How could these two possibly come together? The struggle in your mind that prevents mental fitness consists of clashing brain elements. To bring them into harmony you have to know what they are and how to manage them. Here’s where pineapple upside-down cake comes in.
It’s after the holidays the second year of the Covid 19 pandemic and my Child has sneaked more fattening food than usual. Relatives’ Indulgent Parents joined with my own, allowing my Child to eat lots of things like pineapple upside-down cake. This year even my usually 12 pound dachshund, Dixie, gained a pound. Dixie doesn’t mind her rounder tummy, but I object to mine and I recall the fights I lost in my own head.
I remember a time when my inner-world supported my efforts to maintain a healthy diet. The impact of being ill with an especially toxic flu virus in 2018 and previous viruses since I was forty-seven left me with a damaged gut, many allergies and a foggy brain. To recover I sought help with functional medicine providers and followed their diet and supplement programs. While I worked for my health, I lost some weight and had no trouble resisting cake and ice cream.
My Child didn’t argue much because she was scared about what had happened to me. The idea of getting really sick again kept her on the edge of fight-or-flight. My Indulgent Parent focused on helping me find new ways to play with the healthy recipes my Adult discovered online. My Critical Parent kept after me about my failing to exercise as I was advised to do, warning my Child that she should stop watching so many cooking shows and get off the couch. I gradually managed to fend off Belief #4, that if something threatening (another viral attack) might happen, it’s helpful to worry about it frequently.
By the holidays this year I was feeling well! I decided I’d try eating dairy products again and really got into ice cream and yogurt which I’d really missed. I ate gluten-free desserts and just too many snacks. My Indulgent Parent pushed Belief #11 my way: If you’re special in some way you’re entitled to recognition and an easier path. I didn’t care about recognition, but I was ready for that easier path. I felt special because I’d worked so hard for years, depriving myself of favorite foods and often feeling hungry, things only a special person would do.
Self-pity swept over my Child instead of the pride she’d had over what she’d helped to accomplish in restoring my health. My Indulgent Parent was crushing my Critical Parent, so my Adult offered a compromise. Let’s just eat a little ice cream and a few sweet snacks. You know what happened next. Ever trying to keep the peace, my Adult kept looking for information to help find new ways to motivate internal cooperation.
One day YouTube played a video where Erica Sonnenburg explained in persuasive detail how the gut works against sustained diet changes.* It turns out that the “microbiome” that inhabits our gut will switch overnight when we change our diet for the better. And as we persist in our new diet, it will remain improved for a while. But it retains the memory of previous indulgences and will in time slide back in to our previous, less healthy but enticing diet.
So my Indulgent Parent cried, it’s not all my Child’s fault! We really are special if we can keep this up indefinitely with all the temptation around us, along with the corrupting influence of our own gut. Yes, it often helps to think of myself as more than one person! Now my Adult I realizes that as long as I feel healthy, the only motivation to keep up my new diet is how I look, and that’s not enough. I like my appearance better at this weight than with the extra twenty pounds I had for several years. It would be inconvenient and costly to buy larger clothes again. But I didn’t really feel unattractive with that extra weight, I felt cozier. And I enjoy shopping.
To make matters worse, my Critical Parent disapproves of focusing too much on such things. She often embraces Belief #3 that I deserve to be blamed and punished if I don’t meet the standard she sets. My Adult allows her to hold the standard that I should concern myself with the needs of others and my spiritual journey instead. My Adult works continually to help balance her input and I welcome the challenge to do as she expects. It’s a major source of meaning in my life. But just one extra pound? One piece of cake?
The end of the story about my diet is in the future! But I know what I’m dealing with here and so my Adult can remind me of self-talk that’s helped me settle my inner conflict about this before:
- You have to stop somewhere with weight gain, so why not stop while you can still fit into your present wardrobe?
- Do you really want to go through the past several years of health problems again and the weight merry-go-round? That’s what you’ve learned to expect.
- Let’s find other ways to indulge our Child that don’t have the side effects that poor diet does!
A wise friend once told me that she finally stopped smoking because she got sick of quitting. Maybe that’s what I’ll do: stop repeating the unpleasant process of quitting my healthy diet. I’ll put that into my Wise Parent’s chest of wise quotes, closer to the top.
*Justin & Erica Sonnenburg, The Good Gut: Taking Control of Your Weight, Your Mood, and Your Long-Term Health. (New York, Penguin Books 2015)