The (Reduced) Sugar Trial.... Just Don't-Just Don't-Just Don't

This has been a really, really hard week.

Back at work on Monday, there is candy all over the place. Everyone seems to be bringing in their gifts from home and I can appreciate that strategy. Beautiful boxes with individually decorated pieces and assorted other chocolates sit on the long, low file cabinet in our office suite where goodies tend to gather. All day long I take the route in and out of our suite that bypasses this cabinet.  All day long I say to myself, Just don’t-Just don’t-Just don’t.  All day long I feel anxious and blue. Mid-way through the afternoon, I send an emergency email to my daughter. “You wouldn’t believe the amount of chocolate around here. I’m having a really hard time.” She emails me back, “Me too. Candy all over the place here too, including jelly beans.” I groan. That would be worse. I could eat jelly beans by the million. I haven’t touched one in about two years. I know better.

Tuesday is more of the same. I wander over to my colleague, A’s office, and whine a little about all the candy. He looks at me sheepishly, “I know,” he says, “I had one piece.”  I admire his will power. Another colleague, M, tells me she’s been bypassing the candy-laden cabinet too. She’s trying to stick to my not-a-vow-but-a-tentative-plan-to-deal-with-my-sugar-addiction. Misery loves company.

I am still suffering on Wednesday. A carton of dark chocolate truffles cast under my desk catches my eye. I had forgotten it was there. I had not taken this gift home with me before Christmas because I knew its fate. The carton is tightly sealed. Several times during the day, I pick up the carton and fondle it. About the fourth time, my finger toys with the edge of the seal. I almost let it slip underneath, almost release the heavenly scent of dark, cocoa-covered chocolates, almost set myself up to eat every one just to get them out of the way. A voice from somewhere in my head appeals, “Just don’t-Just don’t-Just don’t.” I put the carton down. I walk the hall to the water cooler, fill my water bottle and drink drink drink. I tell myself there is only an hour left in the work day to endure.   

Thursday is a better day. I take a little plastic dish of raw baby carrots and another of hummus to work with me, along with my lunch. Perhaps if I keep myself more comfortably full during the day, it will be easier. I am usually ravenous by lunch time and my typical soup and yogurt just doesn’t always satisfy me.  I munch on the carrots in the mid-afternoon and ignore the chocolate underneath my desk. The chocolate on the file cabinet, thankfully, is gone.

A dear friend of thirty-five years sends me a precious gift via email. After reading my last blog entry [See The Route to Resolution-Just for Today, 12/31/10] she reveals to me, among other things, her life-long addiction to sweets and how she finally, finally addressed it. I share it with her permission. “I knew,” she writes, “if I said I could never have ice cream again, I would crack up or kill myself. So I said to myself, you may have ice cream any time you want. All you have to do is get in the car, go to Ben and Jerry's, and get one scoop.  Then you must come home.  Come into the house.  Hang up your coat.  Do some little chore.  If you still want another scoop you MAY have one.  Just get your coat on, get the car out, go back to the ice cream shop, get one scoop, and come home. Amazing results.”  

I very nearly cry as I read her words, I am so overwhelmed. My friend has been fighting cancer. She continues, “Of course, cancer has changed this problem, too.  I crave chocolate, because of serotonin, not the taste.  So I ration my chocolate.  Otherwise I do not care if I eat or not. Ice cream can sit in my freezer now and I sometimes end up throwing it out because it has formed crystals.  Hurts my depression-baby soul, but what is the alternative?” There is more. She writes me about her nail-biting and her shopping habit too, and I feel 100% understood. I am almost breathless at her generosity as my eyes, my brain and my emotions take in her words – over and over again.

Nights are slightly less difficult but only because they are short. Between a dance class, the gym, a client, and an appointment for an eye exam, I get home late almost every evening. I have no candy, cookies, other baked goods, or soda in my house by design. However, there are two almost-full half-gallons of ice cream in my freezer, the result of a weak, hungry moment and a sale at the supermarket over the holidays.  Between them, the two half-gallons feature coffee, chocolate, caramel and nuts. Similar to my friend, ice cream is a food group I doubt I could live without. 

   

I have been making salads nightly for dinner. Large filling salads with yummy but not bad-for-you items – assorted greens, tomatoes, cucumbers, avocado, raw mushrooms, artichoke hearts, black olives, cauliflower – that are delicious, but they are not ice cream. Ice cream has been my evening struggle.

On Tuesday night, my friend’s strategy for ice cream consumption floats to conscious awareness as I contemplate my freezer contents. I decide out of nowhere that I will allow myself two teaspoons of ice cream a night. Only two. This means I have to pay attention so I don’t miss the event. It seems to work. I stop after two and put the ice cream away. I only feel a little deprived.

On Thursday night, when I think one more wouldn’t hurt, I tell myself that if I give in to the craving now, I’m going to have to start this all over again. I believe the anonymous responder [see Comments from The Route to Resolution, 12/31/10] that eventually I won’t be drawn to sweets if I can just get over this hump. Sometimes repetition is comforting but not in this instance. I know for certain that I do not want to have first-week-resisting-sugar experiences more than once.

