The Mr comes clean

For about a month, the Mr and I have been confronting an issue.  Matter of fact, I believe it's basically been a month this week that we changed up our routine but I will discuss what that is tomorrow.  First, you needed to know why a change was necessary so the Mr has agreed to tell his story so that maybe someone out there will benefit.  Without further adieu...

Hi everyone!  The Mr, here.  For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a food sneaker. When I was a kid, I snuck frozen cookie dough, pieces of cheese, bologna, etc. And I thought I always got away with it until one time my Mom confronted me about the cookie dough practically disappearing.

This affliction of mine would come and go. It wasn’t as big of a problem for me in high school but from time to time I would find myself in a situation where there was some good food that I wanted and I just didn’t care about the consequence of eating it and would practically suck it down without even tasting it half the time.

When The Mrs. and I finally had some weight loss success I found that I didn’t have much of a problem with this at first. But then, over time, I found myself just grabbing little things here and there. For example, I would eat a piece of cheese while making my lunch for the next day. Then I discovered Nutella. Oh man I love that stuff and I cannot control myself all the time with it available. I thought I was an expert at hiding my sneaks from her and tried to take as much as possible without allowing it to look too ridiculous. She would ask if I had been measuring and I would pretty much lie and say “yeah what’s the problem?”

But there was a problem. The problem was that I was sabotaging myself. What did she really care if I snuck a bunch of Nutella? The point was that I should have cared. For myself. Another bad discovery was Biscoff spread or “Cookie Butter”. I couldn’t help myself around that. I found that after a workout was a good time to take advantage of making my lunch for the next day while the Mrs. was showering up. This gave me plenty of time to indulge in some or all of my favorite sneaks. But it wasn’t the only time. I found that I was pretty adept at slamming food in my mouth when the Mrs. was right in the living room (perfect visibility into our kitchen). I would bend down over the dishwasher like I was busy doing the dishes or something and shovel in a piece of cheese. But it was actually the Biscoff spread that kind of led to my downfall because I ate more than could be reasonably explained, but more on this later.

Over time I also found myself eating stuff at work. A co-worker has a community candy dish that usually has those Hershey miniatures and maybe some Reese’s peanut butter cups, etc. I would never allow anyone to view me actually going and getting candy though. I had to do it when everyone was at lunch, or away from the desk. I was stealth about it but would grab handfuls and think nothing of it, all because I got away with it. But again, I didn’t get away with anything! I paid for it by not losing any weight that week and by setting myself back even further on the weight loss front. You see, this wasn’t necessarily a weekly thing. I could have some weeks where I was perfect. But if I was perfect one week and didn’t lose weight, you could bet I would tend to have more of a “screw it” attitude the following week and that was a recipe for disaster for me.

It was about a month ago now that I started to recognize that my little food sneaking problem, which seemed harmless enough at first, was terribly out of control. I began searching for help online but didn’t really find much. Deep down I felt like I needed to come clean with the Mrs. because I felt like it was one of those 12 step program type of things where you have to acknowledge the problem. It was when this was all coming to a head in my mind that the Mrs. confronted me about the Biscoff Spread.  I thought she had it more often than she did and the last time she had some there was half a jar and now there was one tablespoon left.  It was obvious but I still denied it.  A few days later, I knew I had to stop lying about it. To her. To myself.

I finally, thankfully, came clean by telling the Mrs. about all of the sordid details of my food sneaking exploits. It was embarrassing. It was shameful. But somehow it was also very freeing. I’m not going to say that I haven’t struggled from time to time but by just coming out and saying it and being more open about this struggle I have found a way to deal with this issue much better. I have even managed to lose some weight again and I can honestly say that ever since we had the discussion, I haven’t snuck any food at all.

If I find myself thinking about sneaking food then I think about the fact that I am not fooling anyone but myself. Likewise I am not sabotaging anyone but myself. I have more to lose by sneaking food then anyone else involved and I think that helps me to realize how stupid it really is to give in to that temptation. I don’t know how other food sneakers out there feel, but I know that I felt like I was playing some twisted game. Pulling one over on others or something. But I was really just pulling one over on myself.

At first I was kind of reluctant to share this with the world but I’ve come to realize that someone else out there is likely struggling with this. And while I may not have the perfect, permanent fix for this, I can at least tell you what has helped me with this so far and hope that you’ll be able to find some relief as well.

At work I did ask my co-worker to move the candy dish. It happens to sit pretty much in front of me and while I am trying my best to be good, it doesn’t help me much to have to watch everyone else grabbing candy all day long. Unfortunately my co-worker refuses to move it. Can’t win ‘em all I guess but I know that just means I have to be that much more diligent in my resolve to avoid sneaking food.  One time when she was filling it, she offered me Reese eggs (my favorite) as she was dumping them in the bowl.  I finally had to firmly tell her to stop telling me what she was putting in there because I'm trying to be good and I will obsess over it.  I don't want to know.  The Mrs even went so far as to make me a maggot infested picture of my favorite candy to refer to when I feel really tempted.  Yeah, it's gross but trust me, it works.  No Special Dark bar that is normally in the candy dish looks appetizing after looking at that picture!

One other thing now is that I have to write down everything I eat. I do that anyway but I now have to do it with complete honesty by recording even the stuff that I sneak. That is the rule but, again, I haven’t had to write down anything extra so far because I am still in a good place. I know there may come a time where I fall to temptation again. I am human and I will not beat myself up over it. But I know now that I can be more honest about it to myself and that is the most important thing. Once you stop trying to fool yourself, you realize how pointless it was to try to in the first place.

Tomorrow, the Mrs will be outlining what changes we've made the past month that has helped me get back in the right mind set and even helped her with an issue too.

Are you a food sneaker?  Any true confessions you want to express to see if others can help or give tips?

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