The Sweet Surrender
It starts as an intimate process, separating each one out into their flavor categories. This creates a beautiful rainbow of colors and designs. I have little piles displayed before me on the ottoman. There are vibrant hues of purple, lime green, deep cherry red, sky blue, and yellow. It is almost like a game to see how many I have in each flavor, and where to place the piles. Then I take a deep breath, carefully moving the pieces around, matching complementary flavors together. This is a work of art moving the less desirable flavors to the side to “throw away” because they are not as pleasurable as the rest.
Once everything is nicely laid out in front of me, I take a moment to examine my masterpiece. I can already smell the sweetness left behind on my fingertips. I carefully contemplate where I want to start. Which flavor will be my first? More importantly, which flavor will I save for the very last? This process takes patience, thought, and a level of mindfulness to get it all just right.
The decision is made. I’ll start with one of my favorites. Then start moving through the flavors to the “lesser than” but saving at least one or two of the best for last. Here goes the first one. The second it hits my tongue, I feel a rush. It’s sweet, almost too sweet. It makes my mouth water and tongue tingle. I waste no time going for the next.
It isn’t long before I’ve abandoned my entire process. Now I’m tossing back multiple flavors not really thinking about any particular order, I just need the sweet hit. Five minutes goes by, then ten. I’m still going. It is just so good. I can see my stash is dwindling, and I feel a slight hint of panic. Ok, slow down, savor what’s left. “You are down to the final few handfuls.” I tell myself.
As I reach the end, I am snapped back to reality. My stomach is starting to hurt, and the sweet serenity has turned to an uncomfortable numbness in my mouth. Not to worry, I know the solution. I need some salt to cancel out the sweet. Not a problem, I live less than a block from the store. I’ll walk over and get some chips to even it all out.
While I’m there, I might as well get another pack of the sweetness, why not? That way I won’t have to make another trip next time I want some. I’ll keep them in the cupboard. I get home, un-pause my Netflix and get to work on the salty goodness to counteract my sweet. The crunch, the salt, now I’m at a new level of pleasure. It tastes so good. The numbness of flavor left by over sweetness is now replaced with a mouth watering mix of salt and garlic. “Once you pop, the fun don’t stop” as they say.
Minutes into demolishing my salty snack, I’ve realized I’ve taken it too far. I feel sick. The bitter taste left in my mouth is not only physical because I’m nauseous, but a metaphorical taste because the reality of what I’ve done sets in. This isn’t the first time. This is actually day three of a series of my many binges before. And more to come? I know better. I’ve been to a dietician before. I have experienced the gain and loss cycle many times in my years on this planet. It started in 8th grade when the “ah ha” moment of gaining weight and entering puberty changed my entire perspective.
My next move is the only logical one I can think of at the moment. I need to get rid of the new bag of jelly bellies that I just bought. So I open it up and get to work, tossing back handfuls at a time. I tell myself this is the best thing to do. My teeth and jaw hurt from chewing so vigorously. I can’t have it in the house, so I might as well eat it all now. About halfway through the bag, I’m so sick I can’t move. I toss the rest of the bag in the trash.
The next day, I’m feeling motivated to make better choices. I start my day with a healthy breakfast and set some intentions to never let myself do that again. Yesterday is behind, and I’m a new woman. By lunch, without even a pause, I’ve carefully retrieved my bag of jelly bellies from the trash, thank goodness most of them didn’t fall out into the gross leftovers from the previous day. That would be a new level of rock bottom. As if pulling food out of the trash isn’t already rock bottom, regardless of whether it is in the container or not.
A quick flash back to high school pops into my head when I pulled a fudge bar out of the trash that someone had already taken one bite out of. Everyone said that it was disgusting and hilarious, which was kind of my MO. At that time, it was more for the reaction than the “need” for the fudge bar. In contemplating this years later, I wonder if there is more to examine here…
Flash forward to where we left off, day four of my sweet, salty, sweet binge pattern. This is a cycle I got to know very well. It wasn’t always the jelly bellies to chips routine. I would switch it up with dove chocolate to pizza bites, or ice cream to pretzels. I like to be creative with my binging. Doing the same old thing gets tiring.
Citrus Pectin, Sodium Citrate, Confectioner’s Glaze, Blue 1, Yellow 5, Yellow 6, Red 3. Yummy don’t those sound delicious? It is an amazing trick I learned from my grandma. She taught me to separate out the ingredients and think about eating them one by one. It slows down the craving and gives more of an opportunity for a conscious decision, I suppose. She used to do it by picturing eating a stick of butter or a cup of flour when she wanted to eat a cookie. This is all good, except it still requires a level of mindfulness. When you are blinded by the need for your next hit, you are not always thinking logically or mindfully.