The Route to Resolution - Just for Today

I’m not a big fan of New Year’s. Never have been. When I was a child, it signaled an abrupt halt to the excitement and anticipation of Christmas. The presents were opened, the cookies mostly gone, the magical lights would be coming down, and the long western NY winter months stretched interminably ahead.  As an adult, it’s pretty much the same thing. Just strike the “western” part.

I’ve never been the party type either. The idea of being out in public amongst a bunch of on-their-way-to-drunk revelers trying to look/act like I am having fun strikes me as about as appealing as a trip to the dentist.

The turning of one year into another often makes me feel melancholy. Even when it’s been one of the “good” years, even when the year to come holds a promise of fun and new adventures, I still feel mournful. I have just come to expect it. I do not let go of things, years included, easily.

As a child and a young adult, I always made the same New Year’s resolution until I realized it was a losing proposition.  “I will stop biting my fingernails.” It never lasted more than a few days. That’s partly because it was such unconscious activity. I would suddenly realize that I had chomped half-way through a nail. And then, of course I had to finish the job. Off the wagon, there wasn’t much point climbing back on. Perhaps you know the drill. It could be the same for any addiction, any compulsion, any bad habit. You want something to be different (or maybe you don’t, really) and you - along, perhaps with your brain chemistry and other hard-wiring -  are the only barrier en route to the difference.

I still bite my nails. Well, not so much biting as ripping. Sometimes mercilessly. I often complain to the woman I call my heart mother, “I don’t stop until I draw blood.” The analytic route of considering who I might want to bite instead hasn’t put a dent in my habit. I’ve tried nail polish – it works for awhile, until it doesn’t. A friend suggests that I commit to a weekly manicure but I am too embarrassed to let a manicurist see the condition of my fingers, so that’s out. Plus I would have to deal with my entrenched belief that this activity falls in the category of unnecessary extravagance. [Aside to daughter and best friend – this is my issue, not a commentary on your activity.] Those who’ve been up in a hot air balloon or who are planning a Parisian trip with me know that I do not disallow all extravagance. 

So forget the nails. Maybe I’ll torture them until death do us part.

There are several other things on my mind as I skid into 2011. Sugar is one of them. Those who have known rail-thin me all my life might scoff. However, some time during the four years of my mother’s illness, and continuing in the almost five years she’s been gone, I managed to develop an addiction to sugar. It started with mom’s cookies –the ones she always had waiting for me whenever I arrived. Luckily I was pretty underweight to begin, otherwise the problem (and I) might be bigger. It wasn’t until this past year that I began to take a hard look at my compulsive sugar behavior and realized that if I didn’t want to end up diabetic or overweight, I was going to need to intervene. As with the fingernails, I have been a member of the “You’ve gone this far, you might as well finish” club. The things I might as well finish would be the box of cookies, the box of candy, the cupcakes, the half-gallon of ice cream. Far be it from me to actually throw it/them out instead. That would go against my puritan ethic of waste-not-want-not. I’m stuck no matter what I do.

I did learn something in 2010, however, that I see as potentially helpful as I move closer to, oh my god(dess), life without (extra) sugar. I am a binger. I realized this when I began to examine my shopping practice. I could be shopping dormant for weeks, maybe months, but once I made up my mind to buy something, and the first purchase was made, there was no stopping me until I was sated. The trick was to not make that first purchase, which seemed ridiculously easy to me once I realized it. Don’t look in the catalogs, stay out of the stores. Remove temptation. Case closed.    

Although I suspect that sugar will be a harder demon to corral, the principle is the same. Just don’t start. I tried an experiment during my school’s annual holiday party this season. The morning of the party, I said to myself, “Let’s make a deal. Just for today, why don’t you try to not consume any sugar. See if you can do it. No dessert at the party, ok?” I agreed with myself that I could tolerate anything for just one day.  And I did. I successfully walked past the box of high-end candy sitting on the low gray file cabinet where office personnel tend to place temptations. At the lunch-time party, I ate the entrée, the veggies, and the salad. When it was time for dessert, I gave a brief glance at the array of goodies to see what I was missing (Damn! Cannoli!), said “Just for today” to myself, and “I’m getting out of here” to my staff.  Done! Success! Empowered! But sadly, it was just for that day. The next day rolled around and I made no such pact with myself.  

I suspect this is like any other addiction. A little turns into a lot and then too much before one realizes what has happened. The pleasure-in-the-moment makes the what-have-I-done aftershocks sink into the background. Until it doesn’t.  Maybe I am edging toward that point. We’ll see.

I will stop short of pledging a reduced-or-no-sugar resolution for this New Year. The nail failure is still vivid and I don’t need another reason to feel badly about myself. My plan is to employ the one-day-at-a-time strategy. So when I am facing the enticement of icecreamcookiescakecandysodapiefruittarts cannoliscremebrulee and other tasty delights, in that moment of decision, I only entreat my brain to remind my mouth that this morning we urged Just for today. Who knows, maybe in an instance of research carryover, my nails will thank me.