I wonder if we're not all stating the same thing, just in different ways. I unfortunately know a few addicts who KNOW what they are doing is wrong and the denial part comes in when they say they can "quit anytime they want". So they are addicted, conscious of that fact and still in denial.

What say you all to this?

I meant to say addicts either know their addiction is a problem, but feel powerless to stop (for they don't feel they have the power to do that, because they don't know other coping mechanisms besides the abused behavior/substance they are addicted to)
OR
They are so deep in denial that they don't truly "get" their behavior is the problem, and so they really aren't trying to change. This was how I was with food. Every day I observed the results of abusing food, every day I wished those results would "go away", but yet I never made an attempt to try to stop. One day it clicked that I COULD do something about this. I was lucky enough to find low carb, which provided the other "missing half" to the answer and in that moment I knew it was only a matter of time until I was thin.

I do consider myself a food addicted person, however that feeling of being "powerless but to sabotage myself", I cannot relate to it. I CAN relate to a feeling of powerlessness over food in the moment with food when "unarmed" (due to poor planning or being put in a circumstance I can't control). However, I DO recognize my strength and power to prevent myself from getting to that point where I am disarmed and vulnerable before food.

I really don't agree.

Yes, I do expect someone to employ personal responsibility, to draw on their willpower reserves and try to say NO and not start in on something that they full well understand they will lose control of.

Addiction does not absolve one of the same personal responsibilities as everyone else. All it means is you have a disease, and therefore you have the additional responsibilities of planning your life around it. If someone has diabetes, I full well expect them to be responsible and control/plan their diet and lifestyle so as to avoid a lot of excess sugar. If someone has food addiction, I expect them to be responsible and to control/plan their diet and lifestyle so that their meals are planned, structured, controlled, and to eliminate or moderate impulsive eating ("snacking").

The nature of psychological/behavioral diseases is such that it's easy to confuse symptoms of the disease with self-destructive behavior that is the product of laziness, fear, or irresponsibility (and not loss of control with a substance/behavior). An addict uses their substance to cope, true, but there comes a point where you can't justify EVERYTHING because "you're an addict". If you go out of your way to sabotage yourself, that's your fault. You can only blame the disease so far.
Unfortunately, many addicts - as a result of learning to lie so often (to themselves and others) as is necessitated by addiction - become experts at it. They become very manipulative and dependent and toxic to others around them. They become experts at lying to others and denial. They do this, using their disease to skirt personal responsibility and to elicit undue support, so they may continue their self-destructive habits.

However, these (becoming irresponsible, lazy, and shirking personal responsibility and refusing to acknowledge your own power and self control) are SECONDARY effects of addiction. They just go along with the "lifestyle" one leads as an addict - sort of how one might become a smoker if they tend to work in a bar (working in a bar does not EQUAL becoming a smoker... but it makes it a lot easier to pick up the habit since you're socially surrounded by smokers).

Ultimately, these are the plain facts. Being an addict is not a "get out of jail free card" that you can just throw up any time you do stuff that's bad for you. The diabetic doesn't have control over their body, any more than the food addict has control over their compulsivity with eating. That's true. This is a problem that is out of your control, but it is NOT out of your control to take responsibility and prevent the problems and complications associated with your disease. Being an addict does not mean you are helpless but to give up. It does not mean people should say it's ok because you rooted out your wife's stash of junkfood, and then proceeded to blame her for that.


I don't think it's true that one slip will lead to relapse for all addictions. My boss was an alcoholic and I remember one episode where he fell off the wagon for a day. The following day he got back on as if nothing had happened. I've observed this quite often with alcoholics and smokers in fact.

I think whether or not you fall off - and stay off - depends primarily on your desire to recover and the circumstances in your life at the time.



You know, if the story were more like "my wife baked my favorite cake and left it right on the counter during my first few days of induction, so I slipped and cheated" I think people would be a lot more sympathetic. Furthermore, I think people would have been extra sympathetic if the OP also expressed some intimation of accepting of personal responsibility by saying something like "oh man I really screwed up, oh well next time I will ask my wife to cover the cake and put it out of the way so I am not tempted".

In fact, I know they would be more sympathetic, because I've seen these kinds of posts before. Many of us know that feeling, many of us are food addicts.

