Sugar is my BFF. Learning to LOVE Food, Even Sugar.

Last week was a hard one—lots of food shame and guilt bubbling up to the surface. Yesterday, I went in for counseling with a head swirling with angry/sad thoughts—bad food thoughts, food shame thoughts, self-loathing thoughts. But what happened during the session surprised me. My therapist, after some discussion, said, “So sugar was your best friend.” When she first said it, I cried.

I also didn’t believe this. At ALL. It was silly. It was shameful. But then she said, “You love sugar. Sugar has been your best friend. You always need to make time for your best friend.” Hearing this was so stupid/weird, but it was pretty much what I’ve been telling myself and what I’ve known this last year—I do love sugar. I always have. But everything—the great cultural deprivation punishing shame-filled monster American nutrition/diet/health/weight loss apparatus--has told me that loving sugar is a bad thing. It will kill you. It’s out to get you. You better watch out! Sugar is a sneaky trap!

When my therapist suggested that I just make sugar a part of my food plan, I knew she was absolutely right. But a best friend?? Seriously? Yes. Silly and sad as this sounds, sugar was/is my best friend. Which is okay.
Eating sweets, making them a regular part of my food plan, is pretty much what I’ve been doing, but I’ve felt bad, ashamed, scared, or uncertain every time I record them. I always feel like I’m “giving in to temptation” or being “naughty.” I feel like I should be a better person, just “kick” the sugar habit. “Sugar busters!!” “Break” the pattern. “Train” yourself to do without. Sugar is “Poison!” I LOVE sweets. I always have. But I’ve always felt conflicted about them, always felt that they controlled me, that they would be my downfall, that they made me fat and cranky and angry and sad. Because they were the enemy. But how can anyone love their enemy so much?

Hearing my therapist say that sugar was my best friend made me cry, a LOT, but she was validating sugar AND me. She was showing me that sugar is not a bad thing or a dangerous thing. Sugar is just sugar. It is not out to get me. And what a good friend it has been, so comforting….Calling it my BFF is whacky as hell, childish, ridiculous, but I feel such a sense of relief and I hope that in the coming months (and forever) I can begin to sort through where food is, and where I am.

We are not the same thing, me and food, but we inhabit the same space. Now I must figure out how to be so completely close to sugar, to food, without losing myself. I don’t have to lose myself. There is another way. Lucky for me, I am in love. With a man. We are so close and we’ve been married for almost thirty years. And never in all that time has he consumed me. Sugar hasn’t consumed me either. The idea that it has is an illusion. Or that it will, somehow, overtake me on my way to the post office. Or that the box of Little Debbies is just waiting to suck me inside and devour me.

And I KNOW that I can make changes in my thinking and behavior. Over the last year, I’ve learned to calm myself by breathing and soothing myself. This doesn’t always work, but it so often does. I also get up and MOVE when the anxiety clamps down on me. And I distract myself completely. Sometimes I take medication, but more and more often I do not.
Lately I’ve been able to talk myself down from the slippery slide of bipolar depression, too. I say, this is temporary. This will pass. And then I think, I can choose to sink into my chair and feel worse and worse. Or I can do something, take a positive action. I can CHOOSE to pull myself up. If my medication needs adjusting, then I call the doctor. But mostly I don’t need to. I take action, I make a useful choice and the depression lifts and moves away.

It’s taken years to get to this point where I realize that I really am in control, but the notion, the principle applies to everything now. Or I am beginning to apply it to everything. And that includes food. And that includes sugar, sweets, my very best friends--

Hello, little Whatchamacallit. How are you? Want to hang out? I’m not sure if I can see-saw this afternoon, but maybe on Wednesday.

Hello, Mr. Apple Fritter. We’ve had some good times and you’re not always good for me, but I sure do love how pretty/ugly you are. Why don’t we meet for coffee Sunday afternoon?

Hello, little blueberry cake donut. So glad you could come. I’ve brought the Diet Coke and chips. Let’s watch a movie, one we’ve both seen ten times already.

I know that at some point, maybe today, food will no longer threaten me. I am not a little kid. I am not overwhelmed everything--by my mother, by the world, by the bag of cookies. No. That THEN is not NOW.

Food is just food. It will not swallow me. My mother will not swallow me. I lived through my childhood and came out the other side. This is the other side. Food is just food. A cookie is just a cookie. I love cookies and if I have a cookie I will not be gobbled up I will not be consumed. Because I decide.

I decide. Not my mother. Not my fear. Not my bipolar. I decide. I choose.

Food is food and food is good. A good friend. A constant companion. Food is not out to get me. Food will not destroy me. Food is food and donuts are food and they are my good friend. Sugar is my BEST FRIEND. And good friends don’t scare you. Friends don’t make you feel guilty and ashamed. Friends, as you know now that you’re all grown up, meet for coffee and long conversations.

The cake downstairs is not out to get me. It’s just there. Not lying in wait. Not poised for an ambush. Just sitting on the counter thinking deep cake thoughts. Cake is cake. And I am a grownup. I make decisions. I choose. I do what I do on purpose.

Today I choose to live deliberately.

-rebecca