Willpower Reboot (or hide all the sugar in the universe)
Every January it’s the same. After a holiday season filled with my mother’s impossible-to-resist butter tarts, whipped shortbread and banana-cherry slice; after the boxes of Turtles, bars of Toblerone and Chicago Mix popcorn – I’m basically fucked. How is it that I make it through the first part of December relatively unscathed, only to then lose my mind in the safe-haven of my parents’ home between December 24th and December 27th?
It just doesn’t make sense. I love being at my parents’ house. I don’t have deep-seated anxiety when I visit. Visiting my parents is something I actually choose to do. So why, why, why, WHY for the love of stable blood sugar, am I unable to control myself when I’m home? Why do I emotionally eat the moment the door opens? It’s not like I was raised on a diet of sugar and white flour – we weren’t a dessert every night kind of family.
And now it’s the New Year. Now January is 3/4 over and I am still jonesing for sugar. And I’m unable to stop myself if there is a box of chocolates just lying around. I’m pretty much wired to eat like I might never eat again. And I’m doing my best, I really am. I’m doing my best to eat healthfully. I have salads for lunch EVERY SINGLE FUCKING day at work. I drink lots of water. I’m hydrated, I take vitamins.
I thought I’d had a breakthrough this week. We’d had to drop off coffee and Timbits to a work crew. A box full of Timbits, all coated in Liquid Heaven, just begging me to shove six to ten of them in my mouth all at once and then sink to the floor in a white flour and sugar coma. I didn’t do it. Instead, all surreptitious-like, I leaned over the box and breathed in their deliciously demonic scent, because I knew… I knew that if I had just one of those Timbits, I’d be at the point of no return. I’D HAD A GOOD DAY!!! And then the other night, I blew that progress all to hell while at an after-rehearsal gathering.
How do I get back to eating only when I’m hungry? I’m not talking about crash dieting, or starving myself, but shutting out that inner voice that tells me…
YOU ARE GOING TO DIE IF YOU DON’T GRAB ALL THE FUCKING CHOCOLATE BEFORE SOMEONE ELSE DOES!!!
How do I shut out that binge-eating, verging-on-the-schizophrenic voice? How do I shut out the 2:12 p.m. voice that tells me that I’m insane to think that a decaf Earl Grey tea with stevia is going to satisfy the sugar slut in my gullet? I feel like shit when I give in. I want to crawl into a Slanket and give up on the world as I weep pitifully and wait for my blood sugar to calm down. I’m nothing. I’m no one. I have no willpower. Except… I do have willpower. I only smelled that box of Timbits on Tuesday. I’m not ‘nothing.’ I’m someone for fuckssake!
All right then. Cold fucking turkey it is. I will breathe. I will square my shoulders and do my best to ignore Sugar Nips’ sultry voice. And if I fuck up, I fuck up. I can start over. I’ll just start over. I can do this.