The Path is Too Deep

In my introductory post , I laid out the "highlight reel" of my life from the last decade or so—a relentless series of events involving profound grief, career upheaval, health crises, and personal loss. I also mentioned that when my doctors and therapists, with the best of intentions, tell me, "you should bring your stress levels down," I often just burst out laughing. It's absurd advice. When the stressors are this significant and largely out of your control, you can't just "reduce" them. You can't tell the universe to "please stop." The stress is a given. It’s a non-negotiable reality of the world I'm living in. For decades, my response to that stress was what destroyed me. As I wrote in my "Loop Policy" post, my response was to turn to food—specifically, the high-sugar, high-starch, high-fat "comfort foods" that triggered my emotional eating loop. This was a disaster. I was trying to put out a fire with ga...

 In my introductory post , I laid out the "highlight reel" of the past dozen years of my life—a story marked by profound grief, intense stress, and a lifelong battle with my weight and health. I also shared how I came to realize that my "comfort food" was, in fact, an emotional eating pattern I (and many of us) learned in childhood. It was a simple, deeply ingrained reward loop: Skinned knee -> Feel Bad -> Get Ice Cream -> Feel Better As I grew, that loop became my primary coping mechanism for everything . Stressful day at work -> Feel Bad -> Order a Pizza -> Feel Better Argument with a partner -> Feel Bad -> Eat a bag of chips -> Feel Better Grief, loneliness, or just ADHD-fueled boredom -> Feel Bad -> Eat -> Feel Better This loop was a temporary fix that created a permanent, spiraling problem. It was the root cause of my 190-pound weight gain and a major contributor to the inflammation that damaged my heart. My medication (Wellb...