cacao kapow!

Valentine’s Day hit me like Chris Brown in a Bronco.  I’m not talking about just being alone (although that did have a lot to do with it).  I’m talking about the enormous amount of crap I ate.

I won an entire plastic container full of Hershey Kisses from work and then the store gave everyone a box of chocolates and my mom bought two boxes of chocolate for me.  After consuming that much sugar and chocolate and lard and fat and lard and sugar and chocolate and fat and lard and more lard and the occasional coconut cluster that slipped past my security measures (yuck), I felt like total garbage.

It’s kind of amazing how you don’t realize how bad you stopped feeling until you start feeling bad again.

I always thought I was impervious to sugar, caffeine, Aspartame, vitamins and minerals, love, legally obtained prescription drugs, etc.,  because I can have that stuff and it doesn’t make me more energetic or foggy or good or bad.  I’ve always walked around generally feeling like crap.  So, when I started exercising and eating less greasy, fast food-type items, I didn’t feel more energetic or "alive" or better physically or even mentally.

All it took was a near month-long binge of boxed chocolates to make me realize I didn’t feel as bad as I believed.  And you might say a month-long binge of chocolates will make anyone feel that way, no matter what condition they started in.  Even the most lethargic sloth would come away from three boxes of cocoa-coated caramels feeling worse.  But that chocolate wasted feeling was how I used to feel all the time before I started dieting and exercising.

I felt bad that I indulged so heavily.  I write these entries about doing well.  I write about moderation and it’s okay to cheat every once in a while and you just get up and do better the next time around.  And then I binge.  And it happens to everyone but I still feel like I should be a better example.  I’ve battled food and my weight and my addiction to food for years and you’d think I’d develop some sort of resistance to the constant cravings.  But, no.  In a lot of ways, I’m no better now than when I was seventeen and bingeing on Doritos and Diet Coke.

I also feel like I’m not as in touch with my body as I should be.  I don’t know what’s going on inside.  I can’t detect the changes in my mood or my middle.  There’s a giant disconnection there and I don’t know how to harmonize my senses and awareness. 

If anything, I guess this overindulgence was a good lesson.  There might be something to this diet and exercise after all, folks!  Maybe it does make a difference, even if the differences are subtle and fluid and not easily recognized by those who aren’t in touch with themselves.