Trick or treat...

When thinking about addiction, junk food is not generally the first category to spring to mind.
Drugs.
Alcohol.
Gambling.

These gremlins throw up fear, hopelessness, desolation
When someone, for example your significant other, suggests that you go out and grab some food, these things are the furthest from your mind.  It's a treat, right?  You don't have to cook, cleaning up is minimal, the food is consistent and quick.   
It's easy.
And, sometimes, it is just a treat, an infrequent jaunt in your otherwise well-cooked life.  However, when every time the conversation comes up regarding "what shall we eat?" and you're secretly hoping it will be fast food of some kind?  Yeah, that is when the warning bells should start tolling.

The bells have started trilling their song for me and I've had to wake up and have a look at just how much junk food I have let into my life.  Unfortunately I also have to look at some of the reasons I allow it in and why I find it so hard to say 'no' or choose the healthier alternative.  The crux of beating an addiction is working on the root of the problem, not just treating the symptoms.  Ahhh, but I hear you shout: "Beating Junk Food?  Easy, just stop eating it!!".  The amount of times I have told myself this phrase, heard it from others, felt guilt because this whiz-bang easy solution isn't that simple for me, is uncountable and, to be honest, a little disheartening.  If it is that easy, what's wrong with me that I can't seem to do it?

Lets use a drug addict as an example.  On their journey through life, they have become addicted to drugs.  The substances they abuse have become part of their bodies, they suffer horrible withdrawals if they go without said substance.  Ok, easy solution: lets send them to rehab! This will ween them off said substance and then, with a clean bill of health, they are sent on their way.  Cured.  But wait, what was that I hear you say?  This is their 5th visit to the rehab institute?  So even though they are no longer dependent on the substance, they still turn back to it?  Ahhh, so there must be something else that needs clearing out.

Luckily with junk food, it's a little less serious.  You don't need to ween your body off of a chemical dependency.  In fact, your body is dependent on just about anything else such as, if we're going to be brutally honest here, actual nutrients and vitamins.  So, if it is not a physical reliance, that must mean that there is more of a psychological issue.  Either that or I am just lazy. 

Today marks the day of a "fast-food ban" for myself and my boyfriend, in effect until we come back from our holiday to Tasmania (although, kindly, my boyfriend has told me while we're in Tazzie I am allowed to have a red-grasshopper pizza).  This means that there will be no fast-food consumed by either of us (excluding a red-grasshopper pizza) between 30 August 2013 to 4 October 2013.  For the sake of this ban, fast-food is hereby defined as: bought pizza or "fish and chips" and any meals from MacDonalds, Hungry Jacks, Nandos, KFC, Chicken Treat, Red Rooster, Charcoal Chicken, + any other fast-food chain of the like.

This period is my rehab to de-toxify my body.  To ensure that I do not fall back into this addiction, I am also going to use it as rehab for de-toxify my spirit and mind.

Spring clearing, here I come.