years ago bill got me a book called Potatoes Not Prozac cuz he thinks i'm addicted to sugar.  turns out, i'm definitely addicted to sugar.  i never got around to reading it before cuz i dont read.  but since i'm on overhead at work and arent doing anything, i started reading it.  an excerpt...

Are you sugar sensitive?

When a client comes to see me about compulsive eating, I start by asking a simple question.

Imagine you come home and go into the kitchen.  A plate of warm chocolate-chip cookies sits on the counter just out of the oven.  Their smell hits you as you walk in.  You do not feel hungry.  No one else is around.  What would you do?

Does this question make you smile?  You may think the answer is obvious, but people who are not sugar sensitive respond by saying, "Why would I eat a cookie if I wasn't hungry?"  Or they stop and think about whether they would eat the cookie.  Or, with no emotional charge, they say, "Well, I might try one."  People who are not sugar sensitive do not have a visceral response to the idea of smelling fresh chocolate-chip cookies.

People who are sugar sensitive laugh at the cookie question.  Their bodies are already responding to the very idea of the cookies.  They know they would inhale a cookie - probably more than one, at that!  They might eat the whole plateful, even if they were not hungry.  For a sugar-sensitive person, hunger is not the driving motivation.  what triggers their desire to eat is the smell of the cookies, the anticipation of how the cookies will feel in the mouth, and the warmth and sweetness of the chocolate.  Even the feeling of having a cookie in hand will have a powerful association for them.  Those cookies mean love, they mean comfort.  The cookies are friends and lovers.

People who are not sugar sensitive think this response to cookies is strange, perhaps even stupid: "What on earth are you talking about?"  But people who are sugar sensitive always know exactly what the cookie question means.

as the highlighted red text moved me to tears cuz it was so dead one, i realize i am truly an addict.  so no more cookies for breakfast!  (i had a rice crispy this morning)  i'm making a change!

sidenote: those were more tears of embarassment than anything else.  it was exactly like when i cried at the end of the ikea commercial where a woman puts a lamp out on the street by the garbage and all the sad music made me sad for the lamp, esp cuz he could see thru the window that a new lamp was taking care of his former owner.  and then a swedish guy comes on the screen and says, "many of u may be feeling sorry for the lamp.  that is because you crazy!  the lamp has no feelings.  and besides the new lamp is much better."  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeyEXt7-0jU

are you addicted to sugar?  how did you respond to that question?