I should have known that relapse was inevitable. I hate this feeling. I know better, and I know that if I don’t change things in my life that this will continue to happen, over and over again. I have paid for my mistake all week and will continue to feel this way until I get this crap out of my system. I can’t believe that I used to live with this feeling around the clock. This past Friday, Amanda was going out of town on a girls trip and I was gonna be doing the bachelor thing. There was a part of me that was really excited to have the house all to myself. The kids would not be with me and it would just be me, Charlie, and my thoughts. I was really excited at the prospect of doing virtually nothing. I kissed Amanda goodbye late afternoon on Friday, and I was raring to go for my solo weekend of doing whatever the hell I wanted to do. This was going to be fun. I was gonna love it. Just me and the dog. We were having a blast. We were just sitting there, sitting there. Then it hit me. This fu*king sucks! I have been looking forward to sitting here alone, and I hate being alone. I was looking forward to doing whatever I want, but I always do whatever I want, only Amanda is usually there to do it with me. WE usually do whatever we want.

That’s when it hit me. I craved some mischief. I wanted to do whatever I wanted without anyone trying to stop me. If I wanted to make a costly decision, then I could do it without anyone batting an eye or interjecting their opinion. The calling became louder and louder and I knew I had to impulsively feed the craving that I was having. I had made my decision to relapse, and there was no turning back. I didn’t want to be talked out of it, and I had no desire to play the tape through. There would be no calling of my sponsor, and I would not reach out for help. I have been clean of drugs and alcohol for well over four years, and smoke-free for three years, but there is what I consider to be a comparable demon that I have yet to overtake. That demon’s name is SUGAR and he wreaks havoc on my body, my joints, my anxiety, my energy, my attitude, my fitness goals, my mood, and my overall happiness. I talk about eating sh*t food pretty often, but most of the time I really do eat pretty clean. I overeat, but it’s primarily pretty good stuff. I do love crappy food, but I am not quite the cesspool that I make myself out to be. I generally do not crave a great deal of sweets, but when I do, I REALLY crave them. I pay for it too, cause it REALLY wreaks havoc on me. As soon as I ingest just a little bit, it’s “Katie, bar the door”. I don’t usually eat dessert, or even cake at birthday parties. The reason is because a normal size dessert portion will trigger me into full out SUGAR mode and I want an entire cake and a half-gallon of ice cream…true story. Sugar was not a problem for me when I drank alcohol around the clock. I rarely craved it, but I think that has something to do with alcohol metabolizing into sugar (I’ve heard that, but I’m far from an expert). After I sobered up though, sugar has taken on a completely new role in my life. I don’t have to even eat “sweets” per say, but anything with a high sugar content and my life turns upside down. Even eating lots of bread, ketchup, or dipping food in any kind of sauce and I immediately get a tinge of anxiety and just feel a bit more tense and uncomfortable. However, this weekend was not about some ketchup or dipping sauce, it was an all out, gluttonous, sugar extravaganza.

With Amanda out of town and only the dog to try and stop me, I felt compelled to head to my favorite gas station, the Flying J. My “girls”, Ms. Ida and C’tina, generally don’t work nights, and they are the last line of defense between myself and poor dietary decisions. They are like really sh*tty bartenders who cut you off when you have only had a dozen drinks and one little altercation, only they are serving pizza, ice cream and fried foods. They know me, and will generally not let me buy the junk food which I love so dearly. I grabbed 2 huge pieces of pizza, a pint of ice cream and the 4 pack of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. I ate that, felt like sh*t, and went to sleep. Saturday morning came early, and I went to CrossFit to perform my 16.2 workout. I performed exactly as I would expect to perform after annihilating my body with sugar. No problem though, after the workout (which lasted 4 minutes), I went carb loading at Mellow Mushroom, where I responsibly ordered a salad. I should probably mention that while waiting on said salad, I hammered down about 4-5 huge pretzels which I dipped in cheese, and then “helped” my friend by eating a slice of his meat lovers pizza. After lunch, I headed to the house where it was almost immediately time to eat again. I returned to the scene of the crime and proceeded to get the same sh*t and sugar food that I had eaten the night before. I ate as if feeling sh*tty was my only goal. I ate as if I was in a competition where the grand prize was lifetime supply of type 2 diabetes. I felt terrible, and honestly, still do…3 days later. Sunday, I had that unsettled feeling that maybe I should be doing something, but didn’t really want to do anything, or something, or not. I couldn’t quite pinpoint what I felt, but it certainly wasn’t an excess of joy or happiness. I was stressing about all kinds of little things that I would usually laugh about, and I did not want to leave the couch, but I did not want to lay on the couch either (I’m pretty sure that I just wrote wrote about this exact problem not a month ago).

Monday, that was when the real penance was to be paid. Damn, my feet, knees, and hips hurt like hell. I have not done any amount of exercise that would cause me to feel this type of soreness. The inflammation in my joints is causing everything to hurt. The hurting does not help my mood, but I am not focused on my mood because I am too busy worrying about all the other things which can and will potentially go wrong in my life. All of the catastrophic events that the sugar has caused me to concoct in my brain are only amplified by the fact that I realize that I don’t have the energy to fix the fictional problems in the first place. Being that I am in a sugar rut, I am unable to clearly see that this too shall pass. The sugar has me feeling as if I am trapped forever, and I will always feel lethargic, achy, and negative. The truth is, I will continue to feel this way assuming that I continue to feed my addiction. And what’s crazy is, the fact that I feel this poorly, even with the knowledge that I have about WHY I feel so poorly, all I really want is to eat more sugar and ignore it all together. I think that this sounds eerily similar to some other problems that I have had in the past. Sugar makes me feel terrible, and gives me nothing but problems, but what I want is more sugar. I cannot help but to thinnk of how many people suffer from depression, anxiety, soreness, or fatigue, when what the only real problem is sugar, or some other type of food allergy. I am in NO way saying that I think it is an epidemic, or that I have stumbled upon any scientific discovery. I am saying that I find it interesting how incredibly different both my mind and body perform under the control of sugar.

Today, as I am writing this, it is Tuesday morning. I feel significantly better than I did Saturday through Monday. I spent Sunday hammering down vegetable juices, and ate all of my meals from Ultimate Foods. I am on the straight and narrow and hope to stay that way. Yesterday I was having a mini meltdown when Amanda suggested that I go for a run. I took a casual 3.5 mile waddle and it helped somewhat. I felt like I had less on my plate than I did before. My mind gets so jumbled up when I am not thinking clearly and I get overwhelmed easily. This is why it is so important for me to try and stay as consistently healthy as possible. I went to 5am CrossFit and was able to get the day started of right. I feel the positive juices flowing and am not nearly as anxious. It is crazy how much something like sugar can tear away at all of the positive things in my life. Anyways, I don’t know if that makes any sense to anyone else, or if anyone can relate to having a similar reaction to anything dietary, but it is good for me to inventory it and take note of exactly how it makes me feel. I hope that you have a good and positive day. Pay attention to all of the good that that you have been given, and try to add to it by being good to yourself, which includes what you feed yourself.

Peace, Love, and all things Beef related,

Beefcake