Sugar "Addiction" and Primal Eating
a beautiful bakery • enjoyment • have you ever seen a puppy eat?
A Beautiful Bakery
Last January, my daughter and I were at Arôme, a beautiful bakery with two locations in London. We picked the Honey Butter Toast and Chocolate Pistachio Escargot and enjoyed them on nice plates with delicious coffees.
When we can be in the moment and enjoy what we’re eating without a shred of guilt—just pure pleasure—we taste, we savor, we allow satisfaction. And satisfaction feels good.
Sugar “Addiction” and Primal Eating
Have you ever seen a puppy eat? We have a 3-month old who will lunge into the bowl of our mellow 6-year-old dog. The puppy wolfs down as much as she can until either we see it or hear it happening then come to the older’s rescue. Puppy is not malnourished but the primal survival instinct is real!
It turns out that we have it too, this primal urge to eat. Especially when we keep ourselves on a tight leash with food—food plans, rules, and moralizing i.e. keeping a mental inventory of “good/bad” foods.
When a binge happens, it’s common to blame the food, or ourselves, instead of the real problem, which is our prison of rules and our dysfunctional relationship with food, which I’m hear to tell you, can be fixed!
So why do we overeat? Hunger is involved. When we are starved, we will obsess over food and go crazy when we have access. Habituation is at play. Whatever the forbidden food (ahem, sugar!), it remains exciting, enticing, we feel guilty if we go there, yet we can’t stop thinking about it.
Diet Culture, Diet Mindset, Food Rules, Compulsive Dieting, ALL OF IT is the problem
Dieting causes many, many people tremendous suffering. I was an accomplished, professional woman. I managed teams of people at Oracle, got a first-rate culinary education on the side, handled our family finances and found errors in Morgan Stanley’s options accounting, shopped weekly for the elderly, and with the help of Team In Training (and my, “You can totally do it!”-friend, KC), ran a marathon.
For years, my number one was weighing the “right” weight. Fear of ballooning out of my pencil skirts is what drove me. Eventually I stopped dieting, but it wasn’t until I got certified in Intuitive Eating that I found complete peace and ease with my food relationship.
Food can be a joy in life; if we cut ourselves off from that, it’s no wonder we’re depressed.
Until next time,
On my list for bakery hopping in April! Love the comment about the pencil skirt.