Monday, March 1, 2010

Harder Than it Looks

I am absolutely, terribly, incredibly impressed by people who can walk by chocolate, cake, candy, or ice cream and not bat an eye.  Not lift a finger for a quick taste.  Not begin to form a slow dribble of drool down the corner of their mouth.  Not even notice that they are surrounded by a cloud of confectionery calamity.  For them I suppose it must not be a calamity of gargantuan proportions to be surrounded by sweets.  For me, it is sheer hardship.

And the thing is, there is NO ESCAPE.  It's everywhere.  It's everywhere I have to be.
It's at the gas station.
The pharmacy.
The book store.
And of course it declares the grocery store to be its official office of operations.

I know that I'm not going to be able to hide from sweets forever.  There will have to come a time when I face them.  Today was a reminder that I have to revert to "fight" as well as "flight" so that sweets and I can someday co-habitate in this world peacefully.

Tonight I fought though.  It was a struggle, but I won. 
I'm having huge sugar cravings.

Part of that is fault of my own making: I succumbed to making another WW cake for church this past Sunday (oh, but it was SOOOOO good!).  Thankfully, it was mostly devoured by the starving parishioners of my church.  (You'd be hungry too after standing through ah hour-and-a-half service after fasting since midnight.  Our after-church "coffee hours" are full-fledged feasts.)

So the cake has been consumed, and tonight I struggled through every moment of grocery shopping, Barnes & Nobeling, CVSing, and Quick Tripping as I did my errands.  Candy bars, donuts, croissants, even granola bars were tempting me. 

But I didn't give in.  Even when I had the Cadbury egg in my hand, I was able to put it back.

The thought that kept running through my head was, "How much is this going to cost me?"

How much will it cost me in the gym?  An extra 40 minutes on the elliptical just to burn one chocolately-delicious egg? 

How much will this cost my checking account?  Fifty-nine cents now, but what about tomorrow when I just have to stop for donuts, and then in the evening when I need to get a Reeces' Blast from Sonic, and so on and so on for the next few days until I awake from my sugar-induced frenzy?

How much will this cost in terms of bodily real estate?  Are my veins and arteries clog-free enough that that can withstand the extra cholesterol and plaquey buildup from this egg.  Could this be the one egg that brought about the camel's heart attack?

I decided that I didn't want to find out. 
So I fought my temptation.
And then I high-tailed it out of those houses of sin and sugary debauchery as quickly as possible.

Maybe someday sugar and I will be able to co-exist in the same place at the same time....but today is not that day.  And I can be okay with that.

2 comments:

Dawna said...

Good for you! You're obviously making progress when you can slow down enough to think it through. In some of my circles, we call sweets "food porn". Just don't look!!!! LOL

Lacey B said...

Dorian! You are doing so great!! I really do look up to you so much. I am irritated with myself for my recent behavior...I have totally stopped writing things down for more than a week (which for me, means I am not responsible for what I eat). BUT, today is a new day and one in which I will pull myself together and stop eating crap!! Thanks for being so inspiring!!