Did I end up eating the peanut butter cup. No, I didn’t. But I was very close. Very close.
Why didn’t I eat it? I didn’t have permission, and if I did have permission, what message would I have given to my son – that it’s okay to talk the talk but not walk, the walk, that I can say one thing and do something else. On this day, I didn’t want to give him that message. I’m not perfect and there have been days when he has gotten an inconsistent message from me, but on this day I decided I didn’t want to give him that message.
But how did I overcome that desperate craving for chocolate? Did I get in my car drive over to Macs and buy my own Reese peanut butter cups? No, I didn’t. Very few of us are that desperate that we will get in the car and go buy our trigger food(s) of choice. However having that trigger food readily available to us in our home is a whole different story.
How I overcame this craving, was by drawing on my inventory of healthy, delicious treats. My most favourite one has got to be chocolate cherry nicecream. So I made myself a bowl chocolate cherry nicecream instead. It hit the spot. It fulfilled my desire for something chocolaty, sweet and creamy. And it avoided those hyper-palatable ingredients the Reese peanut butter cup has, namely added sugar, salt, and fat. Those hyper-palatable ingredients make it almost impossible to stop – that’s why you can’t have just one peanut butter cup even if that was your intention. Most of us will always eat the whole package. But my chocolate cherry nicecream isn’t hyper-palatable, so I ate it, enjoyed it, and I was done. My craving was satisfied by something that could help build my health, and is line with philosophy of focusing on whole, unprocessed foods.
While my environment wasn’t 100% perfect, I set myself for success because my environment had everything I needed to enjoy a healthy treat instead.
In an upcoming post, we’ll talk about strategies for setting up your environment for success.
On April 15, Freedom Wellness will be launching Freedom Weight Loss. Check out the details here.