Be Prepared!

15 Jan 2012 2 Comments

by moreaholicconfessions in Food Addiction - The Basics, Uncategorized Tags: 12-step recovery, addiction and recovery, binging, compulsive overeaters, flour and sugar addiction, food addiction, morbid obesity, no flour no sugar diets, overeating, purging, recovery, sugar addict

The Boy Scout motto, “be prepared” often comes to mind in my daily quest to starve off food addiction. Of course I was never a Boy Scout, but I know enough to tell you that those two little words were adapted as the organization’s motto to remind little guys to always be prepared in mind and in body. For me, being prepared in mind means spending a little time every day in quite meditation. A friend of mine recently shared this quotation from Jelaluddin Rumi, and I love it, so I wanted to share it here. Rumi said, “What nine months does for the embryo, forty early mornings, will do for your growing awareness.” Taking time for myself everyday isn’t easy in my self-described, “very” busy life, but I know if I want to remain abstinent from flour and sugar, and connect daily with my higher power, that quite time is necessary to ensure that I am “prepared” in mind to face the good and bad the day has to offer.

Being prepared in body means that I am prepared to face a physical world that isn’t always kind to the very few of us who identify ourselves as food addicts. Case in point, I recently kept track of how many times I came into physical contact with food while I was out running errands, the total: eight times in the span of 3 hours—that’s crazy*!!! Eight times is exactly why being prepared means staying present and away from (as much as I can) all the food I encounter while I’m making my way in the world today. Additionally, being prepared applies at home too. This is why nearly every Sunday morning you won’t find me in a church pew, or on the treadmill at the gym, you’ll find me in my kitchen preparing my food for the week. Seven days, 3 meals a day, means I will prepared 21 meals during the course of three hours. Trust me, sometimes this task seems daunting and I’m not in the mood to prep and cook, but preparing my food ahead of time, plus weighing and measuring it, and having it waiting for me everyday–it just works for me. Spending three hours on a Sunday means I’ll spend less time in the kitchen during the week, which means less time around food, and less time tempting my addict on days when I’m tired, extra hungary or frustrated.

Last week when I finished making all my food I took this picture. I love when I open my fridge on Monday mornings and this is what I see–a fridge full of delicious, nutritious and abstinent food that will give me the sustenance I need to make my physical body work the way it is suppose to.

Making this mind/body connection to always be prepared is what gets me through the day, especially the tough days, so for now, I’m going to hold the Boy Scout motto close and remind myself to be prepared.

*In case you are wondering how I managed to run into food eight times here’s a run down of where I went:

Coffee House – I still need my decaf coffee or tea.
Grocery Store – no surprise here, yes, there is food at the grocery store.
Michael’s Craft Store – I love that before you get to the checkout they make you walk though all the bags of sugary crap.
Dry Cleaners – There were “fundraising” candy bars for sale on the counter.
Gas Station – I wonder if they sell anything healthy in these places?
Target – I know this may double as a grocery store, but I wasn’t there to buy food.
Sporting Good Store – Yep, they sell those damn “energy” bars that let’s face it, are really just over-priced candy bars.
Walgreens – I went into buy personal-hygiene products and had to walk past three rows of junk food to find what I went there to buy.

Of course this doesn’t include the countless number of restaurants, donut shops, bakeries, and ice cream parlors I passed while driving around town or all the food-related advertising that blankets so many billboards.