Brooke –

Wanted to share a WIN that I am experiencing. I have quit sugar and flour, have been doing IF successfully for a couple of weeks and am losing weight like crazy (hurrah!) But that’s actually not the win I wanted to share. I knew that when I stopped buffering with food, my emotions would come through loud and clear – and I was fully bracing myself for the River of Misery. Some negative emotions did come up, and I am working through them well, but what I didn’t expect was all of the positive emotions. You touch on it in the Stop Overeating Workbook, but I didn’t really get it until recently. While I was eating sugar, my expectations for pleasure and joy were so over-inflated – because of the crazy artificial pleasure I was experiencing and the unnatural levels of dopamine coursing through my veins. Now that sugar/flour is no longer in my life, the littlest things make me SO happy. A phone call from my mother, a great movie with my boyfriend, a quiet morning with a good cup of coffee… and this isn’t me being all “kumbaya” sunshine and unicorns… I legitimately feel a buzz of well-being from the tiniest things these days. It’s crazy! And awesome. Thank you for showing me the way, Yoda.

The thing I wanted to check in on was regarding desire. As I mentioned, the last few weeks have been pretty great, sticking with my protocol, etc. Last night I was confronted with cupcakes at a birthday party. They looked amazing. These are the thoughts I had:
“They look crazy-delicious. I bet they taste amazing. I want one SO bad. But, they aren’t in my protocol so they are off limits. I will delay gratification because I want something bigger and better than a cupcake.” So I politely said “I don’t want any,” which was a lie, because I really wanted one. I left the birthday party thrilled with my decision to not indulge, feeling slightly deprived, but patting myself on the back for my ability to RESIST the urge. Then I read the Stop Overeating workbook and I realized that I may be missing the mark slightly. Can you help me through this? My A and R ended up being exactly what I wanted, but I think that I need to improve my T line, so that I don’t have a negative F line filled with resentment, deprivation and FOMO (fear of missing out). Thankfully my motivation is stronger than the desire right now, but I know that it is dangerous to rely on motivation in the long run. I started writing out what I would have preferred my thought process to be, and came up with “I don’t want cupcakes. Sugar does terrible things to my body. The more sugar I eat, the more sugar I want, and I just don’t want to turn that food-chatter back on. Those cupcakes probably taste good, but not good enough to allow all that craziness back into my head.” I do genuinely believe all of those things, with the exception of the “I don’t want any,” I’m still struggling to not want sugar, but hoping that it will come eventually. In the meantime, I want to make sure I’m setting myself up for long-term success. Thoughts?

Thanks again!
Heather