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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.

I remember back to the days of my childhood. My dad and I used to have a grand old time together sharing fun, sharing food- ice-cream, donuts, and cake being our favorite things. When I was with my dad, there was always a treat in store. In those days I had never even heard of food addiction or the concept of immense cravings.

In short my dad loved to eat and so did I. It was one of the many levels upon which we met. We were very connected and we loved each other a lot.

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 what is odd to note is that by the end my father had lost all capacity to eat anything at all. And in reality, he died from not being able to eat.

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.

Most food addiction plans will tell you to stay away from all of those foods permanently. And I don’t disagree. Why play with fire after all? Although I will say that during the week of my dad’s death I lit the match a bit by eating some onion rings and some ketchup with sugar. In some ways I think it was a last feeble attempt to connect with my dad again. Still, I have had my days of intense cravings- and I don’t think I am any too smart to play around in that arena.

So where does that leave us, as masses of us still experience cravings that seem almost debilitating and as we step closer and closer to a slow, dehumanizing decline like the one my dad experienced. The first step is to learn about food addiction and how it operates, one person at a time. And we hope that the more people that learn about it, the more we will be able to find healthy, tasty, and non-addicting foods in the grocery store. Right now, it seems to be a bit of an uphill climb to find and eat non-addicting foods. But today I feel healthy, and vibrant, and fully alive- which is more than I can say for all of the years when I ate all that stuff. And I honor my dad’s love by not going down the road that he did. And my father was an amazingly loving man, so I am sure he would have wanted that for me.

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