This year, I made a strategic error during the holiday season.
For this special time of year, I decided to let my kids indulge moderately in some sweet treats. They found chocolate in their stockings. They ate cookies at Grandma’s. We even made healthy homemade chocolate and marshmallows!
But to my 5-year-old, there’s no such thing as moderation. She cannot enjoy just “a little” of a sweet treat. The first taste fuels the desire for a second or third or fourth, till the carton is empty, the bar is demolished, the carton is poured out, yet she’s whining and begging for more. Her body is screaming for more sugar. When it comes to sweets, her body doesn’t seem to have an “off” switch.
Unfortunately, her body shows a remarkably low tolerance for sugar. I’ll spare you the details, but symptoms of misery follow closely behind what does in fact seem like a “reasonable” portion of a sugary treat. Moderation doesn’t work for her.
I want her to be able to enjoy an occasional sweet treat–especially for occasions like these–and moderation seems like such a reasonable approach. But it doesn’t work for her.
This shouldn’t surprise me because I’m the same way. Like my daughter, my body doesn’t seem to have an off switch when it comes to sweets. If I consume any sugar, my body will mercilessly beg for more. And more. And more.
When I finally eliminated all sugars including artificial ones from my diet, the cravings stopped. I don’t have a sweet tooth anymore. It’s so much easier to never eat sweet treats than to eat them sometimes. And I wasn’t surprised when the same strategy worked for my kids.
When I tell people I’ve chosen to forego sweets, they unfailingly chide me for my “extreme” approach. They think I’m depriving myself, and tell me moderation would be a much healthier–and happier–choice.
But that’s nothing compared to the reaction I get when I tell people our kids don’t eat sweets either! When I say that my kids don’t eat sugar, they are horrified. My kids are surely missing out on childhood/doomed to a life of depravation/headed for an eating disorder/just plain hungry.
We do make the occasional exception, especially around the holidays. But I tell you truly: I am nearly always sorry. Because for several of my kids (and for me), there’s no such thing as moderation.
Maybe your weakness isn’t sweets; maybe it’s chips or crackers or jalapeño poppers. Not everyone is necessarily happier abstaining, but if you consistently find yourself having a terribly hard time backing away from whatever your weakness is, you might want to think about whether you’d be happier skipping it altogether.
Just give it a try. See how you feel. And if you turn out to be a moderator after all, I have a wonderful chocolate recipe you can try.
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I made the same mistake over the holidays. My daughter has ADHD and you can tell when her diet is off. After a week of little indulgences her teacher asked me if we were doing something different. I get the same response as you from people when I tell them we are grain and sugar free. I guess they think I would be a better mother if I medicated her and gave her Twinkies. I don’t understand it at all.
Cereal is our major issue. If my daughter has cereal in the morning she just doesn’t function well or at all within a few hours. So I get outrageous responses to “we don’t eat cereal – especially on the weekdays!” lol
I grew up with junk food all around me. Chips, Little Debbies, soda… with no limits or restrictions. Oh how I wish that was different! I am now 40 years old and still working hard to reverse this thinking and the havic it placed on my body. I have no “off” switch when it comes to junk food. I’ve been doing GREAT with a clean eating life style for about 6 mths now and feel the best ever. I allowed myself to splurge around Christmas, and it was a mistake. I got completely out of control. And we’re all three sick from compromised immune systems. Ugh! Now, I’m taking your challenge to get back on track and I’m so ready to feel great again! We’re trying to raise our son with a few treats here and there, but he too does not have an off switch. It’s so hard to know what’s best, but we just take it day-by-day, and situation-by-situation.
Melissa, thanks for sharing. It’s so interesting that both people who grew up surrounded by junk and people who felt deprived from it both struggle with moderation when they grow up.
You are so right!
No sugar problem here but salty, starchy potatoes do it every time, so does alcohol. Once I start, it’s hard to stop. I’ll make every excuse why we should have roasted potatoes again with a dirty martini or two, or three. It’s easier to just abstain then to go through all of the guilt and weight gain over and over.
My mother used to hide her snacks like potato sticks and chips from me when I was a kid. I’d climb the cupboards looking for them and then eat them up right there, sitting or standing on the countertop.
Mum never allowed sweets in the house or for us to receive them away from it. Honestly, I believe that’s why my brother and I are such sweet-hogs as adults.
I grew up eating food we raised or hunted (meat as well as freggies) and drinking our own spring water; my first 15 years were pretty stinking pristine (plus, being a working ranch, there was about 4 hours of manual labor a day, so we got exercise–if it was never play).
For US, it created a obsession/ fixation. I’m not saying processed foods are good, I’m not saying sweets are good. I absolutely recall being obsessed with watching the kids at school eat their ‘snack packs’ and wishing I could have a taste. Once I could buy my own? It’s all I wanted.
While I’ve returned to whole food-eating (stricter than Paleo: I avoid bacon, nightshades, citrus, garlic, sprouts, broccoli and a number of other foods that may cause trouble for my body — most of the time, I’ll still kick back some alcohol or sugar) my brother still can’t break that chain of ‘lookie what I can eat now!’ And to be honest, I can fall back into it SO easily, the fixation.
I don’t have a sugar filter, either. But I don’t know why… Was it being restricted as a kid and constantly put on diets by a parent who struggled with their own moderation/diet/weight/esteem, or was it due to biology? Of was it both nature and nurture? I think there is a place for sweets and working in conjunction withy husband I’m sure there will always be treats at times, but educating my kiddos to make good choices and modeling the behavior is a top priority for me, regardless of why my own sugar meter is broken. I’d like to break that cycle.
my daughter is the same way. Santa put some chocolate and other treats in her stocking and she tried to eat the entire contents in one sitting –at 6 o’clock in the morning. she has no off switch and she’s like that for TV too. i try to do things in moderation but it’s better if i keep sugar completely out of the house (she’s ok with foods sweetened with honey) and limit TV to the weekends. But it’s the strangers who are the worst and who are constantly derailing my efforts! Teachers, grocery store workers, other parents, playdates, birthday parties, Santa in the mall, taxi drivers, relatives, farmer’s at the Saturday market…!!! And if I tell them no she doesn’t need it she and the person offering both have a fit. So difficult!
The lines about people giving you the crazy look when you tell them you’ve given up sweets and your kids don’t get any either? Yah….I can completely relate.
I understand where you’re coming from but as a child, we NEVER had sweets in the house, not because my mom was necessarily against it, more so just because we were poor. Now as an adult, it’s an act of God to control myself from over-indulging. Based on my own experiences, I would prefer my son to learn how to control his self and consume sweets in moderation, rather than lead him to failure when he becomes an adult and he can make his own choices but has no experience in making them responsibly. It’s kind of like the way I was with money too. I never had any, so when I started making my own, I blew it as fast as I got it. But maybe I’m just an exception and have extremely weak will power.
Monica, it’s great that you know yourself well enough to know you do better with moderation. Honestly, I’m a little jealous. You’re not an exception–you and I just have different natures and different backgrounds.
When she wrote “jalapeno poppers,” I felt like she must have read my journal entries from last year’s challenge! 🙂
I agree! It amazes me how many people offer my kids all manner of junk food right in front of me without asking me first. When I say no they have all kinds of shocked responses, mostly along the lines of, oh its just one little treat. Often I end up accepting the “treat” so as not to cause a scene, but my kids know it will be going straight in the trash as soon as we are out of sight. Some may say it is wasteful, but I honestly feel better trashing it than giving it to my kids.