Like it or not, we're all addicts. Each & every one of us!Believe it or not, we all become oxygen addicts at birth, when we become addicted to air with our first breath, with each breath rewarding our brains with the euphoric rush of oxygen. Despite knowing this, I'd never thought of myself as an addict. I've never taken any narcotics, never smoked, & only ever drank alcohol to excess a handful of times, consuming at most one or two units at most in a month. I've never been unfaithful or sought pleasure through meaningless sex. Apart from natural life choices, I've never gambled, seeing the risk of loss as a waste of hard earned money. So it looks like I take the safe route through life, so what could I possibly know about addiction.   Almost by accident, I've learned first hand about an addiction that almost all of us have, with few of us even knowing it.   Until in my early 30's, I was a super-thin, extremely fit individual, with a pretty good quality of life. I never cared much for food, often having to remind myself that it was time to eat, too busy with life. With the arrival of children, my food intake gradually increased, often cooking far too much, in order to avoid not providing them with enough. All too frequently I consumed the leftovers from what I had prepared, to avoid food going to waste, a value that was instilled in me at a young age. But as an active father, always taking my children away on adventures, I soon burned off the food I was taking in. I was not an exercise fanatic. I was just active, always grabbing every experience from life that I could. In 2008, as a keen open water swimmer, I decided to train to swim the English Channel. Interviewing many successful swimmers who had made the 40km distance from England to France, they had all talked about the importance of bulking up to create resistance to prolongued cold temperatures through fat reserves to draw upon. So I began eating pasta, by the bucket load, converting carbohydrates into a layer of fat. Doing so, perhaps enhanced by my naturally slowing metabolism, my fat cells blossomed, waving goodbye to my well toned body and the six pack I had taken for granted for my whole life. But with one change in life circumstance and another, the swim was postponed time and again.   With my increased weight came a surprising feeling I had never had before. Hunger!   Eating 3 meals a day, with portion sizing growing gradually, my weight reached new limits. I soon grew from a low 60kg, to 70, then 80, and then during a difficult divorce, creeped ridiculously close to 90. Suddenly, seeing this value, I felt like half the man I used to be, and yet had seemingly gain half a man when I stood on the scales. Eating the excess from the meals I cooked for my children that lived with me, not exercising as much, & hunched almost frozen still behind a laptop, I found myself using food respites as a way to break up the day. Cooking became a ritual twice or more each day, and determined to always provide for my children, I would regularly over-estimate quantities needed, further leading to my over-eating.   With more life changes, came more dietary changes, and soon I recognised I was riding a sugar rollercoaster, with regular and high volumes of sugary food and drinks to help me concentrate, or to avoid a sugar withdrawal migraine kicking in. I justified these high quantities of sugar, as being an essential aspect of eating for my formerly active lifestyle, yet I was no longer leading it. So in an attempt to course correct for my sugar rich diet, I would sometimes, for weeks at a time, reduce my intake of easily accessed processed sugars, replacing with alternative substitute food sources, often eating several times a day just to distract myself from any signs of a craving. This too became a habit. When I wanted a distraction from my work, I would go to the cupboard or fridge, open it, stare at the contents, and then close it. All too often, however, I would empty something out first, which I would frequently consume without even really noticing. I'd become an unconscious food junkie, cramming in more, and more often, until the point I was snacking 4 or 5 times a day, with 2 full cooked meals at lunch and dinner, often in portions enough to feed 2 or more.   In short, food was beginning to rule my life, and rule my waistline.   As a trained hypnotherapist, even teaching others to become hypnotherapists, I often met prospective clients who wanted to give up smoking. Many asked me if I had ever smoked and understood what they were experiencing. I always admitted that although I could help them, I never had an honest appreciation of their struggle. As I later discovered, they were right.