Breaking the after dinner sugar loop

To feel free of the desire to snack after dinner, to need a little something sweet, to eat sugar just because it's a certain time and place, you need to decide that you want that freedom more than you want the relief of the craving.

You have to decide that feeling free of the desire is more important to you than the ease of obeying it.

That it's worth your perseverance and determination to create more freedom in your life. 

And then you have to create a structure of eating which doesn't include that after-dinner treat.

A food plan for the day which you like and which feels doable.

And you have to decide ahead of time, before you have the urge for sugar after a hard day and you're sat on the sofa in front of Too Much, that you ARE going to allow that urge to exist within you WITHOUT obeying it. 

You have to believe that you're someone who follows through on your word and you said you weren't going to eat the friggin snack. 

That you're someone who's learning how to eat in integrity with your future self because you know that you would feel so much better if you were free of this evening eating HABIT and if chocolate didn't feel like it was more powerful than you.

And when you feel the urge, because you will at first, you let it exist within you without doing anything.

You just sit there... reminding yourself that you knew this was going to happen and that it's absolutely worthwhile (no matter what your primal brain is telling you) to allow the urge to bubble away inside of you without fear or panic. 

You don't reject or resist it. You just notice and observe it without doing anything. 

Eventually it passes and you go to bed and wake up the next day feeling so damn proud of doing something different.

Of proving to yourself that your urges and feelings don't define your actions.

That you could withstand the loud, unnerving and restless feeling of the craving and nothing bad happened.

In fact, you can hear whispers that maybe only good things will come from this pursuit, even if it feels hard along the way. 

And then you have to repeat this process until eventually you notice your brain and body doesn't present you with the desire at all. 

It's 8pm. You've had a turbo day. You're sat on the same sofa, dealing with the same old sh*t, you're onto the second series of your show, and you don't have desire for the sweet thing.

It just doesn't even come into your mind and cause you issue or unrest. 

You don't "need" anything because you've retrained your brain to do something else which feels just as natural and automatic as rewarding the urge once did. 

You've learnt to sit with how restless you can feel at the end of the day and not make it go away by distracting it with dopamine and thinking it's worth it. 

This moment, when you're not having the craving that used to bother you so much, IS freedom. 

It's relief. 

It's capability.

It's confidence. 

It's a deep inner knowing that you CAN handle whatever is going to come your way (whether it's a tiring day or something much greater) without saying you need to eat something to cope. 

You don't need anything because you have yourself and you have the belief that you can tolerate how you feel without numbing or rejecting it. 

And it tastes WAY better than any chocolate or biscuit ever could. I promise.

If this resonates, make this after-dinner behaviour change the goal and stay laser-focused on creating it because you know that you deserve to feel free.

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