sweet tooth

my last post was about fasting, while i was thinking about that post i had a realization. the realization was not a shock, its something i understand about myself, but have come to a new appreciation of it. i have a sweet tooth. when given the chance to indulge the sweet tooth, i almost always say yes. for someone who is fasting, allowing the indulgence is not an option. and yet, the sweet tooth does not go away.

as the fasting time approached i had found that i was over the limit on some of my snacking. i was planning my days around the next fix of my sweet tooth. i would consider the next meal, how to ensure there was time to relax and enjoy the dessert, how to not fill up on the things that were “good for me” to allow the enjoyment of the things that were not.

this is the thing with a sweet tooth, it is the taste of sweetness in the mouth, the buzz that comes from enjoying the sugar high, the relaxed feeling that comes from the post indulgence crash that drives one to keep doing it. the alternative is to “be good”, to consider your meals based on what they will do for you in the long term. adding time horizons to decisions do help you make choices, but ignoring them does allow you to simply enjoy.

i have a friend who is a devote vegetarian, she has a level of self control which i find amazing. one of my favorite treats are pop-tarts, i find them to be the perfect mix of easy to hold, sweet to taste and ready to share because they come two to a package. i offered one to her the other day and we ended up reading the back of the box, going ingredient by ingredient to ensure this breakfast treat cum sweet tooth indulgence did not have lingering animal products. after the search we shared the pop tarts with a clear conscience, if not a strong feeling of trepidation.

a few days later, she mentioned to me that she had done more research and found that one of the very minor ingredients could be an animal product. the information came with a sense of regret, her for trying something she did not want to try and me for convincing someone to enjoy something that they did not want to enjoy. i was simply enjoying a sweet treat which is normal and acceptable for me to enjoy, she was going against her core values. i was enjoying an indulgence which i know is strictly not good for me though. i wonder what the karma implications of all this is. i offered out of a sense of sharing, hoping i could give someone something they would enjoy as much as i did. did either of us do anything wrong?

as i sit in my sunday brunch location i have sweets all around me. i can decide to have one or not, every day comes with many choices. i have never thought the decisions of today have to have lasting impacts on our entire lives. if i do over indulge today, can i simply improve tomorrow, fast, go for a run, act in some way to make up for or counter the previous indulgence? does tasting this chocolate sweet today really have to be something i carry regret, bad karma, for more than the time to digest it?

being an adult is about realizing your choices come with the need to burn those calories away later. if you over indulge, at some point you need to either live with the extra weight you are carrying around, or you need to change your behavior, diet, burn those pounds off so that they are gone. the calories can be eliminated, but only by stopping to indulge and changing your patterns so the zero sum game of life beings to move in your direction again.

we all make these decisions every day. some of us very high metabolisms, meaning we can enjoy, or crave, more than others. some of us have high degrees of self control, or is it that we are more tolerant to the pain that imposing that control brings us. either way, we are all different. even those of us with a sweet tooth, those of us who find and enjoy sweets more than we possibly should, we all need to accept that indulgence does come with responsibility, responsibility for our own decisions.