BUT that's not what happened. The OP said his wife WAS hiding the "bad foods", she was going out of her way not to tempt him or let him know they were around... yet he STILL went out of his way to sabotage himself in this already very safe, supportive environment. Not only is it he and he alone who caused the cheat, but he seemed to be blaming his wife and not at all recognizing or accepting personal responsibility for his behavior.
That's why he got the response he did. Ya know, I would agree with it.

I'm sorry, but his "addiction" cannot justify that. Being an addict ONLY means you have no power but to control yourself in certain activities or with certain substances, period. It does NOT mean you are absolved from the same personal responsibilities as everyone else. If you know this about yourself, that you can't control yourself when you eat certain foods, then you SHOULD be told that going out of your way to "break mommies rules" and stick your finger in the electrical socket is not an acceptable behavior and it is a behavior you consciously CHOOSE for yourself, and it has nothing to do with your addiction. If people don't tell you this then they are basically enabling you to fail. People need to know they have power. If they feel they are powerless, then they won't make a real effort.

Perhaps you should ask yourself why you want to believe so very badly that you are powerless but to relapse? Perhaps it is because, subconsciously, you are not really ready to change?

My last post came across as very condescending so I am posting this as an amendment to it...

I'm not trying to say I'm perfect, or that those who struggle with their eating are somehow flawed. If I'm honest, one of the reasons I was able to so successfully over come my compulsive eating isn't exclusively because I learned to live a life free of food dependency, but it's because I pushed myself a bit in the opposite direction (meaning I changed the focus of my addiction a little). So now I deal with the deep, ingrained, old compulsions (to eat too much, too fast, too often) as well as fresh, new ones (which, superficially, give the apperance of being recovered from over eating but in reality are just masking a neglected problem).
While I HAVE made progress in that I have much better control over how self destructive my behavior is, inside I am still very much an addict, always searching for that illusory sanctuary in food. I likely always will.

All I'm saying is that you can't blame your addiction for everything. You know, almost everyone struggles with something about themselves that they don't like. It may not be an addiction but everyone has something they wish they could change about them. The less you "fit in" the more you want to change and the harder it is to accept yourself.
Especially if you are someone who experiences life deeply due to the double-edged sword of being gifted with heightened emotional sensitivity and/or intellectual perceptivity... then it's very likely that your feelings and nerves are overwhelming you more often than others. This will cause you to seek out behaviors and substances that make you feel good and makes you prone to addiction.
So being an addictive person isn't a sign of defect. Look at it like this, it's more often than not a sign of thinking and feeling a little different than everyone else, which results in excess pressures/stress that trigger the need for excess comforts/safety in substances and behaviors. Difference is not always bad, it's quite often the result of being exceptional. Many who are prone to addiction are gifted or a cut above in some capacity. Even if it is something as foolishly unappreciated as being extraordinarily sensitive and compassionate (skills that are valuable to enriching life).


So I don't look down on those who struggle with addiction or who have a harder time than I do with food. It's not about ego.
I say what I say because I know how tempting it is to remain in denial and to justify self destruction. I've lost years of my life to this mentality - "oh there's nothing I can do, I'll just lie here instead". I believe if people always realized their own personal power to change the direction of their lives wonderful things could happen. I believe almost all problems are the result of giving up your power and losing hope. There's a saying... where there's a will, there's a way. If you really think about it, it's totally true.

I've often marveled at my sister, and how successful she is in just about anything she wants to do. I often say she's "lucky" but in truth it's not luck. She creates opportunity for herself. She has a unique gift... she has the ability to set a goal and to obtain it. Not only can she do this, but she does it with complete assurance in herself and unflinching confidence. I listen to the way she talks sometimes, and it blows my mind with just how totally confident she is in herself, and how indifferent she is to the thoughts/feelings of others in her environment. She simply does not give a damn about what others say... when others try to bring her down she concludes they are jealous and irrelivent. I am, honestly, very jealous that she can be that way. On the other hand I'm so sensitive and neurotic and a slave to the feelings/thoughts of others.

Unsurprisingly, unlike me my sister is about the least compulsive/addictive person you could possibly know. She not only likes to try only a little of anything, but she likes to sample EVERYTHING. This ability to moderate behavior effortlessly, and anticipation of new experience... these are the results of not being dominated by fear, self-doubt, negativity... and those thoughts/feelings are the result of being overwhelmed by the sensitivity/nervousness produced by heightened emotionality and intellectuality.

