Need Sugar? Give Yourself an Inner-Dose!

“I’m depressed. I need a cookie.”

Sophia Petrillo, The Golden Girls

If you’ve seen the sitcom, The Golden Girls, you know Sophia Petrillo (Estelle Getty) as the wisecracking mother of Dorothy (Bea Arthur). The great thing about sitcoms is that there’s a lot of hidden truth underneath the wisecracking, and there’s none greater than the truth in the above quote—if you’re used to escaping your uncomfortable feelings through food.

Many of us who struggle with body weight do so because we subconsciously—and sometimes consciously—medicate our emotional pain away with food. Sugar and salt are two of the primary addictive substances that are excellent for making us feel better, at least initially.

I love sugar. There isn’t any greater comfort food than chocolate chip cookies or cheesecake (I hear the Golden Girls applauding). But the problem with sugar is that it always bottoms-out. We experience our sugar-rush and then there’s the big blood sugar drop soon after. The high is gone and now we feel worse, sometimes doubly bad: Our depression returns accompanied by guilt for having over-indulged.

For years I didn’t “get it” when it came to sugar. I stuffed a lot of sweets into my mouth, never realizing that I was eating them for the sole purpose of medicating away bad feelings. I guess there should have been some clues, like the fact that I always inhaled cookies or candy bars. I didn’t take time to savor them. Subconsciously I knew I needed the rush and I needed it as fast as possible. I needed to feel better and I needed that better feeling NOW. And I needed it now mostly because I didn’t want to face the feeling, own it, analyze what it had to tell me and learn to be comfortable with the feeling. I just wanted it gone.

The problem with sugar or salt (what’s better than a bag of Lay’s Potato Chips or a can of Planter’s Peanuts?) is that they are no different than alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, Vicodin or cocaine. All of these substances help us to run away from our bad feelings, but they never solve the problem behind the bad feelings.

Sooner or later, if we really want to feel naturally good we have to stop running from our difficult feelings. We have to choose to be with them, learn from them and allow ourselves to be positively transformed by them. After all, the bad feelings we don’t want to face are not our enemies. They’re actually our friends. They exist to tell us that something isn’t right in our thinking, or patterns of behavior. If we’d take the time to accept them, listen to them and walk with them—instead of running to the cookie jar—we’d regain our peace of mind without the sugar high—and eventual sugar crash. And we’d be better off. We’d gain fewer unwanted pounds and we’d have nothing to feel guilty about.

Next time you feel depressed and you want to run for a cookie-- or a piece of cheesecake or a bag of Doritos—stop and wrap your arms around yourself. Give yourself the love you’re missing and then ask that depressed feeling what it has to teach you. Take time to walk with the feeling until it naturally passes through your system and you return to a better sense of well-being. It may take much longer to feel better, but it’ll be worth it because it will be a natural and longer lasting form of serenity.