heya all,

kind of an off-the-wall post here, but I'm considering the merits of sticking to eating absolutely no chocolate and minimizing other sugar intake. On one hand, I can easily tell that I'm addicted by the fact that if I'm not eating like a bar of chocolate on a semi-daily basis, I'm very often thinking about it and craving it. On the other hand, well what's the harm in being addicted to it? Sounds like a terrible thing to say, but I'm not entirely convinced the lives of people who are proudly not dependent on a single substance at all are that much better off or something I'd want to emulate. Still though I thought I'd get some peoples' opinions and see what people think.

~M

Apart from the worldwide epidemics of obesity and diabetes, sugar is totally harmless - unless you count the sugar crash! Whee!

There seems to be a craving cycle where one craves then doesn't, then does again. its very noticeable when we stop giving ourselfs those desires, like in fasting, but if we isolate the desire cycle and see that it is not actually being very realistic then we detach from it a lot more, such detachment is usually a smart thing.

By far I have found the best way to deal with hunger is to feel out the stomach area and see where it is coming from. nearly every time for me finding out the sensations in the stomach allows them to relax and it becomes a pleasant feeling instead of a "needy" feeling. This also makes the detachment more permanent, since we can feel phyiscally with no intermidiary that we aren't actually hungry! Undestanding makes temporary detachment permanent.

P.S. I have cut meat and useless sugar out of my diet for a month now. I feel satisfied nearly ALL the time now. But if I over-eat or slip a little and have refined sugar then I get cravings within the hour!

Mike;

From a medical perspective, chocolate especially is considered a drug. Actually, if you can bring yourself to eat a tiny bit of pure or almost-pure cacao every day, it will be very healthy for you, increases mental capacity, and increases metabolism, which increases energy. However, it tastes terribly bitter without all the additives. Also from a medical perspective, everything about weight or muscle growth is about caloric intake, as well as what you are intaking. Try to make certain, if you are cutting calories, that you have good sodium, potassium, and protein intakes, and that (unless you want to lose weight and muscle) your outtake is the same as your intake. There are plenty of online sites to help with that, and to help with explaining cacao. Also, processed sugar has caffiene, so it is usually considered a drug as well. However, if you look online, there are two to three extremely good alternatives (NOT Sweet'n'low, which is worse medically), which are completely natural. Honey is one. Agave nectar and stevia are the other two, I believe?

Anyway, do what makes you happy. Goodness knows my boyfriend doesn't follow the "health book" as we practice it at all, and he seems perfectly happy. ;-)

Love and Happiness,

Jazzi

PS- double check before using stevia- I believe they thought it upped heart attacks?

Jasmine Marie Engler.... intriguing name.

Mike, I suspect you already know this but addictions of any form are a way of avoiding painful emotions. If your emotional landscape is fairly neutral, the desire for sweet, fatty, sugary food just drops away naturally.

There's a few places in the body where emotion seems to sit - the heart, the throat and gut. This what I do - I try to see what the emotion wants me to do. Maybe it wants me to jump, run, curl up in a ball, sleep, have a holiday, do my tax, watch tv, dance, yell, make money, whatever. Then I obey that. A new emotion might come in, then I obey that. Most commonly a negative emotion wants me to sleep or exercise, but see what it wants you to do. If you can't tell, go without chocolate for a day and you'll find out.

I encourage negatives. I try to see them in their full light and give them full expression without any shame. Shameless! That's a good place to be.