What determines our addiction to junk food? The answer to that question is…….our parents. As children, we were at the mercy of these larger humans called parents. The child mind realizes instantly that these larger humans are in control of us. The size difference invokes a fear response and various psychological coping mechanisms. The power in this relationship is lopsided, in favor of the adults. The child mind then realizes that the best way to gain favor with the larger humans is to mimic their behavior. If the parent sees the child acting and behaving like the parent, basic psychology dictates that the parent (being admiring of themselves to a high degree) will also find the child likeable, simply because the child is trying to be a mirror image of them.

This is why children of parents who smoke, often smoke themselves….. because the smoking was used as the social lubricant to find favor with the household authority figure. Saying that, sedated humans are very mentally imbalanced compared to non sedated humans, so a child who’s raised by a smoker, drinker, junk food eater etc…….is often completely desperate to bond with their emotionally erratic care giver. The more unhealthy the parent, the more their behavior is imbalanced, and the more the child will do anything to avoid conflict and win favor. This is why children of smoker/drinker/addict parents morph into smoker/drinker/addicts themselves……..because that behavior would have to be adopted by the child to find safety within the inner circle of the family unit. Basically the psychology goes, “Don’t hurt me, I’m just like you. I’ll be just like Mom and Dad, because if I do they’ll like me more and that will make me safer.”

So you take all that going on inside the mind, without you knowing it, and you fast forward ahead 30 years later to when this dysfunctional coping mechanism is now literally killing the child………who’s now about 50 years old. When this child sees the stand of organic vegetables at the grocery store and realizes that eating better is needed to literally solve most of their life problems, the child ego is LITERALLY AFRAID of healthy food because healthy food represents PARENTAL REJECTION within the family unit. So to the mind of a person raised by parents who ate shitty food, picking healthy food is equated to losing their parents. Period. End of story. It’s not a vegetable, it’s the death of the bond with the parents…….so the traumatized child (now adult) walks by the vegetables once again and heads for the chip and pop aisle. Healthy food and non addiction = fear and no love. Junk food and addiction = love and family acceptance. That’s the secret.

And like every other self sabotage story, the theme is…”what used to save us, now starts to kill us.” That person used to have to bond with their parents through shitty food, booze or smokes etc……but now there’s no need to be afraid anymore because you can run your own life, yet the subconscious is very powerful and moves toward the bad food as a habit, to find safety with the child care givers. Without realizing this pattern, the person who’s addicted to unhealthy living will think it’s a will power issue or a food issue………which it’s not. Most unhealthy living issues today stem from being raised by people who ate shitty food and how we as children had to eat shitty food to gain quality bonding time with our unhealthy parents. What used to save us, now starts to kill us. If we bonded with our parents through addiction, those addictions come to remind us of the parents, even if the parents are dead. It doesn’t make logical sense but when it comes to the human mind, very little is logical.

What’s the solution? Understand that you’re no longer in fear, you’re an adult now, you don’t need parental protection any longer, you can take care of yourself, adult up, stop killing yourself with child like food and child like behavior, it’s no longer necessary, you’re free now, it’s OK, you’re safe, pick up the vegetables, in the end your parents want to see you healthy, your parents want to see you have a better life, walk by the junk food, the smokes and the booze, leave your past behind, wish it well, thank your saboteur for helping you get this far and tell your saboteur that their services are no longer required. After that, just walk into your best life. The prison door in front of you, give it a push……..it was never locked.