If I got to the post office early enough before I headed to work in midtown Atlanta, I reasoned, I could beat the mailman and claim the package I knew my father had sent me. It was Valentines Day, and like every year that I could remember, my Daddy had gifted myself and my two sisters a box of chocolates.

By the time I’d gotten to work that morning, I’d consumed the entire top layer. Feeling sick to my stomach, high on forced insulin, and stocked with shame, I snuck the box, with its remaining full second layer, atop the console where my communications colleagues left snacks to share. I’m sure, I still grabbed and snarfed a few more pieces throughout the day.

It was 1985 and the year I realized I had a problem with sugar.*

Actually, the problem was not with sugar.* The problem was with eating unconsciously. Eating when I wasn’t hungry, not stopping when I was full, listening to head hunger versus true hunger, eating for emotional salve, and eating from a sense of scarcity versus true abundance.

Listen here to my first-ever podcast interview where I share with Weight Loss for Foodies coach Shari Broder, whom I discovered two years ago via her “Ditch the Diet Tribe” Facebook group. It took me two years to truly grasp and embrace this restrictions-free program that teaches how to manage behaviors and does not label any food forbidden. (Being a foodie and, since 1987, a committed whole foods eater, marking certain vegetables and fruits off the list of edibles never made sense to me.)

At last, I’ve achieved food freedom and I’m continuing to lose the weight heaped upon me via menopause and decades—an adult lifetime of emotional eating. In this interview I share how I developed sugar-abusing behaviors when I was a child and also the patterns around food I learned from my mother. *I am free now.* If you’ve never learned that you hold the power over food, not the other way around, if you’ve not yet learned what scientists have begun to prove—that diets don’t really work, they only eventually boomerang, that few people can maintain restrictive eating forever—I challenge you to join me on this liberating journey. xxo, L

PS: I graciously received a box of chocolates from a suitor this week. I’ve eaten a couple of pieces and shared more with my daughter and a neighbor. It’s sitting atop my kitchen table. I know it’s there. I don’t have to devour it all at once. I tell a very different story, the story of my lifetime, about boxes of candy and other sugars, in this podcast episode. I hope you will listen. I even dare ya. 😉

Here’s the link to the podcast. You can listen on your preferred podcast platform, or click the sound link above Shari’s bio at the bottom of this linked page.