Natalie Hughes on disembarking from the sugar-train.

By simply...woman! on July 3, 2013

Editor in Chief, Natalie Hughes talks truth about sugar addiction.

 

I’m pretty sure I hit the ground running with food issues, right out of the womb.

I came from a long line of women who truly believed that they could love people by feeding them.

 

Give food=Give love.

More food=more love.

Accept food=accept love.

 

There was almost a desperation in the elder women, that if they could only get you into their houses and feed you, they would feel useful and you would be made whole. The second thread woven through, complicating things further and grown from generations of poverty and rationing, was the worry that there would never be enough. I started to see this when I had my first baby, and my mother was so genuinely worried that the baby was not going to get enough milk through breast feeding. “But how will you know how many ounces he’s had? How will you know when he drinks the correct amount?”

My own tension around feeding the baby was imminent as well… what one would hope would be a natural, stress-free part of the day was instead an obsessive worrisome task. This is the ticker-tape of my thoughts: “Am I doing this right? Am I eating the right things to be passed through the milk? How will I ever wean him? Why is he hungry again? He just ate!” I remember having to consciously unclench my teeth during feeding, it was so tense for me. I would love for you to think that I was Mother Earth, grounded in love and all-knowing, but I was a new young mother carrying my unfulfilled needs, my shame and my control issues alongside the baby wipes in my diaper bag.

Which leads me to my own personal food struggles since the age of about 14, starting with the “All Cucumber Diet.”

Control. Withholding. Punishing. Numbing. Escaping.

Aren’t we just supposed to eat food when we’re hungry so that our body can function? What are all of these other words doing, standing between me and the refrigerator?

 

Control food=control life.

Withhold food=withhold acceptance.

Eat naughty food=plug ears, close eyes and yell lalalalalala until everything goes away.

 

Don’t judge me, now…if you are a woman reading this and you don’t have food/body issues, you are either enlightened or a liar. (Are those your pants I smell burning? Is that your nose I see growing? I ask this with love.)

 

And the body.

Oh, the body.

 

Given to me as my most precious gift, I’ve spent the greater part of my life staring at it in the mirror, comparing it to the unreachable, muttering obscenities at it and subsequently cloaking it under turtlenecks. Up or down 10 pounds, no matter… it’s flawed, it’s scarred, it’s unbalanced. Too little on top, too much on the bottom. Prolly should eat some chocolate.

When the little voice in my head gets to be a very big booming voice, I slather it in chocolate. Sugar is my drug, baby. The other white powder, you know. The more you have, the more you want, the fatter you get, the more you want… I call it:

 

Recently, after an extended 2 year run, I disembarked. I de=trained. And I did not start dieting. I did not struggle and I did not white-knuckle. Instead, a friend loaned me a book by the wise and humble Pema Chodron, and I began to understand how to go into the Voice, into the anxiety at the bottom of my gut and observe it. What am I worried about? What is the voice saying? Is it even true? What am I avoiding? What can I take action on that I have been afraid to conquer?

And then I was lead to another book, Women, Food and God by Geneen Roth. (Don’t be afraid.. we’re talking God in the most universal spiritual sense, not the fire and brimstone Old Testament one.)

Within a few weeks of doing little things, tying up loose ends and listening to my gut I found myself–as usual–eating chocolate, and I stopped mid-bar. My inner eye popped open. It was now existing for me as only a habit and I didn’t actually want it anymore. So that was the last bite. The Sugartrain ground to a halt and I leapt off the stairs.

I wanted good food. So I ate it. I stopped obsessing over dessert. I threw out the rest of the food on my plate if I was full. I kind of liked cooking again. It would seem that I have also dropped several pounds and I have more energy.

This is the secret that the diet industry does not want us to know, ladies… you already have what you need. The ruby slippers–diets and pills and Shakeweights–are an illusion. The wizard is a fraud. You could have always gone home.

(P.S. The Sugartrain will not get you there. I tried.)

 

Natalie Hughes is the Editor in Chief of simplywoman.com, a singer/songwriter, recording artist, and the musical director for Crystal Andrus Productions, For more on her music, visit nataliehughes.com.

 

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