I am just like this. Cigarettes, weed, hallucinogens, cocaine, speed, alcohol, sex, food, coffee...I've spent my whole life quitting one to adopt the next...and then I cycle back again. The hard drugs didn't cycle back as I got older, simply because I'm a professional and would have very little access to them and no time to devote (tripping in particular requires a few days set aside...now that I look back I am fascinated that I devoted so much time and energy to drug use in my youth).
I have been sober now for eight months, and am noticing that it has re-emerged in my relationship with food. In truth, it isn't a "re" - this is the most dysfunctional I've been with food. I "allowed" myself sweets for the first 90 days, but then didn't put them away. My nightly squares of very dark chocolate have become an expected aspect of evening...
I'm (lately) having the same experience with "quitting" this behavior that I had with quitting alcohol - lots of deals and promises that fall spluttering to the ground before I'm halfway through the evening. It is interesting, because I weigh the same as I did when I was drinking, but it is no longer acceptable to me. I exercise, and eat somewhat holistically, but there are sweets there- - daily, and the occasional burger and fries.
I don't know if some of us just have larger "appetites" than others. A good friend once noted this tendency while we were traveling; my whole day is loosely structured around "getting what I need" - which in that instance was coffee and cigarettes. I had to do all sorts of machinations on that trip to "get what I needed." I also had an ex-boyfriend recently tell me that my sexual appetites made him feel pressured (?? - I thought guys weren't supposed to say/feel that!!).
But I don't want to be that girl just pulling all the cookies to her side of the table with both arms, like gathering all the poker chips! I don't want to be the Queen of Excess, my cavernous mouth demanding "MORE - MORE" like a nightmare monster!
So the quest to find enough...ENOUGH!...well, this is the quest...
With alcohol, I didn't hit enough. I didn't hit enough with cigarettes either. I quit both because I couldn't stand what I was doing to my health long-term with them. So, as we are taught here, I chose abstinence, because my being cannot define "enough" and so cannot ever moderate.
But how does that apply to things like food? There isn't any quitting food. Yes, I could quit sweets with powerful vows, or be abstinent from french fries (which may or may not be a good thing), but none of that addresses the gaping maw.
People talk about a spiritual solution, and I don't want to dismiss that, but I haven't found it so far and I am very open to spiritual solutions. The AV counters the spiritual solution idea by saying: "it was God who made you this way - a lover of good food, and good sex, and good feelings. You are sensual - with every sense. You are a Taurus - drawn to physical comfort and satiety. Just accept yourself, and stop trying to impose an artificial austerity on yourself. This is you - a woman of many appetites..."
I don't have any answers. Abstinence was my only answer with the most self destructive of my appetites. Now that those are out of the way, the more subtle stuff is showing.