“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.” – Mark Twain

How many of you view your body, your intelligence, your compassion towards others or your work ethic as being “average”? We judge ourselves as being better than a bunch of people and worse than others. But here’s the thing, in order to be the best version of yourself, to you, the only person that matters in this equation, you need to stop looking at yourself and your life on a bell curve. If you look at everything on a bell curve, logically speaking, it means you can rationalise just about anything: “I only smoke 10 cigarettes a day, it’s better than some who smokes a deck!” Or “I ate an entire bag of potato chips, but at least I don’t do it every day like some other people!”. See how this can be a slippery slope?

The reason I bring up the bell curve is because, particularly as a woman, I feel it’s in our genetics to sometimes eat a box of chocolates, black out and wake up in a Sephora. The moment of eating the chocolates t’was everything. However, after the chocolates are gone, there is always a point where our soul is like, “Should I just go?”. We go into it wanting to feel good, we action something we think will do the trick and we are left with shame and guilt. We rationalise our behaviour and try to avoid what it all really means or why we sometimes act this way, not exactly a good ROI.

Fun fact: The evolution around chocolate comes from our very first meal, breastmilk, as it contains 1-2 ratio of fat to sugar, meaning we like foods that have double the amount of sugar to fat. Breastmilk is literally the only natural food with this ratio – No sugary food i.e fruit, has half the vs sugar, and no fat, i.e avocado, has double the amount of sugar. Food industries know this, and absolutely use it to their advantage. So many desserts have mastered this perfect combo artificially to remind us of something we desire that’s so innate. If you look at ice cream, cookies, chocolate, they all have a 1-2 fat/sugar ratio. Then guess what happens?? Positive associations are made towards junk food and we develop cravings for things we don’t need in order to feel good. Next minute, you’re having a love affair with your very demanding brain.

We are all genetically programmed to store as much energy as possible and when sugar took over the world overconsumption became an increasing problem. It messed up our natural biochemistry once it became cheap and readily available. We could no longer tell when we had reached our energy (calorie) requirement. Now let’s say you choose to be a little “healthier” to get over the junk food addiction and consume an artificial sweetener instead of actual sugar. The chemical compound in artificial sweeteners are so tiny that our body can’t actually digest it as a “calorie”, but it is still absorbed into our blood and tastes 300-600 times sweeter than sugar itself. There is a famous French study published in 2007 where they gave rats the option to choose between between drinking water sweetened with saccharine or intravenous cocaine, and 94% of the rats preferred the saccharine. If you’re interested in reading more about artificial sweeteners / rat study, click here. So stay away from saccharine!!! Also stay away from aspartame, sucralose, acesulfame K, xylitol and sortitol. If you have to consume an artificial sweetener, stick to agave because it’s organic and made from a succulent similar to the family of Aloe Vera. Cane sugar and honey are also other natural forms of sugar that are properly absorbed by the body. Why should we eat natural “calorie” sugars over artificial sugars that are sweeter and calorie free? SO many reasons. But I want to highlight one in particular: artificial sweeteners supplement the addiction of sugar through reducing sensitivity. No other natural food could even come close to producing the same level of sweetness, so we crave more and more food in general. There is a calorific gap after consumption that cannot be satiated, which can lead to overconsumption, particualrly with unhealthy foods.

So what does all this have to do with anything?

Because I really hate the amount of shaming that’s associated with food. Our relationship with food is complicated. We don’t really live in a world anymore where our primal needs are easily met. We have to seek out healthy lifestyles and push back on all the money-making gimmicks thrown at us. But nothing has actually changed. We all need to keep eating the same healthy, varied, organic, seasonal, fresh foods in moderation. The fact that fruit is no longer a sweet enough desert for a lot of people is insane. But this is the world we live in and we need to work with it, not against it.

One of our biggest challenges is globalisation by a tribal species. We may not become one giant, homogeneous world culture and behave in all the same ways, but our species does depend on cooperation and we will all be better if we are surrounded by healthy, capable people.

Here’s what I think. You are not an addict. You are not out of control. You just have triggers because you are a human being with wants and needs. You are capable of creating your own reality because everything you want is available to you at all times. Give yourself some time to disassociate from your mental noise and connect with how you really feel. Be bigger than your pride and own up to your struggles, work through them and create a more robust understanding.

My hope is we help each other to embrace what is natural in this world and fight off all the toxins preventing us from being happy through support, education and (hopefully) a few laughs.