#225: Making bad decisions on purpose
For nearly a year now, I’ve been making consistently hedonistic decisions surrounding dessert. Some might deem these choices “reckless” or “unhealthy,” and it would be hard to argue otherwise. For the most part, I’ve allowed them to continue unchecked. The source is of course my sweet tooth, a term I appreciate for its suggestion of biological inevitability, but it’d be more honest to call it my addiction to sugar. Sometimes, like today, I eat it as early as 11am. More often, I’m eating it after lunch and after dinner, a routine so consistent that when I skip it, I feel like I’ve gone to the gym.
On heavy rotation over the last year: homemade chocolate chip cookies the size of saucers; bags of sour gummy bears or chocolate-filled cookies shaped like panda bears; pints of Häagen-Dazs ice cream finished in two to three sittings; salted brown-butter rice crispy treats; chocolate wafer cookies stored in the freezer (better texture); saltine crackers dipped in toffee and chocolate (sold under the name “Legally Addictive”); chopped up green apples dipped in greek yogurt mixed with peanut butter, cinnamon, and loads of chocolate chips (it’s fruit); and a new innovation by chocolate company Tony’s Chocolonely called “Lil’ Bits,” which are basically candy bars made into little balls you can pop like breath mints.
Lots of my sugar consumption takes place while I’m working. Anyone who listens to my podcast knows I’m a long-time believer in employing snacks in the writing process. Completing an essay without junk food is inconceivable to me. Sometimes I feel like a lab rat hitting the button for another treat to keep me going, lest I avoid my essay through other means (TikTok, Twitter, texting). Sugar keeps me focused, but I’m just as likely to use it to unwind or cheer up or make a decent day sweeter. It’s not just a bad habit but a coping mechanism, and since becoming a parent, I’m coping more than ever. It started with the boxes of Levain cookies I was sent by three separate people in early postpartum, and it’s basically spiraled from there. There’s something about the combination of little sleep and high responsibility that makes me want to eat ice cream straight out of the container. Scooping it into a bowl feels too polite, too constricting! I need to be boundaryless. Just this once, twice, maybe three times a day.
It’s funny that I’ve permitted this to continue given my documented interest in making thoughtful choices (lol at my boring-ass legacy). And yet a sentiment keeps returning to me when I consider cutting back: It’s not the time. I know that sounds like an excuse (it is), but I don’t think it’s entirely dishonest either. While it’s morally appealing to label coping mechanisms as either healthy and unhealthy, I think that framework can obfuscate the fact that both types are motivated by an unmet need, and that, frankly, both can work. Being a little flagrant with my diet has consequences (in the short term: my energy is up and down; I don’t always “look my best”). But it’s also been genuinely helpful, dare I say fun, during this demanding season of my life. Being relaxed in this area has allowed me to stay on top of others with higher stakes. It’s an imperfect solution, and it won’t work forever, but there’s something freeing in accepting those limits—not out of shame or delusion, but in full awareness that it’s all I’ve got for now.
There’s a non-zero chance I’ve constructed this argument so I can keep eating handfuls of Lil’ Bits whenever I can’t figure out a thesis. But if we can take it in good faith and agree to keep it low stakes (and harmless to others), I think there’s something interesting about consciously making imperfect choices. Choices that, weighed up against their alternatives, have obvious downsides, but for whatever reason—our mood, our priorities, our personalities—win out. As a chronic moralizer, I’m repelled by these choices. It’s my impulse to assume that the ideal way to navigate life is to always pick the choice that best limits negative externalities and maximizes the wellbeing of everyone involved. But obviously labeling one choice “ideal” closes off so many other possibilities. Not just mistakes worth making or risks worth taking but choices that only make one kind of sense (but a good kind).
A friend of mine recently told me that she’s going to try for another kid soon despite struggling with one already. She’s wildly low on sleep, having a hard time at work, and her mind and body have yet to recalibrate from pregnancy and postpartum (she’s still nursing, getting up all night, etc.), but her desire for a second kid outweighs all that. “I’ve resigned to get to know myself again in a few years I guess,” she joked to me in a text, with an awareness I found charming. This decision might sound crazy to some people, and actually I think it sounds crazy even to her, but I’m in awe that she’s choosing it anyway. Not naively, not with presumptions of its superiority to other paths, but with wild-eyed conviction! What a thrill.
