{"id":38409,"date":"2013-08-06T08:15:51","date_gmt":"2013-08-06T15:15:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/?p=38409"},"modified":"2013-07-19T09:33:06","modified_gmt":"2013-07-19T16:33:06","slug":"addict","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/?p=38409","title":{"rendered":"Addict"},"content":{"rendered":"

“I feel sorry for people who don’t drink. When they wake up in the morning, that’s as good as they’re going to feel all day.”<\/span><\/strong><\/h4>\n

-Frank Sinatra<\/span><\/strong><\/h4>\n

I was listening to the radio the other day and the host was asking one of his staff if they could stop drinking for a month (this was after he challenged another staffer to stop smoking illicit things for a month). The staff member, Richard, loves beer. He’s a craft beer fiend and drinks a lot of them. Is he an alcoholic? Probably. What was his response? He said he could probably stop drinking but why should he?<\/p>\n

This post isn’t necessarily about alcohol. But it is about addiction. What is my addiction? SUGAR. Sugar is most definitely my #1 challenge. It comes in lots of different forms…I eat a ton of fruit, which is healthy but also very sweet and depending on what it is, very high in sugar (i.e. bananas!). I also love chocolate.<\/p>\n

I’ve gotten much better over the years eating it in moderation and if it’s not GOOD chocolate, I don’t waste my calories. Have you ever bitten into a piece of candy or cookie and realized it wasn’t as good as it looked? Yeah, that happens to me and now I spit it out. If it doesn’t taste good, why am I still eating it?!? I also make sure that I’m eating things that are a little more “whole” like a really good ice cream with natural ingredients, or fancy chocolate from a boutique. I’m usually taking a pass on the crappy stuff that doesn’t really satisfy my craving.<\/p>\n

If you want to read some old posts about food addiction and sugar, I have a plethora. Here are just a few:\u00a0Food Addiction<\/a>,\u00a0Fat Pills<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Why We Get Fat<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A few years ago I did a\u00a0Sugar Detox<\/a>\u00a0challenge. It came about for a lot of reasons but one of them was the Candy Room<\/a> in my office. I wanted to break the habit of grabbing a handful of candy from this room and mindless eating it at work or whenever I walked by the office. The\u00a0Sugar Detox Outcome<\/a>\u00a0was positive. I realized a lot of things in that single week of refraining from sugar:<\/p>\n

I eat candy more out of habit than desire.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t miss the candy like I thought I would.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I realized that diet soda makes me crave candy.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

And what have I taken away from that nearly 2 years later? I’m still eating sugar. I gave it up for one week and that was it. I\u00a0occasionally\u00a0go through phases where I stop eating it, or I refrain from eating candy at work but I eat dessert at home. Basically, I can’t seem to give it up entirely.<\/p>\n

Awhile ago I took a week off from exercising. It was shortly after I saw the knee specialist who ordered me to rest for 6 weeks. I was feeling depressed and decided to just rest from everything, even though I was cleared for some exercises. I was worried about getting out of the habit of exercising, I was worried taking a week off would cause me to gain weight. I told myself for that week I’d just be\u00a0really good with my calories<\/em> and everything would be ok. And I did do pretty decently with my calories for that week. I didn’t go over my allotment but I also didn’t make excellent choices. There were several days where I skipped eating my apple as a snack so I could allot those calories for some chocolate. Was I within my calorie range? Yes. Was I eating in moderation? Yes. Was it the BEST way to “spend” my calories? Probably not!<\/p>\n

Some people can’t do the “everything in moderation” concept. I totally understand that. I’m the opposite though, I cannot do the “really restrictive” thing. If I tell myself I’m going to stop eating X, then all I want is X! Then I get hyper focused on it and it becomes an obsession. That is not a healthy path to go down, either, and I’m sure it’s just another sign of addiction.<\/p>\n

So how do you moderate an “addiction”? Do you abstain from it completely or try to limit the intake of what you desire?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“I feel sorry for people who don’t drink. When they wake up in the morning, that’s as good as they’re going to feel all day.” -Frank Sinatra I was listening to the radio the other day and the host was asking one of his staff if they could stop drinking for a month (this was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[336,16,1816,105,106,262,3180,1095,278],"tags":[7341,7340,582,2420,1067,8802,8741],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38409"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38409"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39718,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38409\/revisions\/39718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}