Mystery solved!

[Jean DC]

Gillian’s week 3 webinar on desire solved a mystery that has puzzled me for nearly 4 years. On 6 days a week, straight after I finish my evening meal, I get a very strong addictive desire for sugary food. I almost always give in because the desire is so strong and I end up eating a very large amount of sugar, because once I start I find it very difficult to stop. On Tuesday evenings I have an early meal and go out line dancing for three hours. On Tuesday evenings I never even think about food. No desire, even when I’m offered sugary sweets, I politely decline. I look forward to Tuesday as I know it’s the one day I won’t overeat or have to fight through any desire.
The reason for this I discovered on the desire webinar is “expectation”. I had a light bulb moment and realised I’d got an insight about my lack of desire on Tuesdays, because I didn’t expect to, I knew I wouldn’t so I didn’t! My expectation was NOT to have a desire! This made complete sense to me. I wonder if anyone else has had any insight into their expectation to not feel a desire?

[Louise]

Yes I do Jean – I really relate to that. When I was a smoker, I had to go into hospital for a couple of weeks. I was concerned that I would not be able to smoke, but in fact I never even thought about cigarettes while I was in hospital. I didn’t experience any cravings for cigarettes at all. Years later (when I read Gillian’s book on stopping smoking), I realised that my desire to smoke was always triggered by something I had done before: for example, when I got in my car, I would always light a cigarette, and I would always have a cigarette when I had my coffee break. Being with someone who was smoking always triggered me to smoke as well. None of those applied in hospital, and my brain seemed to ‘forget’ that I had ever been a smoker.
I started smoking again the minute I got out of hospital (on the way home!) but luckily found Gillian’s book and successfully stopped – that was 20 years ago.

[Author]

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