Cookies have been reaching out and grabbing my attention at the grocery lately. I’m speaking of those generic soft, puffy white flour things, iced with artificial seasonal colors—the ones snagging my attention the last few weeks are heart-shaped ones iced pink for Valentines Day; there will be green ones after that for St. Paddy’s Day and pastel ones following that for Easter. These things seem like easy impulse items, easy to rationalize. They’re seasonal, celebratory, little happiness pick-me-ups that surely everyone deserves.
Were I to eat cookies, wouldn’t it be smarter, better all around if they were homemade, the result of someone’s love, time and attention? Or how about making some homemade “lowcarb” ones? Well of course, but, well, I have absolutely no strength or smarts when it comes to cookies!
More than fourteen years into this, having abstained from sugar and grains since 1996—save one “planned cheat” day in December 1998, which thankfully segued into my final lesson with all this—those crappy cookies and their brethren—still beckon.
When we begin down this road, after the initial cravings die down, it’s not uncommon to assume they are actually, finally gone, that we are over wanting foods that don’t work for us. Then later, when we find ourselves wanting something we’d be better off not eating, we think something must be terribly wrong. But the truth is that sustained abstinence only minimizes the want, it will never eliminate it.
I used to approach dieting by telling myself that cookies “will always be there” when I am done. I could postpone, procrastinate about cookies, and then have them, you know, in moderation, when I was DONE with the diet. The way normal people with normal bodies eat cookies.
All these years later, I still know I would not be able to stop with one. I am as weak against sugar and breads as when I began—probably even weaker since I’m completely out of practice with dealing with intense cravings. Because I am not normal when it comes to these things, I am an addict. Abstinence has not made me normal, or strong, at all.
Not eating cookies looks like strength to other people. “You are always so strong, you always eat so healthy…” usually accompanied by a big sigh. I hear that a lot, enough to grow a little annoyed by it. I have thought of asking the next person who says it if it’s supposed to be a compliment, and follow that by asking them if they remark to alcoholics how strong they are for abstaining?
But I won’t. I already know that it’s not meant unkindly at all, perhaps part compliment and part statement of mild frustration at their own lack of “strength”.
I am not strong. All I am is a little more grown up and experienced enough to know I don’t always adore the choices I have. I know where eating cookies would lead me and despite the fact that I dearly love those totally empty, mindless confections, I know that eating them will lead me only to where I would rather not go. Yes, theoretically I might eat some (let’s be truthful, I’d eat the whole package), then recover. But that was part of my old dance. I don’t want to recover anymore, it’s too much work.
In the old days I was right. Cookies “will always be there.”
Adele, 143 this morning