However, there has always been this thing about me that I pick what we call "low hanging fruit" as goals. Low hanging fruit are those easiest to get to, easiest to attain, easiest to pick and move on from. Ironman was the first real attempt at getting out of my comfort zone and going for something that I was not 100% sure that I was going to finish. Ironman was "middle-of the tree fruit" for me.
In 2013 I am going to go out on a limb and aim for that moon once again - I am going for the tippy top of that tree, the highest of hung fruit.
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The big one for me is to admit that I have an addiction, and no matter how I try to dance around it I am in over my head at this point - maybe secretly, maybe not so secretly. I don't even know anymore to be honest.
I am addicted to sugar. My admission is not one of jest. It is one of facing the truth.
I have "quit" sugar a few times and always fell off the wagon. This last time I was doing so good then somewhere along the line I realized that one cookie or one dessert was not going to kill me. I was burning ridiculous amount of calories in Ironman training and honestly I was losing weight faster than I could wrap my head around.
For as much as I cleaned up my eating and tightened down on my lifestyle - first kicking milk, then eggs, and then finally cheese until I was a pretty solid vegan - I was not quite ready to kick out sugar. It was like the one last thing that I could hold on to from my past. No more smoking, no more drinking, no more animal products; I can live without all of that. Take away my sugar? Not right now, please.
I always thought that I just had a sweet tooth, a really big sweet tooth. It hit me the other day that what I really have is a real problem. A really big problem. It is when I started to see that I was changing my behaviors to hide my sugar habit from my Husband that I understood how badly I had become addicted. Smoking, drinking, gambling, and food addictions are all very real. Some are outwardly expressed and some are held closely guarded.
When I saw the hidden wrappers strewn about my car and in the garbage in the garage, it was obvious that I was hitting a new low. I feel these ridiculous cravings for sugars now and I would go out of my way to appease my cravings, hiding the evidence.
Sugary foods leave me unmotivated and sluggish so my workouts are compromised and I feel the sugar crash doubly hard every time. It is a cycle that I need to break heading into my training that is to resume here in the next 10 days.
I need to quit sugar bottom line and because I am aware of the withdrawal that I am going to be facing I need to do it now. If I feel that I must hide my behavior then apparently it is not good behavior and this needs to be my cue to stop it else it may spiral out of control. I refuse to be that sloth on a sofa eating cheesecakes by the ton with my weight up over 250lbs... again. I am not that person any more, and I need to face it that this will be the hardest goal that I go after yet.
So what about you? Are there any behaviors that you want to change but know that it will take fundamental change in order to do so?
Have you made a change in your life that was very high hung fruit?
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In my research as to the issues of sugar/food addictions and our bodies, I came across the below lecture on Sugar. It is quite long, but has some great points and facts in it. The middle section is all bio-chemistry but it helps to further understand the impacts of different sugars in our bodies. If you have a spare 90 minutes to watch the film Sugar: The Bitter Truth, you should.
There is also this video called Chocolate, Cheese, Meat and Sugar - Physically Addictive that discusses food addictions (plus it is only 40 minutes long but pretty interesting). What I like about this speech is that it is the very informative and addresses some of the things that I have been finding out for myself in my journey to becoming vegan.
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