Mystery Solved. (Again.)

Out on my walk today, I was trying to figure out why I felt so grumpy.

I had gone to a community gathering the day before and met some lovely new neighbor friends and ate lots of good food. For the most part, I chose things I knew my body wouldn’t revolt against too badly, and filled up on the most glorious salad and local vegetables. I was feeling quite virtuous, actually.

And then I got to the dessert table.

I don’t know how to explain what happened next except to say that the homemade pecan pie had me in a stranglehold from the moment my eyes landed on it. Normally, I eat quite clean and stick with mostly whole foods, no dairy, no gluten, no sugar. But occasionally… I fall off the wagon.

Today was one of those days.

I threw caution to the wind and cut myself a dainty little slice and quite possibly a couple of other treats. I sat down at the table and ate them like a civilized human being. And then I must have slipped into an alternate universe, because the next thing I knew I was sawing off another piece, scooping it onto my plate, and gobbling it down like a feral animal, possibly making sounds that should’nt be made in public. There may have been moaning.
I can neither confirm nor deny.

Since I had already left the fortress on the mountain for the day, I decided to take the long and winding road from Hot Springs into town to run some errands. This is where the mystery began.

Standing in line at the grocery store, I was doing my best to be a kind, smiling member of the community. But I was grumpy. There is no other word for it. I had the patience of a wet cat. I stopped at my second errand and once again found my tolerance for conversation with humans to be nonexistent. When I returned to my car, I got in and headed for home with a sigh of relief and gratitude that I was done peopling for the day.

What had happened to me?

And then, walking up the mountain in the late afternoon light, it hit me. The last time I fell off the wagon and ate an entire pint of Ben & Jerry’s, the exact same thing had happened. (It was non-dairy. Does that count?) I was a total grump, and everybody I encountered was personally irritating me. I recall blaming it on menopause at the time, which has become my go-to explanation for anything and everything that goes awry.

But having this experience again, after a full-blown gluttony of sugar, reminded me that I had already discovered this about sugar. Already. Previously. And Before.

In addition to all the other well-documented crazy things it does to the body, sugar puts me in an absolutely terrible mood. The crash that follows the spike is real, and for me, it manifests not as fatigue but as a deep, irrational grumpiness toward every innocent bystander in a fifty-mile radius.

And here’s the truly humbling part. I feel like I have come to this exact conclusion a thousand times before. I make the discovery, I nod wisely, I vow to remember, and then the next pecan pie shows up and all that wisdom evaporates like the morning fog on the ridgeline.

When am I going to learn this for good?

The sad truth is that if that pecan pie were sitting in front of me right now, I’d do it all over again. Every feral, gluttonous bite of it.

Hi. My name is Collin. And I am an addict.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go eat a very large salad and apologize to everyone I encountered in town yesterday.

xoxCollin