Food Addiction Recovery – #49

Food addiction recovery is not the only option. You may actually decide that you’re fine as you are. The National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA) is a good resource if you decide that you would prefer to remain overweight. This can be a very rational decision. Don’t believe me then look at their booklist.

Here is what NAAFA says about themselves:

“Founded in 1969, the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA) is a non-profit, all volunteer, civil rights organization dedicated to protecting the rights and improving the quality of life for fat people. NAAFA works to eliminate discrimination based on body size and provide fat people with the tools for self-empowerment through advocacy, public education, and support.”

That having been said, I don’t agree with all they say any more than they would agree with all I have said or the whole notion of a food addiction. I do know that few people are able to take the weight off and keep it off for the long term. I am committed to you having all the information you can to make an educated decision about how you want to design and live your life. Neither NAAFA nor I should make that decision for you. 

I certainly have no problem with the overall purpose of NAAFA and I think you should sort through all of the options and all of the potential consequences of the decisions you make. If you elect this option, you can count on my support in making this option work for you. After all one can indeed lead a very great, happy life and be overweight and maybe morbidly obese. Like most things in life, decisions have upsides and downsides and this is one of those situations.

  Sometimes it is really the best decision to wait before declaring yourself a food addict and trying to lose weight until you have sorted out everything. You certainly have to be realistic and rational about your chances of success, your personality style and your reasons for wanting to lose weight. Yo-Yo dieting (losing weight, then putting it back on, and then repeating the cycle repeatedly) is worse for you than just staying overweight in the first place.  So let’s assess very carefully, what is really in your best interest before embarking on the path of losing the weight. 

The truth is declaring oneself as having a food addiction and then planning to lose weight requires consistent, persistent, and targeted rational thinking and vigilance with constant work – even after you have successfully lost the weight – so you want to make the right decision for you. Your quality of life is a factor and the costs of losing (or trying to lose; or failing to lose; or losing and gaining it all back) a large amount of weight may not be worth the impact on your quality of life. We can sort these issues out together if you desire, so take advantage of my food addiction free resources.