Now that we've tackled the emotional componant...

It's time to deal - truthfully - with the physical reason I have been unable or unwilling to make these changes.

It's rather obvious I've been medicating with food for a long, long time. I have all these intense emotional feelings and have been satisfying them with the bandaid of the foods that recreate in the brain these chemicals that I should be feeling naturally.

In simple terms... I've been getting high on sugar.

And like any addiction, it's also been a self fulfilling prophesy. I feel bad emotionally, I get the artificial mood boost from sugar, which only lasts until the next "fix".

That's why getting something "sweet" was how I spoiled myself (quite literally it turned out), and always - always - how I self destructed once I saw any real success. I looked in the mirror, saw the changes or worse, had others point them out for me, and suddenly I was emotionally vulnerable.

This leads once again to more sugar, which leads again to more masking the real reason I'm burying myself with weight because the temporary "high" is so much better.

So step one to reclaiming my life means that I have to get rid of my dependence on sugar.

I went to the store the other day and implemented my plan. I spent the majority of my time on the outer edges of the store (fresh produce, etc) than in the middle, reminding myself that "nothing good ever comes in a bag". I didn't even get sugar free cookies or pudding or ice cream - which had been my original plan. Instead I went with fruit or natural sugars to facilitate the detoxification from processed chemicals.

In the same respect, I'm trying to move away from eating meat... to fill my body with live stuff like vegetables, fruit and produce rather than dead animals. Not vegan necessarily, and not even vegetarian (since I've read that fish is actually a really good food to combat chemical depression), but just a more conscious effort to get away the more conventional eating habits that have always contributed to my dependence on sugar.

I figure the better I feel physically, the better I'll feel mentally - and I need to do that naturally instead of just these quick temporary fixes.

So my focus, then, is to avoid sugar by eating things that are good for me and my body rather than fill it with chemicals.

It hasn't been easy. Walking past the cookies and turning away dessert at the restaurant (and the booze) was not an easy task.

Like with any addiction... one day at a time.