Fighting Food Cravings- Is it really Life and Death?
I want to talk a bit today about my father, who passed away about a week ago. I have been thinking a lot about him in conjunction with this blog, as his major illness was diabetes- the disease of chronic, lifetime overeating. It mostly goes hand in hand with food addiction and cravings.
Now as a child and young adult, I never knew of the profound link between diabetes and food cravings or food addiction. In fact, I never knew there was such a thing as food addiction. And my dad and I used to have a grand old time, sharing food and laughs. We liked ice-cream, cookies, donuts, and soda, and there was always a treat involved in a trip to the store with my dad.
My dad and I both loved to eat, and it was one of the ways in which we bonded.
But as I watched my dad in the last years of his life, I remember thinking so frequently “What a price pleasure in food can exact.” As time went by my father could hardly walk due to his diabetes. He couldn’t see very well. Food began to have no flavor at all and he had a hard time swallowing. He spent his days dozing listlessly in a chair, and was sad beyond measure at the loss of all that he had ever enjoyed in life.
And the odd irony was that toward the end my father couldn’t even eat from the havoc to his body. And one might even say that in the end he died of starvation.
So what can the rest of us take from this whole experience? There is no question that it is not easy to live without eating sugar, wheat and flour- and a whole other host of potentially addictive foods. Food manufacturers flood every known box, bottle, and can on grocery store shelves with all manner of these substances- and it is nearly impossible to find packaged food without it. For me personally it took a lot of work and planning- but I lived a full seven years with no traces of these ingredients in my body. None, that is, except a piece of fruit twice a day. Interestingly, it also takes about seven years for all the cells in a human being to replace themselves- though I was not thinking of this at the time. These days I live mostly craving-free, possibly because all of my addicted cells have been replaced.
During the week of my dad’s death, I played in the arena of eating some no-no foods. In some ways I think it was a last and feeble attempt to connect with my dad, who was gone by then. But I can tell you that I don’t suggest this as a good idea. I have had my days of intense and unmanageable cravings, and it’s not fun. So I know that seven years or no seven years, it is best for me to stay on the straight and narrow.
So here is where I am left regarding this whole issue. My dad could not avoid his fate. He didn’t know about food addiction, or what to do about it. And so he followed an inevitable path to destruction. I have another possibility. I can stick to the foods that make me feel healthy and vibrantly alive and that do not cause cravings. And I can educate others on how to do the same. And I can hope that the grocery stores eventually begin to offer us more options. And by doing this, I can most fully honor my father’s love- and his greatness. For he was a truly amazing man, in every way.