Friday, November 21, 2008

Complusion and Consciousness

Here's a comment left by saremca form a previous blogpost.....I'm slowly making my way through comments! I think it makes a good point about making conscious decisions, and once again, as Mark often says, "It's simple, but it ain't easy!"


"I like that you make it so simple. You lay it on the line like, "Hey, it's your choice. Make it."

I'm working on being more conscious of my choices, and really considering the options and probable outcomes. I rush through life way too often and then wonder what happened."

my reply......

It's one thing to be conscious but then be compulsive.

We rush because we try and fit too many things in our schedules, trying to "do it all" Let's say we don't take the time to make our lunch because we've got so many other things we make a bigger priority, then buy something to eat that isn't in the best interest of our health, then feeling like...whoa, what just happened? We knew what was going to happen when we left the house, lol! No excuse.


But compulsive behavior is comes from a different place. You can be going along, with the best of plans and intentions, even having a pre made meal, and for whatever reason, this drive comes over you and it's much more difficult to simply "make the the right choice"....you're not unconscious of making a "bad" choice, you're very conscious of it....the compulsion is driven by a number of pyschological reasons.

I'm not making excuses for complusive behavior. I believe it's a habit, like any other habit, you can work to change...it's just different, because you can be fully conscious of what your doing, just not feeling like you can control it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have those compulsive moments too, like last night when I meant to eat the salad I had made for dinner and ate a few handfuls of chocolate chips instead. I was totally conscious of what I was doing, but in that moment I didn't really care. I wanted chocolate and that was that. I regretted it later, though. That's always the pattern.

- Beth

Tracy Reifkind said...

Beth,

Exactly!

I'm going to be posting some recipes and pictures of some "good" chocolate desserts using whole grains, good quality chocolate and honey....but the best part is that you can make single servings easily.

That way you don't have a whole "batch" of anything around, it calms the chocolate craving (or satisfies it), but even if you overeat it you still get alot of nutrition!