The dirty sweet desire

I happen to take a quick glance across the room when we first caught each others eye. I happen to be a shy individual when it comes to encounters such as these but for some reason the sight of her smooth chocolate skin gave me the courage and drive to stand up and begin making my way over to unforeseen destiny. My palms were damp with anticipation as I got closer and closer. I was so nervous and I knew it might be a bad idea approaching a stranger such as this fine chocolate being but I didn’t care. This was destiny and now was my time to seize the day. When I got within a few feet I began to open my mouth and utter the words “O damn you are looking mighty fine. You here all alone?” She said nothing back. She just sat there surrounded by her peers mocking me and probably laughing on the inside about how ridiculous I looked drooling with my mouth open. Before I could say anything else my conscious got the best of me and a little voice inside my head said this was wrong. I was told to stay away from this sort of thing and I promised myself that these days were in the past. I pulled my lunging hand away and turned gently to the side and I thought to myself, “Damn you cream cheese brownie! Why can’t I have you? Why?
Ever since my diagnosis I was forced to reevaluate how I ate and drank. My doctor told me that my body was having trouble regulating my blood sugar and all of the anxiety and exhaustion was stemming from that. If I didn’t cut my intake way down the aftermath could be extremely detrimental to my health. So that means I had to cut my diet down to the bare essentials and cut out most if not all the alcohol and sugar in my diet. I quit drinking a while ago so that transition wasn’t hard and sweets never triggered my taste buds so I knew that wasn’t going to be to difficult as well. However the minute someone tells you that eating something as simple as a cookie is forbidden, that cookie turns into a secret object of desire. My whole life I never had cravings for sweets but suddenly a brownie has become the Playboy under my mattress. Sweets are now my vice. They are my addiction, they are my sin.
Sure my new found cravings might be a little extreme and slightly perverted but in most cases the feelings I am having are shared with the rest of the world. Serotonin is the everyday feel good hormone. When serotonin is low, it causes one to feel depressed and sad. Fortunately simple sugars, when ingested, trigger small amounts of serotonin into the blood stream and give us the feeling of warmth and happiness. When the serotonin goes back to being low, are cravings for sugary sweets increases. Before you know it you are in a downward spiral of crying and than liberating your depression with chocolate milk and Twinkie injections. Sure I do feel better now that I have been exercising and eating healthier but I fear that the forbidden fruit I once rejected has turned into an uncontrollable craving.
Sweetener is in EVERYTHING we eat and as the years progress, sugar and the much revered high fructose corn syrup can be found in more and more foods we commonly buy at the grocery store. So for a person like myself who is trying to cut out sugar and sweetener all together, the task of finding the right foods can be down right impossible. There in lies the complicated and often misunderstood dietary habits of western culture. Finding simple delicious foods that have not been scientifically modified, or enhanced with artificial sweeteners can be quite the daunting task. Just go down one of the center aisles at any local grocery store and you will find nothing but quick ready to eat foods that are specifically designed to attract the consumer to busy to look and see what they are really eating. Bright packages that say low in fat or high in vitamin C attract people like myself who get suckered into eating something I think is beneficial for my body. However flip the package over and look at the ingredient list. Even the popular Nutri-Grain bar which is wildly advertised as being beneficial to our health contains not only high fructose corn syrup but a cornucopia of ingredients that look like they belong in a tube of antiseptic, not in a breakfast bar. Even further down the aisle you find items such as salad dressing (yes even Paul Newman’s “Natural” dressing is guilty) ketchup, mustard, fruit juice, tea, canned fruit, apple sauce, cereal, oatmeal, soda, chips, crackers; all of which contain high fructose syrup, a completely man-made artificial ingredient that is cheap to produce and an almost unlimited supply. When someone like me is forced to regulate what goes into his body, finding that right kind of food can become quite the arduous task.
I offer no solutions to my dilemma because for the time being I want to focus on the problem. I know there is a bright light at the end of my journey but for the moment I continue to tip-toe through a dark and mysterious tunnel that is the American diet.