Cheating Cheats Me

Why do we give ourselves permission to cheat, when it comes to our diets?

We tell ourselves— “Oh, it’s just this once!” “I’ll just have a little bit…“ “I’m going through something really difficult— I just want to eat my way through it, you know— to help me.” “I need my comfort food.”

I’m going to be a little ruthless here and as the food saying lately goes— deconstruct this.

Why?

Why food?

Why play around with a hair trigger?

Does cheating really help us, at all? Or, is it all a mind game?

What is the aftermath? Is it happiness? Lasting happiness?

Does it solve the problems comfort is sought for?

When I cheat in my eating, the consequences are too costly for me. Guilt. Ammunition for self-hatred. Self condemnation. And, that’s not even getting into the physical costs.

My tongue may be satisfied and happy for a fleeting moment, but I am not satisfied.

Or happy.

Cheating becomes the vehicle for self abuse. All those old tapes in my thoughts get injected and start playing on loop, which can just send me right down that binge eating rabbit hole.

I deconstruct what I accomplished.

I don’t want to look my face in the mirror.

Shame, guilt, self loathing, disappointment— those are the fruit that grow from the seeds of cheating in my eating.

I hate that fruit. It doesn’t taste good at all!!

I deserve better.

I deserve to not cheat my health just to please my demanding tongue.

I deserve to continue down my narrow path to good health, to mobility— to freedom from dependence on eating for my emotional health.

Food never heals my emotions.

Food never brings me any lasting comfort.

Food is not my friend, not my counselor.

My tongue is not my master. Well— at least it’s not anymore— most of the time.

I still want my food to taste good and to be satisfying.

But my tongue is no longer elevated to a position of making detrimental decisions, with my brain covering for it and making excuses for it to be “ok” and my emotional health begging for it’s assistance.

I want the prize I’ve been working towards— not the delicious looking package filled with lasting, self-defeating consequences.

I want to make the best decisions for me, especially in those moments where temptation for “just a little taste” wake the monster my tongue transforms into when the tastebud’s dictated demands are met, where again that vicious, self-destructing cycle rages against me.

Cheating, in the end, causes me to lose all the things I now value more than that.

No thank you.

Freedom tastes so much sweeter, with a lasting satisfaction I have never gotten, before.

Because I deserve to win.

We all deserve to win.