Great effort is needed to end the uncontrollable desire for food. For that reason, develop your fighting skills to conquer compulsive actions.

This battle is for freedom; refuse to fail. You can feel intense emotions and choose not to give in. Tell yourself, “I refuse to quit. I refuse to give in. I refuse to fail.” During the emotional windstorms caused by temptation, ask yourself, “what do I really want?” Eating to relieve stress is not what you want. What you really want is to be at peace. Eating out of anger is not what you want. What you want is to resolve the issue. Eating to relieve fear is not what you want. What you really want is the courage to face it. Eating in the place of boredom is not what you want. What you really want is a challenge that will stir some excitement within you.

Do not fight obsessive thoughts, but deflect them into positive thoughts and activities. Use mini-breaks to change your mood and break cycles of obsessive thinking. Do something you enjoy for a few minutes until the emotions diminish. Play an instrument, exercise, go for a short walk, or do some stretching. Not only will you be fighting obsessive thoughts, but improving your life one mini-break at a time. Do not give in to an urge; each time you do, the pleasure will create a craving to repeat it. Remind yourself that junk food is artificial pleasure that steals from your body. If you do not feed a craving, it will die. If you become anxious take a slow, deep breath, holding for one second, and then release, think peace. Let go and let God.

Create the feeling of revulsion to the point of nausea: finger nails scratching a blackboard, a hair in your soup, dog vomit on your carpet, a wet fur ball on your bed, or a bug in your shoe. Find what image best works for you. Use negative labeling. Bacon is burned strips of cholesterol and fat. Make up your own negative labels for the foods you are trying to quit. Play the mental tape to the end; look at the big picture. Don’t look only at the pleasure, but focus on all of the negative consequences.

When we discipline ourselves, we feel as though we have lost something, and feel deprived. Fight that feeling with the fact that you have what you need to be happy. Challenge the feeling of loss.

Remind yourself of the bad qualities of the food you hate. Refuse to eat them. Avoid triggers like donut stores and bakeries. Avoid spending time in the kitchen or at the dinner table when you start to feel tempted. Plan your meals. Have fruit or vegetable snacks ready.

The first few days can be the toughest. If you feel weak and out of it, it will be difficult to discipline your thoughts. Discipline is work, and feeling toxic creates an ‘I don’t –care’ feeling. It will pass once the blood clears of toxins. Do the best you can during these times to remain resolute.

You can develop a healthy lifestyle by doing the following:

Compulsive Eating Program Check List

1. Buy nutritious foods.

2. Know the triggers and the weaknesses and have a plan to deal with them.

3. Decide on an exercise program.

4. Write your reasons for quitting.

5. Take steps to make first few, hassle-free days .

6. Share your intention with a friend.

7. Have quiet times to strengthen your resolve.

Making A Daily Journal

In your journal, write the lessons you have learned, the good that you do, the good that happens to you, any insights, your successes, and your mistakes. Consider each day then review to see how you are doing. Each day, encourage yourself with your successes and bring the mistakes into perspective. Observe patterns and look for ways to change those patterns. Recovery is not a straight line process. If you were to chart your progress, it would look like the graph of the stock market. Just when you think you are doing well, the graph takes a dip. So expect it. Writing in a journal will give you a better perspective in life. It helps you look at a bigger picture and see how you are getting there, one step at a time. It will remind you of all the little things you have accomplished.

People should follow a proper course of action in their eating habits.

Eating habit is usually done unconsciously. It is a behavioral pattern that often occurs automatically. Your daily routine existence, living weary lives, going nowhere and never having enough time to get there. The rat race needs to lose a rat. Get off the rat treadmill and design your own. Design it for increasing challenge. Work towards having a great routine. Take some time to write out your present routine, then write out your ultimate routine. See yourself living it; feel the and the joy of the accomplishment.

The secret of life is that there is no secret. It’s all learning. No magic pill will change your life. You have to do it one step at a time, one day at a time, one moment at a time. You are rebuilding a life on a new foundation. Investing the time, work and energy to reshape your thinking and life will become much less painful. You will come to see life as a gift from God, an opportunity to experience, and a challenge to grow. Your soul will rise up as though on the wings of an eagle.

