If you know me, you know how much I LOVE dessert. It’s an obsession. It’s such a large part of my identity that my friends correlate any kind of sweet treat with me and vice versa. They’d send me articles about new ice cream shops opening up. I’d get forwarded instagram posts about places offering free dessert. Anytime we’d plan to hang out, they always knew that there would be some kind of dessert adventure in store. If not, they literally thought something was wrong with me and questioned if I was the “real” Nikki. I love dessert so much, I would eat it after every meal!
In more recent years, many of my family members (including my parents’ dog Chewy) developed Type 2 diabetes. I know that I should not be eating so much sugar, but I’m pretty sure I was addicted to it. I’d try to get myself to go on “Dessert Diets” where I would tell myself I wouldn’t eat dessert for a certain number of days. Like any true addiction, I could never get past day 3 without caving and satisfying my cravings. The only motivation that could even get me through those 3 days was doing the challenge with an accountability partner so that in my mind, I related breaking the diet with not being a good friend and breaking a promise to him/her.
I thought it was so interesting how difficult it was for me to hold myself to that commitment. Why couldn’t I just do it because I told myself to do it? I go to the gym even when I’m not feeling quite up to it. I went through years of school, studying, getting my masters, all while doing a whole bunch of work I didn’t want to do. I even conditioned myself out of biting my nails when I was a kid. So why was I incapable of giving up dessert?
I didn’t crack the code until I had the opportunity to attend Tony Robbins’ conference this past year. He addressed our limiting beliefs and what stops us from achieving what we want in life. He helped me realize that I had tied dessert so strongly to my identity and as a positive thing in my life that taking dessert away would create a sense of identity crisis unless I replaced my current beliefs about dessert with different beliefs that would reframe my relationship with it. Subconsciously, I was also eating dessert in rebellion to the judgemental industry I’m in that constantly shames artists for not looking a certain way. Eating dessert was my way of saying, “Watch me eat ice cream and cookies, enjoy my life, and still be able to work as an actress!” Little did I realize, it was causing me to overindulge to a point that I couldn’t resist temptation. I became addicted to not just sugar, but to the identity of who I was in relation to it. I figured, dessert makes people happy and if they relate dessert with me, then they’ll be happy when they think of me. It worked! But it was at the detriment of my health.
It really bothered me that I COULDN’T tell myself no to dessert, even if I tried. I would give in. I would give up on any commitments I made to stay away from it. I would just “do what I wanted” and keep with my old habits because it wasn’t negatively affecting me in the moment. That was until Tony Robbins gave me this revelation. He said that every time you break a commitment to yourself, you are creating self doubt, you are disrespecting yourself, and you are teaching yourself that the words you say don’t matter. He likened the situation to a friend telling you that they were going to show up and do something, then they don’t. Most likely you would’ve started not to trust them, maybe lost respect for them, and conjured some doubt about them. That was literally the light bulb moment. It hit me that I spend so much of my time and energy trying to manifest my reality, saying affirmations, putting my intentions into the world of what I want to receive, creating vision boards and visualizing the life I want to live. Realizing that I was weakening my word and diminishing my self confidence and self trust was something I could no longer stand for.
At Tony Robbins doing our Power Poses! Ready to take on the world!
From the moment I learned that lesson, I decided to go on a Dessert Diet, and managed to stick to my goal for a full 40 days straight! I did it by facing temptation with the statement that I will not let dessert diminish my self worth and I am refraining from indulging in it for the purpose of building my self control and self respect, because I want my body to know that my word matters. What I say, I mean. What I say, I’ll do. I am trustworthy. I am a woman of my word. And I’m holding strong to instill those lessons into my being. The crazy thing was that it was just a shift in mentality, a reframing of my relationship to a specific action, and that’s all I needed to change my habit. It was life changing. And now I’ve proven to myself over and over since then, that I can do ANYTHING I put my mind to.