If you're even remotely familiar with the Man 'o Steel, Superman, you should know that his one debilitating weakness is Kryptonite. That weird, glowy, green crystal stuff from his home world. Or something like that.
I, of course, am not Superman (though I hope sometimes I pass for SuperMom), therefore I have countless more weaknesses than he does. My Kryptonite, however, is sugar. I can have a serving of chips without too much problem, but present me with a package of EL Fudge cookies and I'm toast. The double-stuff kind? You don't even want to know. I can't buy stuff like that, solely because I either lack self-control, or I choose not to exercise it. I prefer to tell myself that I simply lack that self-control-around-cookies gene, but the truth is, I am capable of saying the word "no," and meaning it. I think that while compulsive and/or emotional eating happens a lot (to me, and others), sometimes I am knowingly making that bad decision. I've even gone through the process of asking myself, "Am I hungry? Do I need to eat this? Can I eat just one?" and then answered, "No? Oh well, I want a cookie anyway." And there goes the package. Not in one sitting, but in far less time than a package of cookies (or chocolates, or sweets...) should disappear.
The simple solution to this appears to be this: DON'T BUY THE STUPID COOKIES! The problem? I don't stay in my home 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Sometimes I venture out into the real world (gasp), and three days a week, I go to work. In this real world, Kryptonite-candy can lurk around any corner. This week in my office, a bag of miniature Reese's peanut butter cups has been lurking in the closet, mere feet from where I sit. Normally, this information is enough to keep me moving all day; not because I want to get more exercise, but because I want to get more peanut butter cups! I rarely stopped at two or even four....and of course I always regretted it.
You may think I'm exaggerating, but the sad truth is, I'm not. It makes my teeth ache a bit to think about how much sugar I've consumed. My mother-in-law makes these delicious, frosting-stuffed sugar cookie sandwiches around the holidays, of which I'm sure I've consumed dozens. As you can see, I have a bit of a problem here!
Here we have one of the biggest things I would like to work on in this journey to health: choose to exhibit self-control when it comes to sweets, but also with food in general. My three days of work this week went pretty good. On Monday and Tuesday, I stopped myself at two Reese's mini-cups. Yesterday, I had one cup, and one cookie, but I had to remove a healthy food (yogurt) in order to fit the cookie into my calorie budget. In retrospect, the cookie was tasty, but it wasn't my favorite kind. Was it worth giving up my healthy yogurt, something that was bound to keep me satisfied longer? Honestly, not really. I've learned a valuable lesson here, but only through making self-control a habit, an automatic reaction, will I really get on the road to conquering this weakness.
How do you maintain self-control around your so-called "trigger foods?" Do you just ignore it, eat something else, or do you have some other method? My method this week was to drink lots of water, which did take the edge off, but it was a real battle. It's something I'll need to conquer to get to my goals, though, and I think that makes the battle worth it.
All this sweet-talk has me thinking chocolate. I'd better go have a glass of water! Over and out.
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