Cooling the Stimulus

Previous post on weight & health: Healthy practices – don’t fight yourself

My battle against my lifelong sugar addiction is having a surge of success these days. In the past couple of months I’ve changed my diet for health reasons, but it hasn’t been easy. Drastically reducing my consumption of grains, dairy and sugars, even fruit, has taken a huge commitment, and managing my sugar cravings has required lots of guided meditation and EFT tapping. While my main goals are to avoid diabetes and achieve hormonal balance, another is to get rid of my desire to binge on sweets while leaving the desire to eat healthy food. (And weight loss is a convenient side effect of all this improved eating.) I’m basically talking about addiction treatment that requires re-wiring the brain’s old pathways of stimulus and release (for me, sugar is the biggest stimulus). How do you re-wire the brain? Meditation and tapping are how I’m doing it.

I meditate every morning and am always surprised by how much confidence it gives me. I’ve been using guided meditations by Joe Dispenza since October 2013 and they have really helped with my food issues. The amount of time I can go without being seriously tempted by cookies (or donut shops or bakeries) is getting longer. Pastries used to mesmerize me no matter what, even if I’d just eaten. Now they might or might not interest me. This shows huge progress for me. I’m developing indifference to dessert! I’ve dreamed of being this way.

The other day I had a setback that turned into success. I really needed cookies and no amount of tapping would make the craving go away. Finally I gave in to it and started eating cookies. I ended up eating…three of them. I ate three cookies and then just stopped. I paused between eating the third cookie and getting up for another one, and in that space of time I drank some water and then felt satisfied. The sugar binge was over! And it hadn’t even turned into a full binge. It stunned me. It still stuns me.

Sugar just doesn’t have the same power over me any more. I’ve cooled the stimulus. Will I backslide? Will anxiety and stress overtake me so that I inhale an entire layer cake next weekend? That’s always possible, but right now it doesn’t feel extremely likely. I’m excited to feel like there’s hope for me. I’m excited about continuing the meditating and tapping and eventually leaving my old sugar-obsessed ways behind!

Next post on weight & health: BLOWING OFF STEAM!!!

Life is good.

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