I have had many, many wonderful opportunities in my life. I have had experiences that were truly magical. I have had chances to go places and do things I will never, ever forget.

Some of the most amazing things I have had a chance to experience are pretty "ordinary" but to me they were - and are - fantastic.

That said, I am often overwhelmed with gratitude for it all. Now, the reason I am writing this, the reason I started this blog off by "counting blessings", is that this evening I had an intense bout of felling small, underneath a bunch of stuff, scared and miserably plagued by urges and cravings.

That last bit - the urges and cravings - were likely in direct response to feeling small, underneath and scared. I was feeling a terrible need for COMFORT and since I got back "on", trying to "detox" from "trigger foods" - well, since I did that, I removed a key "comfort" from my list of acceptable choices.

"Junk food" simply mustn't be a source of comfort any more! I don't want to go through the pain of shame and feeling so out of control and hooked. Not only do I feel "better" when I abstain from the trigger foods and eat sanely, I feel calmer, I manage feelings in general better and I feel more confident. Well, maybe not 100% but certainly a lot more than when I am "off" on a binge cycle. But even when I am feeling so much better, things can get rough and I hit the wall of stuff that's not okay in my life and it hurts and I think "I want COMFORT!!!" And that comfort cannot be those foods any more .. not if I want the peace of mind and calm that comes with abstinence. But I haven't quite managed to settle into all the non-food comforts.

I have been working on accepting that certain foods have left a permanent imprint on my brain and will always be triggers, setting off a cascade of intense cravings. A lot of other things can set that cascade off - some of them I have no control over. But I sure can manage to NOT put trigger foods in my mouth. It's hard to not see them in the grocery store and not see them on the TV and in magazines, etc., etc., etc. It is hard, and it is worth it.

Eventually, I will feel grateful for the addiction ... some days I do! Most days, however, I feel really small and underneath and scared cuz of the struggle I have fighting the urges.

Every time I read about eating "moderate" amounts of typical trigger foods, when I read or hear that "there are no forbidden foods" I gotta remind myself that FOR ME there are foods I CANNOT moderate, foods I must avoid entirely. I know this intellectually but I have certainly not accepted it fully.

I am very grateful for Spark People. I keep finding new resources here to use in this life-long effort to stay healthy and fit! I am very, very grateful for the Never Quit Pledge and all the wonderful brothers and sisters in the journey who blog and post. I have stuck with Spark People more than a year and a half, never missed a day of exercise, even if it was "only" ten minutes. I fit into size ten pants (and even one size eight pair)!!!

So, blessings aren't all sweet and magical - at least not at the moment they hit me. Those must be the "blessings in disguise", eh?