Food

Without alcohol I feel like my addicted brain keeps searching for something else to abuse.  Everything around me becomes dangerous.  I order something online, then I get the urge to buy several other things that I don't need and aren't in the budget.  One cup of coffee in the morning turns into several.  I'll even get obsessive about finishing a book before doing anything else, or obsessively cleaning, or excessive use of social media.  My biggest concern right now is going back into an addictive pattern with food.  First of all, I don't want to entertain any addictive behaviors, because that's just going to keep those pathways strong, which could lead me back to drinking.  Secondly, I have a rocky history with food.  Most of that is contained within my teenage years, when most females have food and self-image issues.  Still, part of having a strong recovery is prioritizing health, and I'm not doing that when I'm addicted to my food.  I'm the type of person that needs to meal prep and plan ahead, or I'll eat way more food, and bad food, than is necessary.  I'm (almost) a lifelong pescatarian and I do genuinely love healthy foods (plants) and I love cooking and baking.  The problem is that if I get hungry before I've had time to meal prep for the week, I end up snacking on less healthy and more addictive foods: cheeses, sugars, starch, etc.  It's helped me a lot to meal prep on Sunday and then actually portion out everything I'll be eating for the week.  I have a lot of small Pyrex dishes to help me with that.  Otherwise, I tend to go portion crazy, especially grabbing food on the fly when I'm already starving.  As I've mentioned, I've had quite a few issues with sleep recently, and I've also noticed a tendency to binge eat when I'm tired.  I think that this, in part, helps me stay awake.  Maybe for a normal person, a small binge wouldn't be such a horrible event, but it's very triggering for me.  When I overeat I feel slow, and it stops me for doing things that I need to do, especially when those things involve leaving the house.  I also tend to push back, and spend a day not eating after a day overeating, and hunger has been a relapse trigger of mine in the past.  I like not feeling so heavy, so I start to think that if I were drinking, I wouldn't want to eat so much.  I grab the bottle as an alternative to food, when I think that food is my enemy.  I want to have a healthier relationship with food, and unfortunately, right now, that means that I have to be somewhat meticulous about meal planning.  It is my hope that one day I will be able to trust myself to limit my portions without so much planning, but for now it's the safest way to keep me on track.  A program that I have grown to like is Noom.  I've only been using it for a couple of months, but it's where I originally got the idea to meal prep and to portion prep.  It's a kind of make-your-own-diet, because it has to be something sustainable and not temporary.  A lot of it is self-guided, but every day there are articles about nutrition and psychology that are very helpful.  I think that a lot of what I've been learning with Noom overlaps with what I've been learning in recovery.  For me, the two go really well together.