Compulsive eating or any other kinds of compulsion can be overcome by developing healthy lifestyle.

Creating a Routine

When we change our routine, we feel out of balance until the body and mind adjust to the new routine. Once you have the routine you like, it is just a matter of maintaining it. It is like riding a bicycle: once you start, it is easy to keep it going.

Even the smallest changes in routine can mean a huge difference in how you will feel 15 years from now. Eating just a little less, exercising a little more, stretching, lowering body tension, praying ten minutes a day and thinking encouraging thoughts all have a cumulative benefit.

When you reach old age, you will reap the cumulative effect of your lifestyle. You can be running the Iron Man, being an inspiration to everyone you meet, or a miserable old grouch, a joyless, hollow soul, bankrupt of life. For many, the final destination of their daily routine is sickness and misery.

If you can relate to this, then you too are a food junkie.

It is our heart’s desire to eat nutritiously and to be healthy. Yet, in spite of our desire, we follow a different path: the one to the refrigerator. A magnetic cherry cheesecake appears and pulls us closer. “No I shouldn’t,” we sigh, as if being dragged against our will. We fight its control, but the cheesecake knows that eventually we will surrender.
Bulging bellies and heavy hips are not enough to drive us away from those fatty, sugar-filled foods. High blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease and looming health conditions are not enough to repel us. Like a moth to a flame, we stand mesmerized by a 40-watt refrigerator light. No hunger to satisfy, just a pleasure junkie looking for a fix.

Throwing all restraint aside, we have filled the bloodstream with fat, cholesterol, toxins, additives, and preservatives, consuming foods with no nutrition, expecting our bodies to quietly endure the barrage without the consequences. But, a pleasure-centered diet has a price. Disease and obesity are the plague of the 21st century. Surgery and chemical medicines have become the Band-Aid for a problem caused by inner pain and emptiness.

Desperation seeks hope in diet programs, liposuction, breakfast shakes, exercise, breathing techniques, stimulants, weight-loss drugs, hypnosis, plastic wraps, creams, vibration machines and electric muscle stimulation — more Band-Aids. Most of these techniques fail because they cannot relieve the aching of a soul crying for food to soothe the pain.

Does God want you to suffer? No! He came to set us free. Free from the past. Free from guilt, depression and sin. Free to be a child before an amazing God Who loves us. But we are not living free. If we honestly evaluate our decisions and actions, we will face the sobering realization that our emotions are in the driver’s seat. Feelings compel us to act. When they become uncontrollable, they are defined as compulsive, obsessive or addictive behavior.