A sure sign that a trip to the grocery store is in order? A quick snack scavenger hunt through my kitchen that led to me sitting back on the sofa with a handful of crispy won-ton noodles and the remains of a container of French Chocolate cake icing.
I’m sure this would make a much better Facebook status update than the premise of a blog post, but here we are, so just bear with me. If there is anything I have been consistently good at throughout my adult life, it’s stress-eating. Last night, my unwitting victim was a box of dill-seasoned wheat crackers.
Alcoholics have their drinks. Smokers have their cigarettes. I have an 8″ x 8″ shelf for my addiction, junk food of almost every kind.
Just this evening, I followed a link and wound up watching a video featuring Honey Boo Boo’s mother and her panic-inducing aversion to mayonnaise. Now, having sat through the episode in the first HCHBB series in which Mama June proudly boasts of her family’s heirloom recipe for “sketti” bathed in so much ketchup and butter that it might make The Pioneer Woman blush. Here I speak of the use of butter moreso than the ketchup, and even at that, I don’t know where in any corner of our solar system that Country Crock should be named in the same breath as butter. One might express shock? confusion? that something as common as mayo in salads and on sandwiches would trigger Mama June to that extent. I don’t think I need something as drastic as aversion therapy to my little chips and cracker habit, considering that I don’t give into it all the time, but it is still worrisome enough that I wish there was a way to take cucumber slices or carrot sticks and make them appetizing in the same way that chips and dip grab and maintain a hold on me.
Is my reluctance to go for fresh vegetables related somehow to the way they were prepared and served to me as a child? I don’t know, and of all the topics I’d like to cover in therapy, veggie avoidance isn’t all that high on my list. I love drinking açai berry/blueberry/pomegranate-flavoured vitamin water, but I am also smart enough to realize that depending on a commercially prepared beverage is a cop-out when I could be getting my B and C vitamins from infinitely better sources.
The obvious answer is, of course, not to buy the things that I know shouldn’t be in anyone’s pantry, let alone mine. I don’t believe there is a negative physical sensation that comes close to the way that having Type 2 Diabetes has made me feel.
When willpower fails and temptation is overwhelming, it’s surprising that I made it through the holidays as well as I did. I of course re-gained the weight I lost while I was sick in December. Repairing my disordered relationship with food is probably now going to be my second major New Year’s resolution.
