"Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive." -- Sir Walter Scott
Though that is about Lord Marmion, it's not entirely off the mark to apply it to our own deception with ourselves and our eating habits, cravings, compulsions, and bargaining.
When you work out with weights your muscles tone up, when you stop they become flabby. When you focus on nutrient dense, healthy eating, your brain becomes accustomed to good eating. Your taste buds become accustomed, acclimated, and even cheerful of new, healthy foods. Your bad cravings melt away, like fat when you exercise regularly.
But when you stop, and continuously practice to deceive yourself...your brain becomes flabby, your cravings come back, and your palate is back to adoring the taste of fat, and sugar, and shunning, inexplicably, a good salad.
I've made a bargain with the devil..."Oh, I'm just going to hop off this healthy train, and poke around for a while. Be a tad indulgent. Flirt with the old way of living, and then lope up, and jump up on that healthy train like an old hobo, nice and easy, and enjoy a long, healthy life. But, something funny happens when you are poking around in town, eating and drinking decadently, a little too long -- suddenly those train tracks are farther, and father away. And when you finally reach them the train is moving so fast that hopping back on becomes more and more difficult.
To put it in another poem...we are the fly, and the awful temptation of poor food & drink choices are the spider. They don't want our warm affection, it's all a lie, a deceit, and those cravings that we end up courting, for deceitful reasons, begins to weaves a tangled web:
Said the cunning Spider to the Fly, “Dear friend what can I do,
To prove the warm affection I’ve always felt for you?
I have within my pantry, good store of all that’s nice;
I’m sure you’re very welcome — will you please to take a slice?” -- Mary Howitt
Time to untangle this web...again.