I guess what I'm trying to say is I don't think people who struggle with addictions are bad people or flawed. They just have a problem that, when uncontrolled, makes them do bad things to themself and sometimes be a burden to others. I think that a tempting tendency to justify and excuse and shirk responsibility of every screw up even remotely connected to the behavior/substance is common. Addictive people become experts at lying and denial, they learn to do whatever they can to continue the behaviors they depend upon. If I think someone is doing that then I will, as constructively and kindly as I can, tell them I think they need to just accept responsibility, to use a little willpower, and to try harder to develop alternate coping mechanisms instead of justifying yet another relapse.

My observation is, that when I am eating low carb I feel full and more importantly, satiated (or is that sated?) In any case, it is easier to have willpower when you aren't hungry. So my advice is to ignore calories at first and concentrate on eating low carb. Get yourself full, and you'll stay full and not feel the need for snacks so often.

Other advice includes advocating the use of low-carb subsitutes for snacks. Including (gasp) LC frankenfoods if you need them. LC chocolate mini-bars, LC ice cream, pork rinds with french onion dip. The ice cream and chocolate are self-regulating with respect to quantity, you'll figure this out when you eat a big slug of them and see what happens to your system. That is, unless a 60-second-long fart is seen as an accomplishment in your household.

On the subject of Splenda, on one hand you can't compare the covalent chlorine bond with ionically bound sodium chloride. A covalent chlorine-carbon bond is found in methylene chloride, and that is hardly a healthy substance.

On the other hand, Splenda does not appear to be especially toxic, and since you are consuming 1/200th of the amount as you would of sugar (due to the sweetness) you are not getting much of an exposure if you use the stuff in moderation. I have chosen to use it myself, to me it is the lesser of the two evils (sugar being the other alternative). I find I am slowly losing my sweet tooth, although I don't expect to ever get away from sweet things since I grew up on them and it is likely too firmly ingrained in my sense of pleasure/good taste.

Bet nobody would ever dare to play the "pull my finger" game if that is the outcome!

I agree, low carb is very important for controlling food addiction, because it takes away physical desire for food and it kind of robs food of its power as a drug (one that can influence moods, one with a long history of deeply ingrained instinctual behaviors in response to the former).

So then at that point you're physically detoxed, and you're not eating "trigger foods" (foods that resemble/remind you of old behavioral patterns, even if physically they are not harmful)... and all you're left with is the "void" left by not having food anymore. Then you have to deal with that, which is in a lot of ways more difficult than learning to fix the carbohydrate sensitivity. There is a mourning period for food addicts (or at least for me) where you are missing being able to eat all the time. You feel emotionally "flat", in grayscale, not as alive as before. This is why I think a lot of food addicts relapse, because beating the addiction is akin to losing a friend. Your capacity to experience life in color, emotions, to just have fun is compromised by cessation of food abuse.

I think food addiction is what happens when a pre-existing carbohydrate sensitivity unfortunately coincides with a certain emotional/intellectual temperament. It develops by a carbohydrate sensitive person learning that food has an unusually medicative property on the body and mind. When someone who has a sensitivity to carbohydrate ALSO happens to be very emotionally extreme, sensitive, perceptive, nervous, and introverted by personality ... food abuse is very likely. The powerful effect food has on their body, combined with and emotional/intellectual orientation, results in an abnormally strong relationship with food developing usually very very early in childhood. People who think hard on things, and feel things deeply, are more likely to develop relationships and be affected permanently by things that have a powerful affect on their senses. For the carbohydrate sensitive person, food has the ability to totally affect the way you feel emotionally and physically like drugs do.
When this person - emotionally sensitive, nervous, and carbohydrate sensitive - grows and develops, they will as a consequence of repeated conditioning be food obsessed. Food will be enjoyed the way a normal person enjoys other people. Food will be their best friend. Food will be elevated to the status of being more than inanimate, it will be the focal point of all celebrations, all life experiences, all upsets, every waking moment will center on it. Food will become your primary reason for living.

If they don't become active food abusers (compulsive/binge eaters), then it's very likely they might develop bulimia or anorexia or some other form of disordered eating instead.

