How I Quit My Cookie Binges. It Didn't Require Willpower.
/Many years ago, when I worked in the corporate world, I had a weekend cookie ritual.
Every Friday morning, after getting off the train downtown, I would stop at my favorite cookie shop and pick out a bunch of cookies before going to my office.
The cookies were large, dense and utterly delicious. You could smell them baking from blocks away. The peanut-butter chocolate chip and wheat-germ chocolate chip cookies especially made my mouth water.
I liked to arrive at the bakery early so I could save money by purchasing the half-priced day-old cookies before they were sold out (these cookies weren’t cheap!). Sometimes I’d hit more than one location if the first shop I stopped at didn’t have enough cookies to meet my needs.
Before heading to work, I'd quickly hide the big, butter-stained bakery bag inside a darker bag as I feared my co-workers seeing me with such a “bad” food and potentially tarnishing my “healthy eater” reputation.
I also worried my co-workers would smell the cookies in my office, so I’d bury the bag under my coat.
Although secretly obtaining these cookies every Friday was a bit stressful, not getting them felt far more stressful.
Weekends Nights Only
Late each weekend night, I would stuff myself with the cookies, first while sitting in front of my TV and then while standing in my dark kitchen before going to bed.
I was determined to eat them all before the weekend ended, before my time was up.
You see, I had a rule that I could only eat cookies on weekend nights. They were my reward for eating “clean” during the week.
However, because I was restricting my eating throughout the week, including depriving myself of sweets (you know, being “good”), I had a scarcity mindset that drove me to binge on the cookies when I allowed myself to have them.
What was supposed to be a yummy treat wasn’t so satisfying in the end. I went to bed uncomfortably full and full of guilt and shame.
The physical discomfort and emotional distress my cookie binges caused convinced me all the more that I couldn’t be trusted with certain foods, that I had to get back on track on Monday, and that I needed a "no cookies ever" food rule.
Once again, I would be “good” during the week—and once again, I'd inevitably head to the bakery at the end of the week. I was obsessed with those cookies and stuck in a vicious restrict-binge cycle.
Not About Willpower
While I sometimes binged on other forbidden foods, my weekend cookie binges bothered me the most.
I tried to explain my anguish to my boyfriend who just laughed as he didn’t understand why I, the healthiest eater he knew, was so devastated by my behavior.
To be fair, I hid a lot of the cookies and my cookie-eating from him, so he didn’t really have a full grasp of the situation. Plus, he had never dieted a day in his life, so he had no idea what it felt like to “fail” at eating.
What I didn’t understand at the time was that my cookie binges did not make me a failure and were not due to a lack of willpower, despite what diet culture had taught me to believe.
My behavior was a natural human response to food deprivation.
With the threat of scarcity just around the corner—that is, no more cookies come Monday—my very protective brain told me to eat all the cookies now before they were gone, even if I didn’t really want them or was uncomfortably full.
Plus, I feared if I didn’t eat them all on the weekend, I would be tempted to eat the leftovers on Monday. Doing so would ruin my good-eating plan and mean I wouldn't deserve to be rewarded with more cookies come Friday.
An Unimaginable Solution
At the time, I thought I needed to stop buying and eating cookies. I never imagined the solution was to freely eat cookies.
When I finally hit rock bottom with my disordered eating, I started challenging my food rules and giving myself unconditional permission to eat.
This included eating cookies whenever I wanted, even on a Wednesday and even for breakfast. Loosening the reins was scary, but to my great surprise, my cookie binges eventually stopped.
Over time, I went from rigidly controlling my cookie consumption and then feeling shamefully out of control with them to freely eating cookies at any time and feeling neutral about it.
Now, I pretty much always have cookies on hand along with many other foods I had once made off-limits.
All these years later, I’m still sometimes astounded by how these foods are no longer a big deal.
The sense of ease and peace I now feel with food is something I wish for you, too.