Now, let’s look at some overeating patterns and some easy changes that will have a big effect. shapes your life. For most of us, we are running like rats on the treadmill of pleasure.

Overeating Has a Pattern

It is grocery shopping day for Susan. She buys a few treats telling herself “I won’t overeat.” When she gets home, she’s in the grocery bag for her favorite delicacy—warm cinnamon buns. She should have had one, but she had three. She eats a light dinner watching TV and makes endless raids on the refrigerator. By the end of the night, she is completely stuffed.

A week later Susan is on a backpacking trip to the mountains. She feels free of food addiction. She is eating sensibly and feels that she has overcome the problem. But she is disappointed when she returns to her usual surroundings.

A drug addict will feel no desire to use drugs when in the hospital or in prison, only to experience the full power of addiction on returning to the streets. Entering their familiar environment, they quickly slide into their old routine. In the same way, compulsive eaters in the home because they have established triggers through years of repeated behaviors: chocolate for depression, potato chips for loneliness, pizza for entertainment, cookies for boredom, ice cream for hopelessness, coffee tiredness. When our routine is controlled by a series of triggers, we feel out of control, no longer master of our life, but a slave of the stomach god. Like a cruel dictator, it growls and we jump to serve its every whim with quiet submission. Time for a rebellion.

A research has shown that dopamine causes euphoria or the feeling of being high. This hormone is considered the master molecule of addiction. The pleasure of dopamine has the power to form both healthy and unhealthy behaviors. Thus, its presence is a factor to consider in compulsive behavior or any sort of addiction .

With that dopamine’s control on addiction, why not exploit it to form good eating habits. You can form good behaviors by making what is good for you as enjoyable as possible. You don’t get hooked to a certain food if you don’t love the taste out of it. Eating spinach just because it is healthy when you hate it will not work. When you make healthy eating an enjoyable, taste-filled experience, you will want to do it again and again. Neurons and synapses will form new patterns. Red lights will trigger the desire for juicy watermelon. Hunger will shout, cantaloupes! The cravings for unhealthy foods will fade like a bad dream. No more cravings for fat, salt, sugar and chemicals, the body’s biochemistry is rebalanced to a clean bloodstream filled with vitamins, minerals, enzymes and natural fruit sugars. Its a sort of preconditioning your system to adapt with the new food.

Creating Healthy Triggers and Associations

We always tend to associate events or images to certain foods. These mental associations are the triggers for that food. Hot summer days can trigger the urge for ice cream. Campfires can trigger the urge for marshmallows. Baseball games trigger urges for hot dogs. Seeing a donut store can trigger an urge for coffee. The golden arches of McDonalds can trigger an urge for a hamburger.

Food triggers are worth millions. Every food company on earth hopes to brand there products to images and events that triggers, emotions, feelings, and memories that causes the urge to eat, buy or consume. The marketer’s dream is millions of consumers with subconsious triggers programmed, by the media. If you see the Golden Arches of MacDonald’s and your car makes an automatic turn to the checkout window, you may be one of them.

If we want to stop craving for unhealthy diet, create triggers for healthy foods you want to eat. Here is how to do it. Imagine a bright orange cantaloupe, packed with beta-carotene and enzymes, ready to nourish every cell, as good for you as it is low in calories. Imagine enjoying a plate of chilled cantaloupe slices, sensing peace and comfort coming over your body. See yourself relishing every bite and being joyful of God’s blessing. See your body being flooded with nutrients and making you feel so good, so alive. Feel the warmest, most comforting feeling and connect it with the taste of cantaloupe. See yourself after eating a plate of chilled cantaloupe slices. Savor the feeling of contentment. Now when you eat a cantaloupe, enjoy it to the fullest, relishing every moment. If you do, dopamine will help you to form the healthy triggers.

Be careful, some people have overused this trigger-creating technique and developed a serious cantaloupe addiction. We are thankful for the 12-step program, Cantaloupe Eaters Anonymous.