So I definitely agree that a true food addict is someone with carbohydrate sensitivity, and therefore a low carb diet is for most all food addicts crucial in keeping it under control. However, the relationship and habits and behavior that evolved around living life with that sensitivity is far more harrowing than simply choosing extra cheese in lieu of 2 slices of bread. Learning how to truly live, cope with, and enjoy life in a context without the crutch of food abuse is extremely difficult if not impossible.
Whether or not the fake foods help depends a lot on the nature of the problem. For me, they helped a lot. My M.O. with food was to eat everything but to not feel a compulsion to eat the entire contents of any one thing (this is likely because I was raised in a household with lots of people, and having a container of food all to myself was not practical... taking a big portion of everything, on the other hand, was the way I indulged my insatiable need for food).
Now whatever was on my plate I DO and DID have an irrational compulsion to eat... but I did not have to eat the entire box of cookies or the entire pizza, or the entire contents of anything that was meant to serve numerous people. This was because, like I said, the foods I ate were "family foods" and I never developed that habit. The way I coped with my carbohydrate sensitivity (the bad habits, which became emotional compulsions, that I learned from it) was to take huge portions of as many foods as I could.

I think food addicts who were raised as only children, OR food addicts who were put on diets (and therefore prone to buying/stealing food to consume in private) are much more likely to feel a need to consume the entire contents of a family sized container of food.

If you have that need to "finish it all" then it's likely the fake foods are only going to trigger you to want to eat the whole thing. If you're like me, and consciously preventing your tendency to take big portions from being a problem... you CAN indulge in your desire to have a little bit of everything all the time. I am lucky that my problem was mainly with portion size, and once my "serving" is taken I have very little problem stopping. It makes me very thankful I lived in a crowded house where dividing desirable food into portions was standard .

I'm addicted to carbs, and if I start eating stuff, it is very difficult to stop. I'll get one of those low carb pizzas, and eat the whole damn thing in one sitting, and feel like I am outside my body watching it happen.

But my partner isn't low carb, and there's all kinds of junk food in my house. I even go through the drive-in sometimes with her, and deal with the smell of french fries. I also have easy access to doughnuts and cake and all kinds of junk at school and work-- it's everywhere!

And I have to deal with it being everywhere, so I have to deal with it being in my house. I just don't ever take that first bite.
What helps is that I know that if I eat something high carb, I will feel like crap-- I've been doing low carb long enough that my body really just can't deal.

So back to the original post-- you can talk with your wife about laying off the junk for a week or so, while you get on track, but in the end, it will have to be will power. I think the reason people have been so eager with the tough love is that you called will power "bull." I wish it was.

Wooo:

You just described my personality around food to a T. I was the youngest one in the family, and all my siblings were seperated from me by enough years that no one was ever around. Even my mother was gone at a day job. This left me alone with my 2 friends. Food and TV...they became my surrogate "company" for many years and filled an emotional void in me. This is why, so many years later, doing any kind of weight loss plan is difficult for me psychologically speaking. Even if my body is sated by a low carb approach, my childhood blueprint fights me all the time for so called"comfort" from my lifetime "friend".

Breaking blueprinting is perhaps the tallest challenge of all about weight loss...at least for me.

I didn't realize this had gotten so huge. If someone wants to see my post as bashing, that's really not my deal. CHOICE is a reality in this WOE. The question was asked why we didn't succeed in a low fat diet... For me, it was CHOICE. I chose to stop eating low fat because after giving it a fair chance it became clear it was not the best diet for me. If someone stops eating low carb it is, similarly, a CHOICE.

If you are the one who supposedly wants to make a change and even YOU can not give up the foods you so desperately want to give up, how on earth can you demand that someone else do it first? It just isn't logical. Forget willpower for a moment and look at the logic in that.

This is not a CHOICE anyone else can or SHOULD make for you. This is YOUR choice and YOUR life. Don't you want to exercise your right to make choices and at the same time, be able to take all the credit for your success?

"A gift that's demanded is no gift at all..." Demanding that someone else do exactly what you have admitted you can not is really not the best way to get someone on your side. A few weeks of success and results would be a much better way to win support.

My hubby is one of those who can eat whatever he wants and is still very thin, AND he happens to be the proud owner of a Little Debbie snack cake route (like Hostess/Tastycake if you are not familiar with Little Debbie), which means there is always junk in my house and in his fully loaded truck outside in the driveway! I never thought I would be able to resist the urges but I do, I haven't touched the stuff in 10 weeks now. I guess it helps that I have lost so much that it isn't worth the cheat. AND I am postponing buying summer clothes til I am closer to my goal weight.