Goodbye, temptation! (Version 6,754)

Do you have one of those terrible tempting bowls of candy at work? Or in your house somewhere? There is one right outside my office that is lovingly refilled by a certain department almost daily, and I must pass it eight thousand times each day on one of my many, many pee breaks. (Speaking of, do you know why pregnant women pee so often? It’s not, as I’d always thought, something that only happens toward the end because there is no room for your bladder. It’s because pregnancy hormones make your kidneys more efficient! Wow.)

Since going off sugar in late December I have been cruising along just fine. I have passed up endless breakroom treats that used to sing their terrible siren song back in my sugar-addicted days (daze?).

Well today I had a bit more of a personal sugar temptation. I met a friend for lunch who I hadn’t seen since Christmas, and she gave me a belated present. It was a lovely, thoughtful card and a holiday tin full of candy. FULL OF CANDY. And some of it was peppermint candy I wasn’t too excited about, there were also two dark chocolate Ghirardelli squares.

But it’s funny. I took one look at it and didn’t really desire any of it. For a moment I felt the old hoarding instinct, that maybe I should keep the Ghirardelli for later, just in case.

But in case what? The stores ran out of chocolate? Hello, fat thinking! Once I realized this was absurd, I marched straight to the hallway candy bowl and emptied out all my candy into it. It’s not mine anymore, it belongs to whoever it is that passes the candy bowl and needs candy. That’s just not me anymore.

Sometimes I think I sound like a crazy anti-sugar convert. But it’s as if I lived my whole life without knowing I was drugged, and now suddenly I’m alert. It’s a nice, easy bliss born of discipline that seems to require no willpower; it’s the ultimate high.