For as long as I can remember, I have celebrated the season of Lent by giving up something that I absolutely love: sugar.
As early as my teenage years, I practiced abstinence from sugar for six to seven weeks each Spring. It was always hard. And I was always proud when Easter Day rolled around. But that’s also when the wheels would come off of the bus, as I made up for lost time by consuming sugar in all its devious forms: Cakes, cookies and plenty of my favorite: Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Easter eggs.
I’d say I got a little healthier each Spring because of my choice to be sugar-less for nearly two months around this time of year. But actually, whatever “good” it may have done my body to be sugar-free were usually overturned when the restraints came off and Lent ended. I made up for lost time and probably neutralized anything positive I’d accomplished by avoiding edible, sugary, food-like substances, once Easter Day rolled around.
There is an important conversation we need to have around sugar, its toxic effects on our bodies and the connection between sugar consumption and cancer. For curious minds you can start looking at this relationship by reading anything written by Mark Hyman, MD.
But for today, I am focused on another element of the conversation which is that those foods or things that are “taboo” for us, are as variable as the degree to which people differ. Our idiosyncratic experiences and early memories of certain foods is what moves them into the “sinful” category, or at least the “wanted but not supposed to indulge” group. For me it’s sugar.
A few years back, around this time of year, I went with a colleague to a business lunch. The topic of Lent arose and we were all talking about what we may have “given up” for this time period. A lovely, petite woman at our lunch table said something shocking, that stuck with me.
“For me, its chicken wings” our lunch date confessed. She went on to explain how she can’t stop eating chicken wings and it is her guilty pleasure. She described how much she loved the different ways chicken wings could be prepared, from Buffalo Hot, to Old Bay and barbecue, chicken wings were definitely her “weakness.”
I share this because I am fascinated by how different, yet how similar we humans are. For one thing, this tiny – healthy looking young woman looked like she couldn’t eat more than two chicken wings in a row on a hungry day. Yet this was a habit she longed to break, just like I long to break my addiction to all things sugar.
It would never occur to me that chicken wings were a coveted delectable, and possibly something to obsess over. Just like it didn’t occur to her that the desert menu is way more fun to peruse than the lunch menu, and she could look at that first, as I am drawn to do by training. (I said I gave up sugar, but still I love to torture myself.)
The number of different “guilty pleasures” will grow as quickly as a room of people fills up. We are all different. We are taught that some things are “bad” and some things are “good” and we accept them as such. Maybe if I lusted after chicken wings, I wouldn’t care about a rock salted hot fudge sundae with real hot fudge. Maybe if she tried a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup egg she would lose interest in chicken wings. Maybe not.
My point is to illustrate that our addictions and obsessions have little to do with who we actually “are” and lots to do with the environment we grew up in. I see this as great news, since it opens up the possibility that these learned “preferences” or “cravings” are exactly that: They are learned. So they can be unlearned. I am not saying I have a blog for how to “un-learn” them, for if I did I would be long over my sugary food addiction. But I still think it’s good news that we can change.
I can’t imagine I’d ever prefer a spicy hot chicken wing over a double iced piece of yellow cake that my Mom brilliantly and handily makes every time we ask for it. But I am saying that stepping back and challenging our idiosyncratic rules, that are largely self-imposed, can run us ragged if we don’t get curious, at least once in a while about why we think some foods are “good” and some foods are “bad” from a mental perspective.
If we want to talk nutrition, we should probably avoid both sugar and chicken wings. There is little if anything our bodies can work with as part of those ingredients. Yet, with history being the best predictor of the future, there is a good chance I will be eating Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Easter eggs until I am no longer breathing. And if the chicken wing is dipped in blue cheese dressing, you might catch me eating those too!
All things in moderation. And hey, if you have a “guilty pleasure” you’d like to swap, leave a note in the comments section and put it to rest!