For more information about the multiTRIM diet, go to: multiTRIM.com.
Pounds Lost: 20.2
Lisa tells me something amazing today. “I have overcome the fast food addiction,” she says.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Two months ago, my life wasn’t quite complete without a MacDonald’s, or a Burger King, or an In and Out. I’m not a smoker, but I would venture to say that the craving for the salty fries, and the dripping burger was in the same Richter scale neighborhood as a cigarette for a smoker. Somehow, part of me was missing if I could not stop by and pick up a double cheese with a large fries and a mammoth Coca Cola.”
Having smoked myself for over twenty years—although I gave it up over twenty-five years ago—I know of what she speaks, still. That hollow scream, silent, but insistent, which demands, threatens, tears, rips, and shifts, and the calms for a breath or two while gathering strength before it screams again for fulfillment, completeness.
“You think they put something in the food?” I ask, as a joke, really.
“Wouldn’t surprise me,” she says.
“Really?”
“No, not really. They can’t really do that, can they?”
“I doubt it.”
“But the effect is the same. It’s as if they had,” she said.
And I think back upon the times I tried to quit, when I was walking into walls—more or less literally—trying to outrun the craving for nicotine. Feeling like half of me was missing. Feeling wooden, unable to perceive what was in front of me and thinking, surely this is not worth it, is it? Surely, I should just have a smoke, and have this pain over with.
I tried to quit smoking a dozen or so times. Only the last time worked. And it took months to quiet the voice, the craving.
Same as for Lisa, now that she’s gradually stepped farther and farther away from the fast food habit, the voice, the craving, is growing weaker and weaker.
So what, I wonder—if they could—are they putting in the food to keep people stuffing themselves with when on paper it’s one of the worst things you can do? What cravings are so strong that they can wrestle reason and good sense to the ground at will?
Really, it doesn’t matter. As long as we can distance ourselves from it long enough to see reason, long enough to climb out from under that terrible craving that says we are not complete until we down another double-cheeps with larger fries. These are shackles we must break.
For life.
No comments:
Post a Comment