Food Focus



Entenmenn's Raspberry danish twist. It was
not uncommon for me to take care of the
whole box in one sitting. Yikes.

 Why is everything centered around food?

I wish I could tell you how many times my social life has been centered on food. Where are we eating? What do they have? What are the portions like?

One of the reasons I love Mexican food so much is because they give you bottomless chips and salsa. Bottomless. Do I really need to eat a bottomless anything?

The more frustrating thing for me recently is, because I've change my eating habits, I've had to change my social habits. No matter where you live in the world, you think it's boring. And when you're bored, what do you do? You eat. Using food to fill my boredom has given me an idea to list the other ways that I have used food in the past. Maybe you can relate to some of these:

1. Food is my reward
2. Food is my stress reliever
3. Food is my comfort
4. Food is my distraction
5. Food is my pain reliever
6. Food is my best friend
7. Food is my substitute for loneliness
8. Food is my social focus
9. Food is my constant companion. Always there, always the same, always good.

And that's where I stop. Because it's just not true. Food will never fill those roles in my life, and unfortunately I have let it be all of those things for far too many years. I just finished a book called "Thin Within" that I highly recommend, and in it, there is an exercise where you list certain foods that, in your life, have been your choice in times of certain emotion. For instance...

• When I am feeling sick, I eat....
• When I am bored, I eat...
• When I am celebrating, I eat...
• When I am with my family, I eat...

And I could fill in all 25 of the emotional blanks. I knew right away what foods were associated with what emotions. Entenmann's, Bojangles, Ben & Jerry's, donuts, pizza, sushi, on and on and on.

What's the point? The point is this: we let food be the center of our worlds and the center of our emotions. Connect the dots on that has been HUGE for me. I hope that I can shift this food focused life to a God focused life and continue to believe in myself more than I believe in temporary satisfaction.

Get on board with me. Things are about to get crazy.

-Liz