I'm a Junkie, food not drugs

I'm a junkie, food not drugs.

Specifically, chips. I can turn my nose up at alcohol and just say no to drugs. In times of great strength I’ve even been able to walk away from a cookie. Open a bag of Doritos and hide them somewhere in the house; I’ll wake from a sound sleep and find them without even looking. It’s a gift. I’m kind of a savant that way. Chips and dip, chips and salsa, Fritos and Lays, I never found a chip I didn’t like – except sour cream and onion, yuck. But the chip that drives me to doom every time is Nacho Cheese Doritos.

I’m sure when satin sits down to watch MTV (another time, another blog) he’s got a big bowl of Nacho Cheese Doritos sitting beside him. I crashed my diet; I know, who would have guessed. It sounded like a freight train rolling off the tracks into a zillion Doritos. Wait, it was a zillion Doritos. Ok, it was just a partially eaten bag left over from New Years Day, but you get the general idea. Every time I walked through the house, they mocked me.

“Hey, Linn, we’re in the pantry.”

Finally, with my defenses worn thin, the Doritos won. I ate.

The funny thing is Nacho Cheese Doritos aren’t even that good. Look at them closely. They look like they’ve been spray painted with gloppy orange processed cheese-like food substitute. The powdered cheese-like partials stick to your fingers and everything you touch like evidence at a crime scene. And breath, try to talk to someone and watch them wince. Doritos breath is like smelling a dog freshly rolled in skunk and sea-weed – yuck? Like most things bad for you, it starts good and ends poorly. If you really thought it through, you wouldn’t do it. It just doesn’t make sense.

And that’s the whole thing. It isn’t rational. Rational makes sense. Food, for me, doesn’t. I should be able to say I’m not hungry, don’t eat. I should be able to see the ingredients read like a chemistry quiz, and say yuck. What combination of food science and the missing link in my brain makes me crave such a lousy food-like substitute? I’ve been at this long enough to know that beating my self for failure is counter production. Good days and bad days and hope for a few more good days in the end. I’m not ready to throw in the towel; not yet. I know from personal experience that exercise acts to suppress my appetite, so I’ll start there and figure the rest out as I go.

PS

A photo from this morning's walk.