Step 4: Be careful of what you let in

Well, I'm not religious but I do remember the saying 'your body is a temple' as I was growing up and I do think it is apt. The body of scientific evidence has building steadily now for the past few decades and there is no doubt; what goes into into your body and mind either by consumption or through your senses or behaviours make a big difference to how healthy and happy you are. (There is still some debate to the effects of diet with the working of the brain due to the blood/brain barrier but there is clearly some correlation either through the effects of addiction or on the side effects of poor nutrition. We definitely know the effects of addiction on the brain, brain fog, poor concentration, poor sleep and so on. With the increasing use of MRI scanners, we can study the effects in real time and we can say with a lot of conviction that addiction, through over production of dopamine, its effects and its supporting structures (delta fosb) that your brain structures get physically altered. If you're reading this and think that you don't have any addictions, I would encourage you to ask yourself if you ever feel compelled to look at the internet, get onto your mobile, to play a video game, to eat biscuits and chocolate, to exercise to excess, to shop. If you do any of these behaviours regularly and feel a compulsion to do them then you may have entered into the world of addiction.
It is often reported that drinking in the OCD community is quite prevalent and who can blame anyone for drinking alcohol as a way of soothing from the never-ending barrage of unwanted thoughts. (Or drugs or whatever). But for me the interesting bit here is the first list. A few years ago, I went on a sugar detox for about 6 months and I have to say the results were radical. I lost a lot of weight, probably slightly too much in fact but the first thing I noticed was in the first few days of not having any. I felt like my head was being hit with a sledgehammer, had the worst brain fog you can imagine and generally felt like I was on acid for about 2 or 3 days (and not in a good way). I was always a bit sceptical that you could be addicted to food or anything other than the big ones like alcohol, drugs or gambling but my scepticism evaporated within those first 2 days, it was that profound. So, it was very hard quitting sugar and the first week was tough but as with most recoveries and the 'snakes and ladders' route to recovery, I eventually found it a lot easier and managed to enjoy my food without sugar. I should incidentally say, that I was on the diet because I was getting some candida in my mouth that was making it feel horrible (an overgrowth of a type of yeast when your body is out of kilter).  I had tried a lot of different solutions to get rid of it without much success. Starved of the excess sugar in my diet it went within the first week. I also noticed that the pains in my joints went after a few weeks. Pretty incredible considering all I did was eat toast, a few chocolate/health bars, a few sweets, had orange juice and maybe drank a little bit too much alcohol. The other thing I should say is it had a profound effect on my sleep. For the first time in my life, I slept like a log, it was quite simply wonderful. 
So, yes, I would encourage you to have a think about what food you are taking in but also what else you are taking in through your senses and experiences. It has been shown conclusively now that pornography or playing video games can have exactly the same effects on the brain that addictions to sugar or alcohol or drugs have. In facts it’s even worse in many respects with food, sex (porn or sexual activity) as the mind-body rewards those behaviours excessively (in caveman times it would have been of great benefit to get sex or food when the going is good: and that translates into copulating with people on a screen or eating diets of excess fat and sugar in today’s vernacular). In fact, you can give rats, high fat/sugar diets and they will just keep eating until they are rolling around like little fat barrels, it’s the same for excess copulations, all you have to do is stimulate the rat with novel or new rats and they are good to go again (even though their bodies are not). However, if you give them cocaine (or humans) and only about 10% of them will get addicted and so whilst it’s a problem, its actually less of a problem in society as a whole than porn or food addictions. 
I would not recommend porn or endless programmes/ magazines with very good-looking people in them if you suffer from ROCD by the way. None of it is real but parts of your brain don’t realise that and you get further away from reality and that’s the last thing you need with ROCD.  Don't get me wrong it’s good to get some rewards and our bodies have adapted for reward seeking behaviour over hundreds of thousands of years but the modern world is incredibly different to the world that we have evolved in.  The early human version of you might have had a bit of meat now and again when a hunt was successful but would mainly be eating fruits, seeds, vegetables, grains and so on. We are not adapted for a heavy meat diet. We are certainly not adapted for a high sugar and fat diet and we are certainly not adapted to be able to have copulation with never ending willing partners. The main reason I have talking about these 2 issues is that pretty much all of us have an understanding of the drugs, alcohol and gambling concepts of addiction and that they are ultimately very bad for us but all addictions lead to the same distorted rain structures which are very maladaptive and will lead to big problems with how we feel about ourselves, how we sleep, how healthy we are and what type of thoughts and feelings we will experience. Ask anyone who has done a high fat diet on one of those MacDonald type binge programmes and even the hardiest candidate will be suffering from extreme anxiety after a couple of weeks. This stuff is bad for you and you need to eat the right stuff.
But we should not feel bad about it, our brains have evolved to reward us and increasingly so and so it makes it harder and harder to resist whatever addictions we are dealing with. I'm pretty sure a lot of people don't even realise they have addictions; they just have to have their mobile on them at all times so that they can get the news as it happens or so they can be in touch with whatever their friends have said or done every few minutes. There are team of psychologists by the way employed by all the big internet companies making apps, games, websites more addictive to us (as they ultimately lead to more money for them either by in app purchases, advertising and so on). We allow of this stuff in so easily without stopping to think of the consequence on our bodies and on our minds. We are not ready for all of this stuff and it does not make us very well and it’s a confusing world out there because there are so many companies trying to sell you something but we kind of intuitively know what’s good for us as a part of us feels bad unless you have completely lost touch. It’s usually easier to ignore that fleeting thought. 
And so, for step 4 we need to be very careful about what we let into our minds and bodies as they severely affect the way that we think and feel and even how we behave. There are enough sites out there that will tell you what is good for us; fruit, vegetables, grains and seeds and so on (that sounds familiar) and plenty of water with a few treats sparingly. It always seems like so much effort but there are plenty of experiments that show that anxiety can be reduced by simple acts of eating healthily and drinking plenty of water.
If you are serious about getting better and recovering then you are going to have to care about not only what you are eating but what you are doing with your time. Are you spending it going for a walk or reading a book or are you hooked up to the internet getting little packets of dopamine hits whenever you find something you like? If you are doing anything regularly where you feel compelled to do it, you really need to stop it and work out a new way of living to give yourself a real chance of recovery from OCD or ROCD.