Sweet Conflations

I’ve been feeling better.

Part of it has been my poor diet, which I’ve tried to turn around in recent weeks. My mastication habits are almost entirely in my domain to handle, and since starting to handle them, I’ve felt much better. It is amazing to me how something as simple-seeming as food choice can affect an entire life, but it has. For over a year, I haven’t been sleeping well and I’ve been feeling worse: I’ve been lethargic, listless, and weary.

Look, it is hard to engage in doing something when you don’t feel like anything. Now I feel like All-the-Things! I am thankful. I thought that the way to my better self was in denying-self-denial. Articulating that now, I realize how dumb that actually is. I was eating whatever I wanted, more or less whenever I wanted to. Not only was it literally contributing to my sooner end, mentally it was fogging me in.

I hate feeling that way: all fogged up and tired. The past two weeks or more have been a revelation. Mentally I am clearer, physically I am peppier, and holistically, I am better. Even tonight, I made a poor choice, and already I am feeling the effects and I don’t like it. I am more resolved than ever to do different.

I try not to make moralizations out of food choices. I don’t believe cravings are my fault. Sometimes food does look too good to resist, like tonight. But often, choices are in my control and control them I must. The only way out is through, as the old saying goes. I make choices when I am able, and let the rest lay as it falls.

For too long I was conflating the sweet allure of confections with the way to feel good. I am a feelings eater, or was (as it turns out, that is changing quickly). I thought the way to feeling better was to eat what I wanted to eat when I wanted to eat it. It ain’t. (Which may be why my feelings are evaporating from my mouth.) I am happy to finally have a solution. It isn’t the solution I thought, but it’ll more than do.

It isn’t easy, of course, not having that cake, or drinking that soda, or even having a late night snack, but feeling how I feel makes forgoing the sweet choice a more desirable option. “Nothing tastes as good as this feels” is another old saying, and while things really do sometimes taste amazingly, this feels pretty good as well.

I am excited to see what comes next. I have had more gumption, more energy, and more ability to choose to do things. Even now, as I’m writing, which I haven’t done much of lately, I rejoice to have the zest to do so. I’ve written many times before about all the creative excursions I’ve wanted to take, and couldn’t, and now I feel as if I can finally walk those trails and smile in the dappled sunlight.