onceafatgirl

Even Eskimos eat dessert

Yesterday, my husband decided at the last minute to go to home for a celebration that we were originally not going to attend. It was 8 in the morning and he asked how long it would take for me to get ready if I wanted to make the almost 6 hour drive. I didn’t have any meals prepared, and I was not interested in spending the next 2 hours cooking and packing, to spend 6 hours in the car, just to go home for a day and turn right back around. So he went and I stayed at our apartment. Yes, I miss him when he’s gone. Yes, even for just a day. This is just one example of how my eating boundaries can be inconvenient.

Earlier in the week, we were talking about how hard it must be on a relationship to have someone put boundaries around their food in the middle. He said he wondered how many marriages had ended because of it. He said that for him, he knew what he was getting into from the start. I had boundaries around my eating for seven years when we started dating. But even knowing that ahead of time, it is still inconvenient for him that I am sober from sugar. It is inconvenient for me to put boundaries around my food every day without exception, and I’m the one whose life is getting saved. We don’t eat out a lot, because it can be difficult for me to get what I need. We can never just order a pizza, or drive through a fast food joint. He can, but we can’t. (By the way though, I cannot imagine that being affected by my food boundaries is more inconvenient than being married to an active addict…just sayin’.)

And then he said something that I think is really important. He said that he (as I know, because I do all the grocery shopping) has a cabinet full of bread, snack cakes, starchy sides, sugar cereal and candy that I never touch, but what happens when people are already married, and one of them suddenly gives up sugar and can’t have it in the house anymore?

In the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous it talks about avoiding alcohol as a means of staying sober. “[Some people say]…we must not have it in our homes; we must shun friends who drink…we mustn’t think or be reminded about alcohol at all.”

But the Big Book’s reply to this is that it can’t work that way. “[The addict’s] only chance for sobriety would be some place like the Greenland Ice Cap, and even there an Eskimo might turn up with a bottle of scotch and ruin every­ thing!” 

The truth about sugar, like alcohol, is that it is everywhere. I was never going to outrun it. I was never going to escape it. So I had to change my mind about it. That started with my thoughts and my words. I stopped talking about “loving” sugar. I stopped thinking about eating it. If I do think about eating it, I stop having that thought. I remember that it is poison to me. 

I don’t romanticize drinking bleach. I don’t think about how nice it would be to slit my own throat. So I also don’t think about how great it would be to harm myself with sugar now, because eating sugar would always be self-harm.

Yes, in the beginning, it is easier to keep oneself away from tempting situations. While one is still detoxing, it is a great idea to keep sugar out of your home. It is probably not the best idea to walk into a bakery in the beginning. But ultimately, one has to muster some immunity, because there is nowhere to hide. Grocery stores, coffee shops, movie theaters all have sugar foods. Even just walking down the street in some places we are bombarded with smells. Where could we go? Even Eskimos eat dessert.

So my husband gets a cabinet of sugar and carbohydrates. He gets a freezer of ice cream and pizza rolls. I pack his lunch every morning with pizza, doughnuts and Mountain Dew. It’s not mine. And the way I eat may be inconvenient, but it’s the way I eat, not the way he eats. I don’t have to be afraid of sugar. It turns out it is not going to jump into my mouth.