TRIGGER WARNING - THIS POST MIGHT MAKE YOU WANT TO EAT, DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU ARE HAVING ISSUES WITH YOUR DIET, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
So I'm sitting here looking at a carrot cake. It is described on the front as "decadent", which I'm sure it is. I bought it about 30 minutes ago.
What I'm trying to understand is ... why do I want to eat it ?
That seems like a question with a completely obvious answer, but it isn't obvious to me. I mean, earlier I had two microwave dinners that amounted to about 500 calories, and I am not technically hungry at the moment, and I wasn't when I bought the cake either. So it isn't hunger.
Cake tastes good, but I don't think that is it either. The salad I bought tastes good. And honestly carrot cake doesn't taste that damn good compared to a lot of things. It's sweet, and that tastes good, but the cake part is sort of strange tasting, I mean I like it, obviously, but lots of food tastes good and I don't think I bought it for that reason.
For the past few days I've been on yet another excursion in over-eating, .. after being on a short diet, of course. It seems like I can't stay on it at the moment. But, and I'm sure other people have done this, I seem to have fallen into a pattern where I'll do something dumb on a diet and that is an excuse to just write off the rest of the day and eat whatever. It's like ... "well, today is fucked up, might as well have that burger". Except then that turns into two days, and three days, and the next thing you know there is less diet than there is eating a ton of shit that is bad for you.
Oddly, it seems like when you are "trying to diet", you actually eat more, and I can't explain that either. It's like you are always going to start your diet tomorrow, so today you want to get all the food you can enjoy because you won't be able to have it anymore. Except, that also happens tomorrow. And today that last food before the inevitable (and failed) tomorrow diet is carrot cake.
But even that doesn't explain it.
When I was in the store, yes I was thinking about the above "Want that carrot cake since I won't be able to have it ever again ... (even I don't actually logically believe I won't be eating it a week from now based on recent past history, .. but it's a game we play with ourselves) ... but there was more to it than even that ...
When I looked at the cake, when I was standing in the bakery, it wasn't just that I was thinking that I wouldn't have the cake anymore, it was like a physical desire of some kind. I mean, I got kind of tingly inside thinking about the cake. Because I know how cake is going to make me feel. It's like this feeling of euphoria, knowing that as soon as I start eating the cake my eyes are going to kind of get glassy, and I'm going to have this wave of good feelings, and I'm going to go into a kind of daze, .. I don't take drugs, but it's literally how I imagine a drug user must feel. I know I'll get a little sleepy, feel dreamy, and that is going to feel great to eat cake.
It's super weird, because when you are eating reduced calories, you don't really think that, at least not while you're on reduce calories. It is like you don't feel that feeling when you see carrot cake, .. it is just a thing on a shelf, but you don't feel a physical desire to have it. I can't explain it, but when you have been eating the wrong things, .. you literally feel something physical when you have the opportunity to do that again, it makes no sense. But if you spend a week eating "what you're supposed to", you don't really feel the same way.
Whatever this is, that's why I can't stay on diets, it's not that I don't have willpower, ... I have done things in my life that most thin people I know only talk about doing, to my mind most of them don't have jack shit for self-discipline, so I don't think that is it. It's not the taste of it, ... sure, it's sweet, but so what, if it was just the taste of it I don't think I'd care. It's something about the feeling that it creates when you know you are about to eat it ... like some kind of brain chemical that is being pumped through your body at the sight of cake, or maybe from the memory of the last time you ate it, or from the expectation of knowing how you will feel based on habit, or something.
I really can't explain it. But I feel like understanding it is key to any hope of long term success, because it is inevitable that even if I get down to ideal body weight, they aren't going to stop making carrot cake, and if all it takes for me to start eating absurd shit again is for me to feel that kind of carrot cake ecstasy, and I'm right back to "I'll get back on my diet tomorrow, so let's eat a bunch of cake today ..." then I just don't see how it can be sustainable.
I don't think people who have never felt this way would ever understand.
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/naexnf/addiction_and_carrot_cake/
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