ODAAT

Day 27

A few days ago I watched a movie and that movie clanged a bell in me so loud I swear others could hear it.  It perfectly illustrated what it feels like to have sugar addiction. I'll explain.

At the beginning of the movie we see that there are children, strapped into wheelchairs, lined up in a classroom. They cannot move. Not even their heads. The teacher is teaching, as teachers do. As the story progresses, it's clear that the kids are being held by the military and are being restrained because they have been infected with a virus that makes them, in effect, zombies. But they are different. They can speak and learn and function like normal people. Except when they smell human flesh, they freak the eff out. 

So, there's a part, near the beginning of the film, when the teacher gets a little too close to one of the kids and one of the tough military guys, the general, sees her touch one of them gently on the head. He marches in, pulls his shirt up, spits on his arm and wipes something off. He shoves his arm under a kid's nose and in a split second the kid goes from normal to bug eyed, straining forward, jaw gaping, teeth chattering insanely, trying to get a bit of the general. The general is clearly making a point that the kids are incredibly dangerous. ​

Here's what struck me about that scene. That zombie kid, in his full flesh eating insanity? That's how I feel when sugar has me. It's not so dramatic but it is as unremittingly enticing as flesh is to a zombie.  I do not have the ability to have just a little or stop when it's enough. 

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There is no "enough". 

When I'm eating sugar and flour, and I mean ANY sugar including sweeteners and ANY flour, my brain does not function properly, like a normal person. There is no ease around food. There is no take it or leave it. When I'm in it, I crave junk. I allow junk into my food system. I lie to myself about what I can and can't have. 

All of the diets I was ever on always allowed some form of sugar and/or flour whether it was a cheat day or with points or with moderation.  When I am fully under the spell of these ingredients (I want to call them drugs because that's what they are but I don't think we're there yet in our relationship, so for now, they are "ingredients"), I cannot have some, or a bit or a bite or a taste. Pie? Sure! I'll eat the whole thing. Maybe not at one sitting but I'll take care of it for you BL&D.

I become a flesh eating zombie and I don't like it. Not one bit.

Since I gave up S&F, I've finally found some ease. It seems so normal and unexciting but there's no zombie chatter going on in my head and that feels great.  It was so gradual as to be almost unnoticeable but in looking back, and as I write this, I can see that in nearly four weeks, I am better.

And instead of thinking that it's forever, I am taking it One Day At A Time.