The Crash

It doesn’t happen overnight.

You don’t wake up heavy.

You drift into it.

You don’t gain weight all at once.

It starts quietly.

A bad day becomes a bad week.

Comfort becomes habit.

Hunger turns into noise.

You don’t decide to lose control —

it just slips from your hands.

One day at a time

You start eating for relief, not fuel.

You reward yourself for surviving the day.

You promise you’ll “start Monday.”

Monday becomes next month.

You hide snacks.

You call it stress.

You call it metabolism.

You call it genetics.

You call it everything except what it really is.

You’re not in the driver’s seat anymore.

Food is.

Learning to lie to yourself

You buy bigger clothes.

You blame the washing machine.

You pretend the mirror is wrong.

You tell yourself you’re “just bloated.”

You negotiate with the scale like it’s a person:

“Maybe tomorrow.

Maybe next week.

Maybe "after the holidays."

You stop noticing the damage

because you’re busy surviving.

Your body speaks first

Before your mind catches up, your body reacts.

Sleep becomes shallow.

Breathing gets louder.

Your heart races on stairs.

Your joints begin whispering warnings.

You’re not dying.

You’re inflamed, overfed,

and starved of the nutrients that matter.

Your body is waving flags.

You’re too numb to look.

The moment it lands

And then, one morning, it hits.

You don’t recognize the person in the mirror.

Your clothes don’t fit.

You avoid cameras.

You avoid social events.

You avoid yourself.

That’s the crash.

It’s not dramatic.

It’s not cinematic.

It isn’t the moment you scream.

It’s the moment you quietly admit:

“I’m not in control anymore.”

The wrong target

You blame yourself.

You think you’re weak.

You think you lack discipline.

You think everyone else has it figured out.

They don’t.

You were never taught how food behaves in the body.

Nobody explained hunger signals.

Nobody explained insulin.

Nobody explained addiction to engineered reward.

You were handed diets and punishments.

You were never given understanding.

Misled, not broken

You weren’t broken.

You were misled.

Your crash wasn’t laziness.

It was chemistry.

It was stress.

It was habits.

It was an entire world telling you:

“Eat now. Feel better. Fix it later.”

The food industry is built on the crash.

Some diets are built on it too.

Not because you’re weak.

Because confusion is profitable.

The crash is the beginning

The day you see yourself clearly is the day everything changes.

Not because of shame —

but because of honesty.

Once you admit food has been driving,

you can finally take the wheel.

You don’t starve yourself.

You don’t punish yourself.

You don’t count almonds.

You learn.

That’s how you leave the crash behind.