How 'bout some sugar.....

Have you ever just needed something so bad that you can’t get it off your mind? A craving where you will go crazy until you get what you need, a feeling of rage in your chest as you search for what you desire most?

Hopefully you have on some level experienced this (or you’ll think I’m totally insane and somehow feel as though you’re better than me, hey if that’s what you need to get through your day, then great! Yep you’re better than me, oh it doesn’t feel as good when I acknowledge it does it?), whether it be a drink, a smoke, a crush, or in my case sweet treats made from what I’m sure is pure poison. Yes I’m an addict, My name is Shauna and I’m a what…sugar holic? Well anyway I want sugar, I crave sugar, I know sugar is bad for me and well right now it feels OH SO GOOD! Isn’t that how all addictions work though, the things that are soooooo baaaadd feel sooooooo good!

I’ve struggled with this all my life, during my childhood food and sweets were on what my mom called a “get while the getting’s good” basis, which meant, you filled your plate when we had food and you gorged yourself, because there wasn’t a guarantee that we’d have it again anytime soon. So my sisters and I all gorged. We chowed down stuff that I hate to say now I wouldn’t even consider edible and wouldn’t let my daughters even touch let alone eat…yeah they remember sitting in the barn, eating expired Ho Ho’s, wow that sentence sounds so terribly wrong! Oh well it is what it is...the making’s of Shauna.

So we gorged, but to make it a full circle horrible situation we had other influences in our lives that told us that woman were only attractive if they were bone skinny. Sure my mom didn’t mean to make us feel like fatties, but imagine being a little girl, looking at your mother in the mirror, all 120 lbs of her and hearing her tell you how incredibly fat she is. Talk about confusion!

So we not only got the “Get while the Getting’s good” but “after you get you’re a fat cow who is good for nothing!” (My mom didn’t say that to us, just to herself….message received).

Enter eating disorders, anxiety, and horrible self esteem oh and just in time, puberty...yes thanks for that!

So yeah, yucky childhood when it comes to self restraint, you don’t need to read more about how screwed up I am, but what I am interested in is this: Why when sugar makes me feel so bad do I continue to indulge in it? I had a great run, quite a few months of absolutely no sugar, and felt just lovely; Positive, fit, emotionally stable, then Christmas comes and all those darn treats, just eyeballing me, calling my name, jumping into my hands, opening the lids…wow this is a horrible addiction.

I understand the physiological side, and the psychological side, yep I get all the “psy” words, and have a degree to prove that I understand, but that just makes it worse, I mean I do understand! I know my body gets a chemical rush from sugar, I understand that I crash and feel like crap, and yet still I WANT it, and that is driving me crazy!

So maybe it isn’t really about the sugar. I mean I do get it, I do understand, maybe for me and probably for most addicts it’s about something entirely different…

Control.

I’ve noticed that when I really go crazy with sugar my life seems out of control. My kids won’t sleep, I don’t have time to shower, I suddenly start having dreams that I’m in high school and can’t remember the combination to my locker, right as I’m going to be late for class, but oh my gosh I’m not wearing a bra!!! And the bra is in the locker and that boy is walking up to me and I forgot to put on deodorant...ok, you get the picture.

So I guess I just need to let some things go, to understand that I really don’t have control over anything, and to allow myself to have a little sugar every now and then, maybe I won’t binge if I loosen up, then again that’s like telling an alcoholic that there’s a one drink maximum.

Or maybe I just let it go. Who cares if I have this addiction, admitting it is half the battle. Is it really so bad that I binge on this stuff? If I keep myself at a healthy weight and in the jeans my husband likes does it matter?

Probably not, but the fact that I’ve spent 802 words so far going over this in my head tells me it does, and the fact that my daughter just told me she’s had too much sugar today tells me that I’m a little too vocal about my control issues. She’s 4, I’m glad she understands her bodies signals that she’s had enough, but I’m sad that I’ve brought this into her circle of understanding.

So yes I have a problem, I want to be perfect, I want my BMI to be a solid 22, I want my sugar intake under 20 grams per day, I want to be confident in a bikini again, I want to be confident walking around naked in front of my husband again, I want to sleep, I want to know if I’m moving in the next year, I want my boobs to be perky again (sans surgery), I want my cupboards organized, my car cleaned, the settling cracks in my house to go away, I want to know that there’s nothing wrong with my daughter even though her head is strangely shaped, I want it to stop raining, I want control damn it!

Well now that were clear on that…thanks for listening, I bet you wish you had a degree in psychology so you would have just made $150.00 listening to me rant.