Oh, sugar

I call myself an intuitive eater (funny story: my counsellor recently asked me if that was a religious practice. uh...no, it's not). I didn't invent this term, it doesn't belong to me, it's just something I do. I eat what I feel like, I eat what my body tells me it wants, and I eat what my brain and heart tell me they want (i.e. sometimes I want ice cream for dinner and that's cool). People say to me all the time "oh, I could never do that! I'd eat cookies all day and I'd gain 100 pounds!". No you wouldn't. At first, you may eat a lot of cookies, and that's okay. But eventually, you learn to listen to your body and you realize how foods make you feel (eating only cookies will not make you feel good long term, I promise). Eating a bunch of raw spinach with some toasted sunflower seeds makes my body feel really happy. Eating a turkey sandwich makes my body feel happy. Eating ice cream sometimes makes my body feel happy. For years, this has worked for me and has felt really awesome.

Lately, though, I've come to realize that there are certain things that do not react well with my body. A big one for me is sugar. I have acne as an almost-30-year-old. I didn't have acne all through adolescence, but in my mid-twenties, little by little, I developed an "Acne Problem". There are other things that indicate to me my body's intolerance of things, sugar in particular, but right now acne is the most salient thing. Now, I love me some sugar. Telling myself that I CAN'T eat something, particularly something I like, feels...not good. Not good at all. As someone who was a chronic dieter for years and years, food restrictions trigger all of the negative body shit that came along with my life in the dieting world. Immediately, my brain goes into that space and that makes me want ALL OF THE SUGAR RIGHT NOW BECAUSE I SAID SO.

Now, if I profess to eat intuitively, and something makes my body feel not good (and also makes my face extremely uncomfortable), why would I continue to eat it? It takes so.much.work. to remind myself that this has nothing to do with the size or shape of my body, it has to do with how I feel. It has to do with respecting my body and myself enough to feel good. Just as wearing a bathing suit in public and feeling great about myself for doing it feels like a way to show respect to my body, avoiding foods that make me feel like shit should also be a sign of respect for my body. I need to remember that.

The other fucked up part of this is that sugar is SO addictive. I am 100% addicted to sugar. I experience intense physical withdrawal when I stop eating sugar, and combined with the psychological shit that goes with food restriction, I'm a bit of a hot mess when I try to go off of sugar. By the second day I find myself screaming (inside my head, mostly) HOW IS THIS EVEN WORTH IT GIVE ME SUGAR OH MY GOD WHY WOULD I DEPRIVE MYSELF LIKE THIS WHYYYY?!? It's ugly.

So I'm going to write about it. I'm going to do my best because I deserve that, my body deserves that. I am probably going to misstep, give in to intense cravings, and eat sugar (I've been at this for over a week now and am back to "Day 1 With No Sugar" as of this morning), and that's okay. I will be gentle and patient with myself because that's all I can do. I will not freak out when I have an acne outbreak after not eating sugar, because my body will need time to detox and catch up, and that's okay.

Patience. I need a lot of it.

I am going to try to journal a bit of this process here (reserving the..er...uglier stuff for my own personal journal, you're welcome). Tracking all of this is difficult, but it's important to know what things in my life impact my ability to take care of this shit. If I know the things that make this more difficult for me, I can avoid those things if possible, or manage them more effectively. So, here it goes. Again.