Does Frosting Need to be Forgiven?
Or, as my therapist put it, “Why does it need to be forgiven?” The “it” was frosting I ate by the spoonful before embarking on a full-scale binge. In the old days, when my weight would yo-yo up and down by massive amounts every couple of years, binges could last for days, weeks or even months at a time. When I started therapy with Rachel to address my issues with food and weight, she informed me that it was a symptom of my childhood sexual abuse. Once we started tackling that issue, I lost approximately 100 pounds and have maintained it for the past 15 years. Despite this success, binging is still a part of my life, albeit on a much lesser scale.
Binging tended to follow one of two tracks for me. The first was almost as if I was on auto-pilot, and I wasn’t aware of it until I was in its grip. And once that happened, it was too late to stop. The second more frequent kind were deliberate. I knew what I was doing, would procure treats (all sweets all the time) and eat until I passed out in a sugar coma.
About a year before I started working with Rachel, I again embarked on a diet and added a mandatory exercise component of riding my stationary bike. The latter was absolutely inflexible, no matter how bad I had been or how much I didn’t want to do it. I gradually grew to enjoy the feeling I had after working out and expanded my routine. Working out made me feel instantly better and served as an automatic reset from the previous day. So, while I may still have binged, some of the damage could be undone and the duration wasn’t as long.
But losing that all or nothing mentality – black or white, good or bad – was a much harder nut to crack. I’ve joined Weight Watchers too many times to count and while I generally dreaded the meetings, there was a piece of wisdom that has stayed with me these many years, even if I couldn’t put it into practice at the time. And that was if you drop an egg, you don’t break the rest of the dozen. Or if you miss your stop, you don’t keep going. You get off or turn around. I used to think it was silly that people would eat fattening meals and drink a diet soda. What difference did it make? Turns out, a lot. It’s not the few calories in question but the way you view it. I saw it as a zero-sum game. A winner and a loser. Sometimes it’s about finding the gray and meeting in the middle. Because how much better is it mentally and physically to have some but not all, whatever it may be of? Wouldn’t you prefer to eat an extra 500 or 1,000 calories instead of 5,000?
Another bit of wisdom that stayed with me was from a mindful eating book. If you wanted to eat more of something, it instructed you to ask yourself if having more would satisfy the desire. For me, the answer was no. Always. I didn’t want two or three, I wanted it all. It was helpful in thinking that I was enjoying whatever delicious thing I was eating but for now, one would have to do because the alternative was a trip down the rabbit hole.
And that rabbit hole always led to the same place: self-hatred. I hated my weakness. My gluttony. My powerlessness to control what I was doing. But no matter how awful I may have felt physically after a binge, it was nothing compared to the pit of despair I felt mentally. Often the only way for me to shake off my black cloud was to forgive myself so that I could let it go. Which brings us back to the frosting.
I had been good and then I mindlessly ate some frosting, then a little more and then it morphed into a full-on binge. I hated myself. I woke up the next morning still hating myself. I knew I had to forgive myself so that I could move on. But I couldn’t, and my toxic mood was consuming. When I met with Rachel and poured out my tale of heartache and despair, she asked why it needed to be forgiven. It was only frosting, and all people eat more than they want or intend at certain times, and it doesn’t make them bad people. On some level I knew she was right, but I just couldn’t shake it. Weeks went by and I continued to torture myself about the frosting. And then one day I just got it. It was frosting. I didn’t kill anyone or cause irreparable harm, not even to myself. There was nothing to forgive.
I don’t want to oversimplify because the theme of forgiveness runs deep within me based on my childhood sexual abuse. I internalized the abuse I suffered as being my fault and my eternal quest was to forgive myself. It didn’t matter what for, including something as seemingly benign as frosting. But perhaps the most interesting thing that came out of the experience was that it opened my eyes to the realization that I am in control of what I eat. Even if a binge starts out on autopilot, there is always a point where I recognize what’s happening. In that moment I can choose to stop eating. Or not. I get to decide. It doesn’t have to be black or white, good or bad, all or nothing. I finally recognized that I am not powerless. It’s not just happening and at any point I can turn around.
So, now, whatever I choose to eat or how much of it, I acknowledge it with my eyes open. As such, I’m in control. I eat what I want and move on. I may feel sick, and I try to remind myself that that is the consequence of eating a ridiculous amount of sugar and carbs. I also know that my mood will suffer because I think I go into hardcore sugar withdrawal the next day. But I don’t torture myself about the morality of it because it’s not an ethical dilemma. There is nothing to forgive. Not even eating frosting by the spoonful.
