On Sunday I had a bit of a detox failure that sneaked up on me. I was chilling on the couch with my book and my dad handed me a bowl of cheesy. So far, my research hasn’t led me to believe in a relationship between dopamine and cheesy snacks, but I can’t deny what happened next.
When I absent mindedly reached in to the bowl and popped the first crunchie cheesy into my mouth I undoubtedly got a dopamine rush. However, at the time, I didn’t realize it.
I was done the bowl in under a minute. I think I even lost concentration on reading my book which was pretty good.
From what I’ve seen in life, there are people who can just slowly enjoy crispy deep-fried snacks without loosing full control, but I am not one of them. I usually accept that once I open a bag, I am going to eat it all.
This time was no different. I got up twice to refill my bowl before just taking the whole bag and just destroying it.
It was only later that I realized dopamine had likely been the culprit. About two hours later, when I got up to go skiing I was craving food. I had a peanut butter and banana sandwich and told myself that would be my lunch.
When I got home from skiing my dad had made supper so I ate that too. On Monday, when I woke up I was in the mood for more food, and I had to break up my library stint to go grab some lunch.
It was only on Monday evening when I was talking with my mom about how I was feeling extra irritable all day that I traced back the source. Losing my mind to the bag of cheesies (after I had promised on my Friday to-do list that I would eat carefully at my dads) created a dopamine high that my brain badly didn’t want to come down from.
I weighed myself tonight and I am 5 pounds heavier than normal. That is a pretty devastating loss of self-control!
The interesting thing about this debacle is it is almost an exact repeat of the feelings I got when I went to my aunt’s house and ‘deliberately’ cut loose on any food I wanted. It took me a long time to recover a stable mind after that!
Even though I still have almost a whole month left on this fast, I think I need to prepare myself for the fact that I will always be a little sensitive to dopamine stimulants.
I have read numerous comments by people suffering from ADHD that they improved immensely by monitoring their sugar intake. I think I will also need to monitor my cheesy intake.
The good thing is that I don’t think the cheesies themselves are to blame. It is the brain fog that has you mowing cheesies like a zombie. I think if I can learn to enjoy a single bowl and then put the bag away, I will not plummet into a 24 hour stretch of irritability and craving.
For anyone who is interested in trying a fast like this, I would even recommend having practice snacks here and there and then just stopping.
I have become convinced that your diet is a major part of the dopamine mystery. Hopefully, I will be able to solve it by day 60!
3 Thing To-Do List
- 4 more hours on conclusion
- go for a run
- get food intake under control no matter how you feel