It’s a stretch to compare her choice (regarding a kid) to my choice (regarding my snacks), but I think they share a spiritual connection. There is the moralizing approach to decision-making, which is to assume that when an obviously responsible choice presents itself, you ought to choose it, and then the more off-the-cuff individualized one, which is more playful with the rules. Years ago at Man Repeller, we interviewed a woman (sorry I can’t remember her name) who told us that the only way to get everything she wanted was to purposely let some balls drop in her life. It was a slightly different argument than saying “you can’t have it all,” and I never forgot about it.
On the topic of coping mechanisms specifically, I think there’s something exciting about subverting our own ideas about the more virtuous choice. I think a lot about a copywriting gig I had in 2020 for a therapy notebook1, which included a section on distraction as a misunderstood tool. As the book explained, while we tend to demonize distraction and assume that presence is always better, clinical studies show that distraction can be genuinely useful. Outside of a clinical setting, it’s possible to use it to your benefit. “[It’s] based on a fairly simple principle: Anchoring our attention in something neutral or positive is easier than pushing it away from something negative.” It’s obvious when you put it like that. (In fairness, I was the one who put it like that. This was my copywriting gig.)
When I consider aspects of my current lifestyle that feel messy or half-baked but are otherwise contributing to my day-to-day functioning—my half-pajama wardrobe, my scattershot media consumption, my bathing schedule, my strategies for “staying in touch”—I can picture telling my former (favorite) therapist about them, frustrated with their insufficiency, and her shrugging and saying, “Sounds like they’re working for you!” I’m not sure she would actually say that, but it’s something she said to me from time to time. I suspect it was advice tailored to my personal brand of self-punishment. She was always tempering my expectations of myself, reminding me that just because something could technically be done better didn’t necessarily mean it had to be—and that in fact, doing it poorly might be allowing something else to be done better. You can waste a lot of energy trying to live up to a technical standard, or busy your soul with shame in the meantime.
In truth, I’d like to eat less sugar (lol). Not because it’s inherently bad—I plan to eat dessert forever—but for the obvious reason that eating it in excess alienates me from my longer term needs. But until I feel more capable of adjusting without triggering old (worse) patterns, I’m trying to appreciate what being lax about it has done and is doing for my mind at this time in my life. It can be nice to reframe a coping mechanism in this way: not just as a little failure I’m forgiving myself for making, but as an actual function of my life, its limits notwithstanding. This mindset is itself an imperfect coping mechanism, and isn’t really appropriate for every situation. But I’ve found it really calming, a form of self-respect, to recognize the agency I have in these areas of my life, however imperfect.
Recommended reading: “Andrew Cuomo Is Worse Than You Even Know,” by Nathan Robinson for Current Affairs. Headline says it all. A truly disgusting and disturbing person. New Yorkers, PLEASE DO NOT RANK CUOMO. Zohran for Mayor!
Last week’s 15 things also included a sci-fi trilogy I started and can’t wait to finish, a wild SJP fact, my favorite new pop song, and more. The rec of the week was ways to feel useful right now amid the horrifying news in Gaza, LA, and beyond.
Wednesday’s podcast was a pop culture check-in with Avi and Harling, specifically a deep-dive on the new season of And Just Like That. Chilling stuff. This coming Wednesday it’s time for another round of Dear Danny!
Hope you have a nice Sunday,
Haley
I think there is really a certain personality type (mine! And many other high strung women I know) that really views controlling everything as the key to happiness. Like if I can just figure out my capsule wardrobe and my high protein salad lunch and 1.5 cocktails when I want to "have fun" (or maybe it would be MORE "fun" to stop drinking entirely??) and my no-buy year and my morning meditation routine and my minimalist skincare and my preferred therapy style and my work email folder system then FINALLY I WILL KNOW PEACE. But actually that ends up being a sure route to insanity and I feel way less insane eating dessert and splitting a bottle of wine and not trying to be the best little project manager of my life and the world.
I love this thought process and I do think it’s especially interesting that you chose food as the subject because I think our culture moralizes “healthy eating” to a kind of pathological degree. I grew up in Florida and was allowed to eat all kinds of junk food - pop tarts and Cookie Crisp for breakfast. I moved to Berkeley, California at age 8 and realized no one there was eating this way. They didn’t eat Kraft Mac N Cheese, they ate Annie’s. I was aware of the cultural difference. The interesting thing is the way that, as an adult, I find that I’m constantly telling people about how I grew up on pop tarts. I can feel their judgement, the fact that they think my parents were practically walking the line of negligent and unfit. But I enjoy telling it anyway, I guess because I’m trying to challenge people’s beliefs around the idea that to eat healthy is the most high stakes, and morally right, decision at all times. It’s me saying - this is how I grew up, it’s not perfect, but it’s OK.