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Beating Kevin

Sunday, November 15, 2015

Sugar Loves Sugar

I heard this phrase, "sugar loves sugar," from a woman in my meeting and I understood right away. You have a crazy hankering for something sweet. You pop a weight watchers bar in your mouth, thinking it will do the trick, but it doesn't. You chug some diet coke, go into the freezer and chip away at frozen chocolate cake. Suddenly you have consumed an entire bag of kettle corn popcorn and you finally wake up. Something stops you finally and you only wish that this sudden halt would have happened an hour ago. 

SUGAR LOVES SUGAR. Eating something sweet just leads you down the rabbit hole. This isn't to say that this is always true, sometimes (when?) one Hershey Kiss is enough (what am I saying?). But often we find ourselves sliding down that slippery slope. And we have blown our extra weekly points and feel so out of control that we might as well not even calculate the damage. 

It reminds me of a teaching from Pirkei Avot: "Mitzvah goreret mitzvah, aveirah goreret aveirah." Doing one mitzvah leads you to another. Doing one sin leads you to another." A sense that you get seduced and it opens a door within you. 

The same is true of mindful acts to take care of yourself. Do one and you feel more inclined to do another. Intentionally get out of the subway one stop early and walk a little more. Buy a type of fruit this week that you have never tried. Eat dinner with a beautiful place setting and make dinner an experience. It's amazing how one act can lift you from an eating fog. We often think that weight loss requires major changes, but in truth its just a little decision right now that can shift our behavior. 

And what if we find ourselves down the rabbit hole, 60 points later? Should we just give up that day or the week, thinking "I can't lose this week anyway, why bother?" It is so easy and natural to think this way. One of my previous leaders said, if you broke one egg in a carton, would you go ahead and break the other 11? Of course not! So why not just change our thinking, forgive ourselves, learn something and then move on. 

Sugar may love sugar, but self care also loves self care. 



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