Cursed Tongue: Sweet Obsession

Posted by CursedTongue on November 18, 2007

There was a time when I could consume just about anything and not gain weight. Of course, when I got to college, it turned out that I could have been 15 pounds lighter if I had gotten more exercise (I walked a lot) and been a cafeteria vegetarian (I did not trust most of the meat dishes at my school).

I lost weight despite the discovery that I could get a regular supply of sugary treats like Sweet Tarts, candy canes and cinnamon jelly hearts at 50% discounts, if I bought them after Halloween, Christmas and Valentine’s Day. With the complete lack of parental supervision, I could sit at my desk and consume mass quantities of said candy while writing papers, my knees often involuntarily bouncing under my desk — much like a hummingbird flapping its wings.

While I don’t eat nearly as much sugar anymore, I still go through phases where all I can think of is sugar. Usually my brain is a cacophony of bubbling thought. Most of the time it’s like five people talking all at once. But when I get sugar cravings, my brain chants, “Sugar, sugar, sugar, sugar, sugar, sugar, sugar, sugar.” Now that I’m legally and in most senses of the word an adult, it takes a lot of restraint not to eat out of the sugar bowl with a spoon.

I read that sugar cravings can be indicative of protein deficiency. So I started making healthy omelets with fresh veggies when I suffered from attacks of the sugar munchies.

It helped. Except that at night I was having dreams about opening a refrigerator full of chocolate cupcakes, éclairs and cannoli and stuffing myself. It seems like this would be a good dream. Maybe satisfy my sugar cravings without the extra calories, but they were more like anxiety dreams of the “I forgot to study for test in a class I didn’t know I was taking,” variety. After about a week, I broke down and made chocolate chip cookies. I didn’t have the dream that night.

On the holy night of sugar consumption, I face a particularly difficult struggle, a showdown between me and the big bowl of candy by the door. But this Halloween, after only six years of arguing about it, my husband and I finally purchased only one bag of candy. Instead of having high hopes for gaggles of trick-or-treaters that would never come, we bought one bag of mini Snickers. Not those cheapo fun sized morsels, but the little bars that probably amount to a third of a Snickers bar.

We maintained our record of twelve assorted power rangers, princesses and one zombie prom date. But because we only had one bag of candy to begin with, we only had about half of a bag of candy left over. Which is still too much, but it proves that I was right six years ago, when we were shopping for Halloween candy.

And, since I am flooded with good feelings of the “I told you so” variety, maybe my body will take a break from the cortisol production. Cortisol, as everyone who watches too many commercials for weight loss pills knows, blocks the breakdown of glucose and increases abdominal fat. The four “quality control” Snickers I ate last night might actually have a chance of being burned off by the 60 minutes a day of walking that I do.

Although, looking back upon my college days, maybe sugar is not the hobgoblin of weight gain. Maybe I need to walk even more and go back to my cafeteria vegetarian ways. I haven’t forgotten the disturbing dreams about double cheeseburgers that I had for four years. But I think I would rather be haunted by food that has parents, as opposed to chocolate cake. It’s going to take a lot longer than six years to argue the rib eye off of my husband’s menu.

- Sarah Letnes

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Tags: diet, humor

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