-You try your best to eat normal meals, and tell yourself you won’t snack, but then out of nowhere you realize you’re in the cabinet snacking on something like cereal without meaning to.

-You wait until there’s no one around and then sneak over to the fridge/cabinet to get food, even when you’re not hungry.

-You spend an hour before bedtime trying to think of a way to sneak a snack food into your room so no one will see you eat it - again when you’re not even hungry.

-You see other people’s leftovers on their plates while cleaning up after a meal and feel a strong NEED to finish said food - even when you’re not hungry.

-You justify your snacking by telling yourself that you’re “fueling your body because it’s hungry” or something silly like that but it’s really just head hunger and you pretend you don’t know better.

-You try so hard to change your eating habits, eat better, etc. but you find yourself eating until it hurts, and even after it hurts.

-You can’t have any snack foods around because no matter how much you preach “moderation” to yourself or others, when you know it’s there, you feel an obligation and a physical NEED to eat it.

Sometimes I feel like a lot of the fitblr/healthblr/whatever community really pushes issues like food addiction to the back, in a shameful little corner. It’s something people don’t want to admit to. It’s a form of an eating disorder and I feel like we need to draw more attention to it, because honestly all I ever see are motivational posts like “it’s okay to eat. It’s good to fuel your body” and while YES THIS IS ABSOLUTELY 100% TRUE, it’s hard for someone with a food addiction to see ONLY that, because it’s almost like a justification for the disorder.

Food addiction is a real disorder just like anorexia or bulimia. It’s something I deal with every single day, every single hour, every single MINUTE. It’s a constant struggle with my own mind. Even after having a life changing surgery like gastric bypass, 9 months later and 100+ lbs down and it still hasn’t gone away. And I just wanted to take a moment to bring light to it, to admit my problem, and hopefully encourage others to know they aren’t alone in this battle (like how I feel 99% of the time).