Avoiding Binge Foods

[MajestyJo]

Food for Thought
Avoiding Binge Foods

Most compulsive overeaters react to refined sugar and flour the way an alcoholic reacts to alcohol. One bite and we sooner or later go on a binge. We find it impossible to eat a controlled amount of food, which contains refined sugar or flour, and we inevitably end up with a hangover from our excesses.

Many of us have other binge foods as well. We have learned from sad experience that it is easier to avoid these foods entirely than to try to eat them in reasonable amounts. We have to be rigorously honest with ourselves in order to determine which food plan is best for each of us as an individual.

No food is worth the anguish of a binge. Once we accept this, we can accept the necessity of abstaining from personal binge foods. Abstinence means freedom from the obsession with food and from the compulsion to overeat. Freedom to live without overeating is the reward we gain when we avoid the foods that trigger our compulsion.

May I realize that avoiding binge foods is a small price to pay for freedom.

This morning I had two pieces of raisin bread. They tasted so good I had a third. Two hours later I am still feeling hungry and ended up with two perogies with sour cream and two slices of bacon. This is a reminder that there was too much white food there that turns to sugar. The freedom can come from the inner knowing when I am open to other's ideas than my own wants and wishes.

It is a lot harder to stop foods that are harmful than to not pick up the drugs and alcohol. Food is necessary to daily survival. Drugs and alcohol were crutches for coping with life. Food can have the same affect if I allow it.

As my co-sponsor said many years ago when I was in treatment, "What does binge taste like?" I think binge is anything that makes me think 'more' and follow thought by action, instead of prayer.