Quote:
Monday, January 20, 2014
You are reading from the book 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.
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When I see or hear the word binge, I remember a counsellor in the recovery house say to a client, "What does binge taste like." The client had stated, "I don't think I am an alcoholic, I am a binge drinker." The counsellor asked me to take her for a walk around the block and have a little talk with her. When we got back, she realized she belonged in AA and not a mental hospital.
The same with food, there are comfort foods that we like to indulge in, but for me, food is food, and anything that I eat in access, can be a problem, be it sweet or savoury.