Deprivation and Sugar

One thing that has become crystal clear to me since embarking on the McKenna programme is that for me, sugar and hunger are totally unrelated. When I'm really hunger, the last thing I want is sugar. What I crave most when hungry is protein (usually in the form of cheese), followed by carbs (bread). Fruit and veggies are low on my list of hunger satisfiers, but sugar is not even on the list at all.

However, the minute my hunger has been satisfied, in other words the minute I should pack up my knife and fork and leave the table, something sweet becomes a practically overwhelming need. I usually succeed in shrugging this need off, but often give in to a generous handful of dried cranberries or some other kind of dried, high-sugar content fruit.

Though consumed with sugar desire, I am able to take a step back and look at the strange compulsion that has envelopped me. For me, it all comes down to a sense of deprivation. I feel somehow that I am being deprived of something that others have a right to, but that I cannot have. I feel envious and "hard done by".

Why me? Why can't I have this beautiful, sensuous delight without paying the price? I honestly don't have the answer.

By all rights, I should feel much angrier about the bad hand of cards I've been dealt with respect to my arthritis, or being such a shrimp, but no! I'm angrier about how quickly I get full and the fact that physically there's no legitimate room for that amazing piece of chocolate cake or that gorgeous serving of crème brûlée.

McKenna has various techniques to deal with such cravings, but I have yet to find them useful. I certainly haven't mastered the tapping technique, which involves a complicated series of taps on various acunpuncture points. I keep saying I'll practice them more, and since my colleague has given me back my copy of I Can Make You Thin, I'll have to re-read the section.

McKenna also has techniques to totally eliminate the desire for certain foods. On one episode of the British ICMYT TV series, he "cures" a woman of her cola addiction. On another show, he uses his techniques to completely extinguish someone's desire for chocolate. But the interesting thing is that I am so far resisting the idea of eliminating my love of sugar. I wonder why.

After all this writing about sugar, you must think that I gorge on it constantly. In fact, I have very little in my diet. But it's still a psychological obsession. I probably need to further investigate my sense of deprivation...