for more than one day, you begin feeling withdrawal symptoms such as headaches.

The Results

The results from eating food when you truly are hungry, for nourishment purposes only, are much different than when you eat food out of boredom, addiction, or some other reason.

The results of eating for nourishment only include:

• Maintained weight: Adding and losing a lot of weight is never really healthy for the body. (Don’t get me wrong, if you are overweight, it is much healthier to lose the weight than keep it on.) Gaining and losing, especially quickly (instant gratification is what most people want) is very hard on the body; especially the heart, forcing it to work much harder than it is used to. Keeping a steady weight allows the body to be in a constant state, which is more conducive to a longer life.
• More energy: If you are eating when you are hungry only, you are most likely eating healthier foods. These healthy foods keep your blood sugar at a steady level.
• More alertness: I have recently discovered that by not eating foods that are chemically altered, I am very alert and very aware. I am able to keep my focus at a much higher level. I am also less distracted while trying to concentrate.
• Feeling of wellness: As you begin to eat healthy and less often, you will get a general feeling of being healthy. You will have added self-confidence because of your healthy weight. You will also have added self-discipline because you only eat when you need to. If you have discipline in the food aspect of your life, you will most likely have self-discipline in other areas of your life.
• Saving money: Finally, because you eat less frequently, and most likely less quantity at a time, you will save quite a bit of money. Instead of eating fast food, constantly buying junk-filler food like chips, soda, candy, etc. you will most likely be purchasing only what you need to eat from a grocery store. If you have never kept track, it is MUCH cheaper, especially if you have more than one person living with you, to cook your food than to constantly be ordering out.

The results from eating because of cravings include:

• Weight gain: Because your cravings never stop, the food you eat only satisfies you for a short amount of time. You begin craving more food soon after your last meal. This leads to an increasing amount of weight; until you either break the eating cycle or become obese.
• Constantly feeling tired: With the constant eating and high level of sugar going into your body, you will get an energy rush for about 30 minutes,. Then, you will crash. When you crash, you will not be able to function properly again until you eat more sugary food. This process will continue until you break your habit.
• Anxiety: In the past few days without food, I have had moments where I had an intense craving for food. In those moments, I became very anxious because I knew I couldn’t eat no matter how much I wanted to. A food addiction is the same as any addiction; when you begin the cravings, the anxiety and stress levels will rise until you give into your urge.
• Depression: As you continue to give into your cravings more and more, you will begin to fall deeper and deeper into a black hole that is so hard to get out of. Eventually, you can fall into depression because you are gaining steady weight, but yet cannot do anything about it because you are controlled by the foods you eat. This state is very hard to get out of, and it takes a very determined person to do.
• Large expenditure of money: Having to eat large amounts of unhealthy food is VERY expensive. It costs a lot of money to eat out a few times a day, constantly buy chips, candy, soda, and many other unhealthy snacks.

How to break the cycle

Breaking the cycle from eating when you crave to eating only when is necessary is a very tough cycle to break; a cycle that I am trying to break as we speak. Trying to stop the cycle of addiction is never an easy thing to do. There are a few ways to go about breaking the eating habit.

The first way, which I am doing right now, is to just quit cold turkey. As I write this, I am focusing solely on cleaning out my system, getting ready to start fresh after my cleanse. So far, it has not been nearly as hard as I expected, and I am at the end of day three. Yes, you will be uncomfortable because you will want to give in and eat. By being strong though, within a week, you will begin craving nutritious food. After you break the cycle, it is solely up to you to keep the discipline to stay away from the foods that cause the addiction. Afterwards, for example, instead of eating at KFC, learn how to make your own healthy chicken. Not only will it be better for you, it will taste better because YOU made it.

The second way to break the addiction is by trying to gradually take bad foods out of your routine, replacing them with more nutritious foods. Personally, this is much harder for me because it requires a lot of self-discipline from the beginning. Instead of telling yourself you are just not going to eat bad foods, you allow yourself to continue to eat some while you wean your way off of them. This approach, however, will work for some people who are able to stick to their plan.

I personally recommend taking ten days to focus on YOUR life. Doing the “Master Cleanse” or some other form of detoxification is a great way to learn a lot about your inner self. Being focused and having to go deep inside of you to resist the urge to eat not only makes you a healthier person physically, it allows you to become more attuned to your spiritual being.

I challenge everybody to take a deep look at the way they see food. If you are satisfied with how you eat, that is great. If, however, you want to change, make it happen. You ARE in control of your life: the way you look, the way you feel, and how healthy you are. Breaking an addiction can be very difficult, but the results when you are finished are life changing.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 9th, 2008 at 12:38 am and is filed under Fitness, General Thoughts, Self-Improvement. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.