Guest author Marina L. is participating in a do-it-from-home class to emotionally unhook from sugar. Here’s her thoughts as it’s about to begin…
I have suffered with food compulsions and sugar addiction for my whole life. I have reviewed lots of self-help books and I have lived with intentions of making a change. But I never change for very long.
I have been accumulating materials here for months, always with the intention of diving in, but I hadn’t ever spent more than a total of a few hours during all that time. So when this class came up, I jumped at the chance to finally get going with the material, especially the hard copies that I had been wanting (don’t like reading online; hurts my eyes.)
My relationship with food is unhealthy for me. Because of my relationship with food, I’m overweight. I have a lot of health problems, many of which are affected by food. But no food is as damaging to me as sugar.
I have hypoglycemia. I’m now insulin-resistant, I can notice changes in my moods and my brain function when I eat sugar. I can be much more subject to high irritability when I eat sugar. I feel I’m heading for type II diabetes. I’ve been ignoring the fact that I’ve been living with Candida. The list goes on and on.
I know that sugar is poison to me. But I don’t know it all the time.
I certainly don’t know it when I decide to eat it, and while I’m eating it. But when I get sugar hangover headaches, or I wake up and my mouth is so abnormally dry that I can barely pry it open, or when I’m much more depressed than usual the day after eating sugar, or when I notice I have some numbness in my fingers that seems to correlate to heavy sugar consumption, or when I have teeth and gum problems that seem sugar-related, or when I read an article that wakes me up about the destructiveness of sugar, THEN I understand that sugar is poison and I want to cut it out of my life.
But one thing that really scares me — there is SO much time when I can’t get in touch with my motivation to stop. Or even if I had a list of the reasons in front of me, sometimes it can all fall flat. I can’t make it real; there’s no inspiration or motivation about the significance of the problem. Do you understand what I mean?
Maybe it’s a form of denial. I’m all too familiar with being gung-ho one day and not even conscious the next.
Most of my life, if I’ve “fallen off the horse,” I have a “What the heck?” attitude. I just go further… merrily eating things that aren’t good for me, because I screwed up anyway. May as well get back on the horse some other time. Meanwhile, what better way to soothe the grief (and the grief I’m probably subconsciously giving myself) of failing than to eat?
So, I want to do something about this.
When I listen to Karly’s audio messages, I hear that she’s been there. Karly puts me in touch with my own experience. I find her writings give me hope and inspire me, and I HEAR her insight. I appreciate Karly lighting the way, and I want to come along. Without a shadow of a doubt, I’m going to be OK.
What I hope to get out of the class is a new way of moving through my day. A way that is about the rekindling and strengthening of what little practice I have had with taking myself by the hand….