One day while reading my women’s health magazine, I got my first dose of almost admitting I had a problem. I was casually flipping through when I was stopped by a headline that I couldn’t ignore. “The Truth about Sugar Addiction” stared me right in the face. I started to read about dopamine production in the brain when someone eats sugar. They wrote about a spike so large and so intense, it was a similar response to those who use heroin or cocaine. Reading this left me with a pit in my stomach and a heavy heart. Sprinkle on some denial and you’ve got a perfect combination for another binge. That is exactly what I did. I was out to prove something, though I didn’t know at the time what that was. I wasn’t an “addict.” There was no way that could be true. I make healthy choices, I work out, and I eat salad. All of these thoughts kept spinning in my head as I put down another round of jelly bellies.
Insert a husband (then boyfriend) who was diagnosed with adult onset type 1 diabetes. This changed a lot about how we ate and exercised. I got myself on track, unintentionally during that time because we cut a lot of unhealthy habits out. He was now insulin dependent, and I wanted to be supportive in his journey. So naturally, I started hiding my treats and consuming them in secret. I went as far as “going to the bathroom” and taking my jelly bellies with me to get my fix.
Eventually the newness of his diagnosis wore off, and I got more relaxed about what I ate and when. Through all of this that article stayed with me in my subconscious. It would make a little appearance in my mind once in a while, usually when I was on the “wellness wagon” as my coach would put it. It was the catalyst to a wellness journey, I didn’t yet know I was on. It was nearly four years after I read that article that I finally decided to make a drastic change.
I happened across a wellness coach because of the work I do. I find a lot of personal development and self-help people. My job is to seek these people out and share how we can help elevate their message and business through our positive media company, The Transformation Network.
One day after she had already said yes to working with us, she asked me a simple question. I don’t remember the exact question, but it was somewhere along the lines of “Are you doing ok with your own wellness?” Followed by a “you look tired” comment. Something about her sincerity and the trust I’d already begun to build made me want to work with her. I’d put off working with anyone in that field for years because I already knew everything they were going to tell me, and it was going to be a giant waste of money. This time felt different so I dove in. I didn’t know what to expect but I knew I had to commit if I was going to pay for someone to tell me to eat healthy.
This journey was not what I expected. It wasn’t about losing weight and eating healthy. It was, but it was more than that. I went on a journey of self-discovery, self-love, and ultimately self-forgiveness. I started to uncover the “why” behind my binging. Once I knew the why, I could make different, conscious choices. Sounds simple right? Well, it turns out my why, comes from multiple reasons.
I started to make a conscious effort to understand when the binging was the worst. I had to get way out of my comfort zone to log my food and my emotions. After doing this for a couple of weeks, I was shocked to discover that almost every emotion was triggering a binge in some way. If I am happy, I celebrate with food. If I have a hard day at work, I self-soothe with food. If I am home alone, I cure boredom and loneliness with food. That dopamine hit is something I crave in the good and the bad parts of every day. This is a daily battle in an ultimate wellness war. I’ve come a long way with this journey. I’ve had one major jelly belly binge in the last three years which feels like an enormous win. I still catch myself pacing around the house looking for something to get my hit. I came to an honest and vulnerable conversation with my husband about how he can support me. Knowing that it is a sensitive subject we had to turn it into a game in order to lighten my energy around it. The deal we made is that if we have any kind of treats in the house, he locks them in a file cabinet and takes the key with him. I won’t pretend that I haven’t pulled on that drawer hoping he forgot to lock it. He knows I try and that is now part of an ongoing game we play to see how many times in a week I try to get in, knowing it is locked every time. Or better yet, he will leave it unlocked on purpose with no treats inside to see if I try to open it.
Wellness is a journey. The sweet surrender is knowing that it will always be a journey. Surrender to the process, surrender to knowing when you need to reach out for help, and surrender the guilt that goes along with trying to make a change for the better. Today, reflecting on where I am on this journey, the good days out number the bad one hundred to one.
I have worked hard to form new habits especially when it comes to celebrating. I have become aware of my red flags and I’ve filled my toolbelt with ways to cope if I’m needing that soothing dopamine hit from a bad day. My go to is no longer sugar. Fun Fact: guess what else fires those dopamine triggers? Exercise!
My self-discovery is never-ending. I continue to investigate my whys. I use my creativity to find new strategies and solutions. At times, I feel myself on the balance beam, teetering one way and then the other, but I am able to then finding my center. Once I find my center, I come back to the sweet surrender of acceptance and progress.
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