I am congratulating myself for living without chocolate, bread and potatoes for ten days. Since leaving Combe Grove last Sunday I’ve had a week of elation and despair. The novelty of eating a low carb high protein diet has worn off. I am missing the sweetness and my tastebuds are alert in detecting sweet flavours, such as red peppers, raspberries, roasted small tomatoes, balsamic vinegar. Even though I am full I continue to get the munchies in the evening. I know a lot of this is habit but that doesn’t stop the cravings, the mouth hunger, the desire for chocolate while watching tv or reading a book. I’ve spent the week noticing what I’m noticing.
Going round a supermarket is a discombobulating experience when approached with mindful awareness. How many of us shop on auto-pilot? I am truly astonished by how many shelves are full of crap - be that endless aisles of sweets and chocolates or vast arrays of bread, biscuits, cakes, pastries, savoury snacks, cereals etc. My god, the amount of cereals, some purporting to be healthy (hmmm!). I’ve never been into cereals and can happily ignore them. Neither am I salt ‘n’ vinegar crisps person, if I have to have them it’s cheese ‘n’ onion for me, but I’m not drawn to them. Supermarkets are temples to savoury snacks with whole aisles devoted to the delights of them, if that’s your thing. It’s incredible. To truly wander in wonder through a supermarket is very revealing about what the food industry and retailers are invested in, and it certainly isn’t our nutritional health.
I am grateful that I’ve never been a lover of biscuits; they’ve only ever passed my lips on a training course where the sheer tedium of a long meeting makes me grab at those cellophane wrapped tasteless offerings, or at night in a hotel bedroom - chocolate bourbon anyone? - in desperation as a substitute for a Mars Bar (not one of my favourites, but Premier Inn helpfully offer a vending machine so it’s that or a KitKat).
Born with a sweet tooth, I’ve been a chocolate connoisseur since childhood. My earliest memory of sweets is chocolate buttons, sometimes on top of white icing on fairy buns when me and my sister were dragged off for Sunday tea with a relative. I lived in anticipation of pudding and cake after the limp lettuce and sweaty ham.
This weekend I’ve realised that I much prefer a huge salad with my protein because there is a much greater range of flavour than in a plateful of green veg. This is a surprise result for me. I do love veggies and need to investigate the pile of recipe books I’ve gathered over the years, including vegetarian ones, and actually go make some of the recipes rather than admiring the book spine from a distance.
The retreat encourages time restricted eating which is fine with me. I moved to intermittent fasting ten years ago, delighted with being given permission to give up breakfast. I’ve always struggled with eating at some ungodly hour like 7am and been like this since my school days when force fed soggy cornflakes in an attempt to get me to drink milk - yuck. I don’t like milk either, which means I’m not having to wean myself off lattes or cappuccinos. All those hidden calories! While at Combe Grove we had lunch at 10.45 and supper at 4.45pm. I’ve continued with this, adjusting my times to 12 noon and 6pm. I’ve increased my portion sizes of protein and side dishes and find that I am full. On Thursday I wasn’t hungry at the end of the day and had some soup. Bearing in mind that this is not a diet, is not about the restrictive eating of all the good stuff, and is not a weight loss programme, I can honestly say this is the most full I’ve ever felt. And, whisper this, I’ve lost 3kgs in weight. It’s up to us if we want to check our weight. I do because I want and need to lose weight for health reasons. I felt lighter in my body and just knew I had released some pounds and was curious to know how much. The weight loss is something that will keep me on track. I’ve booked a trip to India this November and I want to be able to fit into the seat on the plane with ease, not worrying about whether the seat belt will go around me. I want to cope with the heat, and want to be able to walk without getting breathless, I want my knees and feet to feel the relief.
I have experienced real lows since Monday, outright grief, with some unexpected feelings of loss about the end of my marriage 25 years ago, and sadness about the deaths of my parents. I’ve realised that with each of these events I turned to chocolate, frequently eating a huge family sized bar of galaxy every night. I gained a lot of weight after mum died. Then, when my dad developed dementia and I visited him in the care home he would sit and stare at me, once describing me as ‘ample’. I am grateful that he used a kinder word than ‘fat’.
Combe Grove provided us with a CGM (continuous glucose monitor) to track our blood glucose levels. I first used one a couple of years ago when I joined the Zoe programme (£500 to learn to eat more vegetables, which I already knew, but knowing stuff doesn’t make you do it 🤦♀️). These devices are incredibly useful at tracking your blood sugar and what makes it spike. Anyone can buy one from the Libre website. While using it for Zoe I was pleasantly surprised to discover that my blood sugar was stable and stayed in the normal range even after chocolate. The same is true this time and the average has already reduced from 5.2 to 5.0. I suspect this trend will be reflected in a reduction in my Hba1c results (this is the blood test used to indicate diabetes, tracking sugar in the blood over a three month period). This would be good news. I’m not diabetic but I am insulin resistant and heading towards diabetes.
The retreat gave a lot of consideration to ways in which to deal with cravings. Being busy with hands and mind has helped. I had a couple of evening webinars this week which were a great distraction. Having a supply of hard boiled eggs at the ready is useful. Another course participant recommended eating a piece of hard cheese and this worked well for me, unlike munching on nuts. It’s a path of trial and error, of having faith that the cravings will diminish in intensity and ultimately fade. Access to our WhatsApp group is a lifeline for support.
What’s really caught my attention is not so much the longing for chocolate but the emotions associated with the longing. Society often speaks about emotional eating yet slowing down and paying attention to what the food has been masking is, I feel, where the healing happens. I’ve cried myself to sleep a couple of nights this week, not through feeling sorry for myself, I don’t, but to release long stored feelings as a letting go.
Although we buried chocolate last week he hasn’t yet crossed over and his ghost lingers. He is wandering around the kitchen and living room trying to make a connection. He’s not quite recognised that he’s on the other side now.
Congratulations and keep going. Even though it sounds like you are having to deal with some tough emotions, maybe it is better that they hjave risen to the surface so that you can embrace them? And be kind to yourself. Chocolate is my addiction too. Researching child slavery in Cacao plantations and fair trade chocolate has put me right off buying the major brands and now I source all my chocolate carefully. It's pure and produced ethically, also expensive so I have to ration it. I also have fully taken on the culture around cacao traditions from the Mayans and indigenous production, and a daily cup of the medicine that is Mama Cacao. You can drink cacao sugar free.
How wonderful Lynn - Spring cleaning in all sorts of ways! I wish you courage and perseverance and joy and relief and health and peace from the bottom of my heart! xxx