I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to quit candy. Literally. That’s not an expression. I have no idea how many times, I just know that I spent most of my adult life trying to give up refined sugar, cakes, candy, other sweets…all of it. For one, it’s just a health concern. The weight that it caused me to gain when I was in my masters’ program gave me a lot of concern. And two, I just didn’t feel like I had any control over that part of my life, which really meant that part of me.
I remember being about 100 pounds heavier than what I am today and having those incredibly strong-willed moments where I felt like I could quit sugar and drop the candy habit once and for all. If any of you know about these kinds of weight-loss moments (or really any habit-breaking moments), you know that usually the night before you consume as much as you can of the thing that you want to give up. You then move forward into a severe deprivation mindset–knowing in your heart that this will be the last time that you ever have whatever it is that you’re going to have (even though the last several years show you that you’re probably going to go back to it anyway). After about three days, your entire body and mind scream uncle! Then you find yourself back into whatever habit you were trying to break. For me, it was always another big bowl of candy.
What caused me to finally shed the refined sugar in the excess weight was not a willful act. At least not a willful act of just quitting the thing that I didn’t like about myself and remaining the same. What I learned was that changing an action was not a singular act. Instead of looking to just stop sugar and lose a tremendous amount of weight in a matter of a month or two, I had to decide that sugar and candy and that kind of emotional numbing wasn’t going to be part of my life any longer. After I made that decision, I was going to have to be OK and ready for whoever I was going to be next.
We can’t expect to make major life changes or choices or take actions that are completely foreign to us without actually changing us. For the most part, I found myself substituting a lot of the high that sugar gave me with the good emotions of confidence and capability and self-control that the weight loss and the exercise gave me. I had always been a very physical person when I was younger. I played football, basketball, boxed, and what have you. But much of the return that I now got from athletics came in a different way than it had when I was a child. What was different were the emotions that I got from being physical. Communal acceptance and having friends when I was in high school and college had a lot to do with my physicality. But now, feelings of self-worth and self-control, of being able to govern what I could or would do even if the environment didn’t lend itself to it; these were the new emotions that I was feeling. I would feel those same emotions when I would exercise restraint over having sugary sweets.
That kind of change isn’t just a dietary change, it’s a life change. It’s like dominoes. Once you make an incredibly bold move and push that first domino down, which for me was acknowledging how I leaned on candy for numbing and giving me an escape from my life‘s difficulties, especially my life’s difficult emotions. I had to decide that I no longer wanted that escape. Once I decided to stick to that, other dominoes fell as well. My willingness to exercise came to the forefront. I was more willing and able to take on other challenges because I felt like I had control of myself. Other more difficult dominoes fell as well. For one, I used to just eat candy out of boredom. Now, I had to be more familiar with not being stimulated all the time, or practice creating good feelings within myself by remembering what I was accomplishing, not through deprivation, but through self mastery.
I’m exceptionally glad that I had the courage to finally allow for everything that would come with a change as big as letting go of sugar, my primary lifelong vice. It’s been over 15 years since I made that change. There are other changes that I’m trying to make in my life right now that are coming to the forefront. I’m still having those days where I do all right and other days it falls back down on me, very similar to how it was with my sugary snacks. But, I’m starting to ask myself the important questions now: if I’m going to change my relationship with my emotions, which is what I really want to do…am I ready to be different in the world than I am today. The answer is a resounding yes. In no way, shape, or form does that mean it’s going to be easy 🙂
If you would like to learn tools and skills to help you improve your emotional aptitude, reduce your emotional isolation, lessen your avoidance of shame, fear, and anxiety, and enable yourself to reach your goals, break old habits, or create new ones, I can help. We can meet virtually or in person at my office in Waterbury, Vermont. Just click the button or the link below for a free consultation and let’s talk.
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