Look before you leap

Oh man.
Lent is not going well.
I cut out dessert, and now all I think about is dessert. Seriously.
In the past year and half, since getting on this path to health, I’ve never restricted my self. I still ate pizza and desserts and chips and everything, but I did it in moderation, and I never really felt deprived.

I am feeling deprived. Seriously deprived. It’s all mental. And this is such age old ‘why diets don’t work” kind of stuff. Once you tell yourself you can’t have something, it is all you want, and you think about it, and your mind tricks your body into thinking it needs whatever is being withheld more than anything, and then you cave. And when you cave, you cave good. I do anyway. For the past month, as I’ve tried to retrain my focus on healthy eating habits, I’ve been having dessert probably about 3 times a week. And on the nights that I didn’t have it, I didn’t think about it too much.
But now…it’s bad.

And I’m a little scared.

Many of you know that I used to be a binger. I didn’t purge, just ate. And ate sugar. And I hid it. I have a distinct memory of taking a box of girl scout cookies out of our families stash and hiding it under my bed, and eating it in secrecy in like two days. The fact that I can now have an open box of cookies in my pantry and eat them like a normal person is a big step for me.
But, with this Lent deal..I find myself thinking about how I can sneak the food.
Uh oh.
Each month we celebrate the birthdays in our office with a cake during our once a month all staff meeting. Well…like I’ve said previously, the spirit of competition is high around here for the wellness competition, and when I didn’t have a piece of cake, my male co-workers (who are all on a team together) were ribbing me and trying to get me to eat a piece of cake.
I didn’t eat the cake, and when I sat back down at my desk, I seriously planned on how I could have a piece of cake, I would just have to sneak it so that no one would notice.

This is not good.
I did some thinking this afternoon, and I think I have to give up, giving up dessert foods for Lent. It triggers my binge eating/sneaking food behaviors. The most important thing in my healthy journey is learning to have a healthy relationship with food, and I can’t compromise that.