Freedom
I reintroduced sugar to my diet, and it’s good for me. Here’s why:
For many years I have eaten a restricted diet to cope with health problems like weight and food sensitivities. I lived with the craving for foods that I like, comfort foods that I grew up with, and that now I couldn’t have. “I want it, I wish I could have it, but I can’t” That’s deprivation, and living in scarcity - “I can’t have what I want”.
I reintroduced sugar to my diet, and it’s good for me. Here’s why:
For many years I have eaten a restricted diet to cope with health problems like weight and food sensitivities. I lived with the craving for foods that I like, comfort foods that I grew up with, and that now I couldn’t have. “I want it, I wish I could have it, but I can’t” That’s deprivation, and living in scarcity - “I can’t have what I want”.
To make things worse, people who didn’t know anything about me other than my body size, assumed that I was overindulging and volunteered advice: “Reduce your sugar intake”; they sent me unsolicited nutrition information to educate me, and even referred to me as “Cheeseburger lover”. That only fed my Victim viewpoint: how unfair to read all these books about nutrition, eat a sugar-free, low-carb, low-processed food diet, and yet be suspected of gorging myself with junk. Deprived and misjudged. The worst of all worlds.
A few weeks ago I came home with a bag of keto chocolates: dark, and low sugar. Later on I added to that a few dark chocolates with regular sugar, and then a box of Godiva chocolates of mixed colour, from dark to milk to white. And a box of liqueur filled chocolates. I started eating a small, bite-size chocolate after each meal. I made a conscious ritual out of it, to imprint my body with pleasure and fulfillment: eyes closed, chocolate melting on the palate, savouring the aroma. Dessert has followed every meal - one, and sometimes two or three chocolates savoured and enjoyed with full awareness to the point of satiation. And when I got some almond cookies and fortune cookies with my Chinese restaurant order, instead of passing them on to friends as usual, I kept them, and enjoyed them one or two at a time.
What this has been doing to my mood and sense of self is priceless: deprivation and ‘poor me’ attitudes have been replaced by fulfillment and gratitude. “I can have what I want and enjoy it” is the message my body has been receiving.
Interestingly enough, something shifted again in my cravings, and I found myself choosing fruit over sweets as dessert after most meals. The chocolates are still there, in an aesthetically pleasing display of luxurious opulence, and I know that I can have one or as many as I want, when I want them. And this, my friends, is total freedom: I am free to eat and free to not eat; free to follow the signals of my body, and free to do what it takes to fulfill a desire moment by moment, with pleasure instead of guilt.
Freedom from addiction is not the same as cessation of a behaviour; it is freedom from compulsion, any compulsion: the compulsion to eat, or to not eat; to consume, or to not consume.
Nutrition-wise: watching Zac Efron’s “Down to Earth” documentary on Netflix about Blue Zones - the areas on Earth with the greatest longevity, I see healthy people eating carbs, including dessert - a nice slice of cake. An Italian doctor comments: 10 grams of sugar a day is fine; 100 grams of sugar a day is not. If Italians can have ravioli with a bit of tomato sauce and a sprinkle of parmesan, followed by a slice of sweet cake, and live well within their 100’s, then maybe what I have learned about nutrition must be revisited. And thus, my loves, the head is informed and in line with the heart and the body when opting for sugary chocolates for dessert.
The head thinks of Italy’s diet. The heart rejoices in the intentional living choices towards fulfillment. The body requires its pleasures - and I listen, from the first craving to the sweet moment of satisfaction.
And thus, my friends, savouring sugar is so, so good.
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