The traditional ways to avoid overeating sweets create the having to avoid the overeating of sweets.
Empty your house of them. Give away your leftover Halloween candy. Hide the Christmas chocolates. Keep the cookies in a shoebox on the top shelf of the closet, and place the stepstool in the opposite side of the room.
For some, this may be successful.
Frankly I always found these tactics fanned the flames of desire.
What you can’t have you want more of, right? Just think of dating psychology for a moment and my point is proven.
Anyhow, I worked through many of my food addictions in the past, but I was still hooked on something very very powerful. Dark. Chocolate.
Here’s how I overcame my daily obsession.
But first a back story: I was always the kind of kid who, after being told not to open the door, headed straight for the handle the moment the adults left.
So naturally when I tried to wean myself off chocolate by hiding it, I’d go through the effort to unbury and devour it before my rival rationale could enter. Not to mention I always remembered exactly where I hid it! We really can’t fool ourselves for long.
So that’s when it occurred to me: rather than caving into temptation of the forbidden fruit, I should let it not be forbidden.
I began leaving squares of dark chocolate with cacao nibs and minty chocolate bunny heads and organic Mayan spice bars on the counter, in the fridge, next to the tea in the cupboard, even next to my work computer. It was all I saw. In the morning when I got of bed, I spotted chocolate before I could even make it to the bathroom to brush my teeth.
Did I eat dark chocolate first thing in the morning? Yes.
Did I snack on it mindlessly while at my desk? Of course I did.
But I wasn’t breaking my will.
Eventually two really powerful things emerged:
1) Chocolate became mundane.
My craving for it was no longer a yearning for novelty.
2) It began to teach me true discipline.
At some point when we can see our temptation in plain light, it ceases to become so dazzling. At some point eating so damn much dark chocolate was, well, sickening.
True discipline wasn’t about saying no, it was about understanding consequences.
When I work with my clients, there are plenty of ways to use the right food and diet to permanently and effectively eliminate sweets cravings. But on top of those methods, uncovering some of the driving forces and increasing awareness is just as powerful a tactic.
And both these roads lead to long term success, rather than sneaky antics or sheer force, and the sweet tooth is healthily repaired.
Tags: food cravings, healthy eating
Megan this is an awesome post!
This line says so much: “True discipline wasn’t about saying no, it was about understanding consequences.”
In a way its almost both. But the “understanding” HAS TO come first if the “no” is going to be something that lasts and has depth based on experience.
Warmly,
Tif
PS.. how do you coach people that have sugar addictions? Is it the same? I have sometimes thought that if I ate all the sugar that I sometimes crave it would create such a destructive cycle that would be hard to pull out of.
Tiffany, that is such a great point! And a massive one, so I’ll attempt to speak a bit to it here, and may continue in a separate blog post or two. Here I speak about an understanding of physical (health-related) consequences of a choice to take an action, in this case to eat or not eat something. Part of cultivating this understanding may also include learning to distinguish between physical and emotional cravings. Only a very fine line may exist between these two types, so it can be hard to know what the driving force is—am I eating these sweets because I’m lonely or bored, or because I have an overgrowth of yeast in my body compelling me to feed it, etc? And how do I know how to respond to this craving—to allow myself to enjoy it until I’m sick of it and have learned true discipline, or restrict myself because I know it’s feeding a bigger problem? Perhaps I should have titled the post, “How I Recovered My Sweet Tooth,” because every person and circumstance is different, and may require a different solution.
The best way of discerning that I’ve found comes from AnneMarie Colbin, in her book Food and Healing. She suggests that when the body is in a state of balance, you can pretty much trust its motivation to eat or not eat something as its innate, intelligent guidance. But on the other hand, when the body is not in balance, as may be evidenced by physical symptoms or sickness or persistent emotional turmoil, it could be assumed that the craving is a more destructive type. I think you can also look at the nature of the craving: are you craving kale or pastries? The body knows what it needs and will often alert us to seek out that which it’s missing (and if it’s a less “wholesome” item, such as a pastry, we can probably assume there are other forces at work). But ultimately an addiction is an addiction.
There are many ways to work with addiction—the example in my story is a “light” approach, meaning I didn’t need to entirely restrict myself because I wasn’t exhibiting huge mental or physical symptoms that I was out of balance. In other cases, completely abstaining from a certain food or type of food has been necessary for me to break both the physiological habituation and the emotional attachment to that type of food.
To be 100% honest, it’s my professional opinion that most people have some sort of fungus/gut imbalance in the body due to use of antibiotics, lack of foods containing beneficial probiotic bacteria, etc. Complete abstinence from sugary foods might be in order. However, in working with my clients, I seek to help them find a way of eating and living that’s practical and not extremist, unless they have an extreme health issue that merit more rigid guidelines, and breaking a food addiction may need to be done in steps or phases and with lots of medium-grade substitutions.
Thanks for posing such a thoughtful, important question!
What a great post! I can definitely relate to your experience. What I came to realize was that I simply reached for dark chocolate out of habit. I didn’t actually enjoy it as much as I thought I would. I find that I do still want dark chocolate just before that time of the month, but other than that I can take it or leave it.
(I really enjoyed the comments too- very insightful!)
Jennifer, that’s such a good point– it’s easy to unconsciously go for a food, partly for the memory or anticipation or even the ritual of it, and when we truly pay attention in the moment, it can be, well… disappointing. Great awareness!