This extra chapter was cut from The Journey Back to keep the book focused. The physical paperback is $12.95 with free U.S. shipping. Any $17 PDF-and-audiobook bundle is a separate optional digital add-on, not the price of the paperback.
The first promise I finally cashed in was not a hamburger, a piece of cheesecake, or a sub sandwich.
It was ice cream.
More specifically, it was Jeni’s.
There is a Jeni’s at Park Road Shopping Center, only two stoplights from my apartment. That proximity mattered. I did not have to plan a special trip or drive across town. The ice cream was always close enough to become a possibility.
And I love Jeni’s ice cream with a passion.
My wife Brandy makes better homemade ice cream, but as far as ice cream I can buy whenever I want it, Jeni’s may be the best I have ever had.
The flavor I kept thinking about was peach. I wanted a small peach ice cream in a waffle cone so badly that I could almost taste it before I ever pulled into the parking lot.
For weeks, I used the same strategy I had been using with hamburgers, cheesecake, and sub sandwiches.
Not today.
Maybe next week.
Then next week arrived, and I postponed it again.
The promise worked because I never told myself that the ice cream had been taken away forever. I could have it. I was simply choosing not to have it yet.
But every time I postponed it, the cone seemed to become a little better in my imagination.
It was still cool outside, not the kind of hot summer day when buying ice cream would have felt automatic.
I do not remember whether I had been working at the apartment or was returning from Alen’s house. I only remember pulling into the shopping center and sitting there while other people walked in and came out with their ice cream.
Even after I parked, I kept arguing with myself.
Nope. Not today.
This is not the day you are going to win.
I had begun treating the craving almost like an opponent. If I drove away, I won. If I walked inside, the ice cream won.
But that was not entirely consistent with the promise I had made myself. I had never said I could not eat it. The whole point of ‘later, not never’ was that later eventually had to be real.
So I went inside.
I ordered a small, child-sized serving of the peach ice cream with a waffle cone.
Then I did something I had almost never done with food.
I slowed down.
In the past, I inhaled food. I was like a vacuum cleaner around anything I enjoyed. I ate quickly, barely paused between bites, and often finished before I had given myself time to experience what I was eating.
Food was something to consume. I did not really savor it.
This time, I took the spoon and lightly dragged it across the surface of the ice cream. I put that small amount into my mouth and let it sit there.
I noticed the coldness.
I noticed the texture.
I noticed the peach flavor, the sweetness, the smell, and the way the ice cream melted.
Then I did it again.
Instead of digging out a full spoonful and immediately reaching for the next one, I shaved a little ice cream from the surface, tasted it, and waited.
It may have taken me close to thirty minutes to finish that small serving. The ice cream was beginning to melt before I could get through it, even though it was still fairly cold outside.
I had never eaten ice cream that way before.
I had rarely eaten anything that way before.
As I sat there, I made a discovery that changed how I thought about food.
Eating is not only about the nutritional content of the food. It is not even only about how the food tastes while it is in your mouth.
A tremendous part of my experience had been the anticipation of the taste.
I had spent weeks imagining that peach ice cream. I had pictured the cone, rehearsed the first bite, postponed it, wanted it again, and built the experience larger every time I drove past the shop.
By the time I finally bought it, the real cone was competing with a version I had perfected in my mind.
The ice cream was good.
The anticipation had been extraordinary.
Those were not the same thing.
I have spent most of my career in marketing. Sitting there with that melting cone, I realized that my own mind had written a better sales letter for the ice cream than the product could possibly fulfill.
That was not Jeni’s fault. The ice cream tasted exactly like a very good ice cream should taste.
The problem was that I had asked it to deliver much more than flavor.
I had expected it to deliver relief, reward, excitement, freedom, and the emotional payoff for weeks of saying no.
It could deliver peach, cream, sugar, coldness, texture, and a waffle cone.
It could not deliver the fantasy I had attached to it.
Eating slowly allowed me to see the difference.
When I used to inhale food, anticipation and consumption blurred together. I wanted the food, ate it quickly, and then wanted something else before I had really examined whether the experience had lived up to the craving.
This time, I stayed with the experience long enough to notice what was happening.
The first taste was wonderful. The next few tastes were good. But the entire cone did not contain thirty minutes of increasing pleasure. Much of the reward I had imagined was concentrated in the anticipation and those first few moments.
After that, I was mostly repeating the taste.
I still finished it.
That is important to admit.
When I was done, I regretted going. I thought, ‘You could have put it off again. You did not have to eat the whole damn thing.’
I beat myself up more than I should have. I treated the fact that I had finally used the permission I had given myself as if I had failed a test.
But the honest questions were more useful than the punishment.
Was it good?
Yes.
Did I need to finish every bit of it to experience what I had wanted?
Probably not.
Was it as good as the version I had been anticipating for weeks?
No.
It probably could never have been.
I do not remember whether I checked my glucose after eating it. I also do not remember exactly what I ate at the next meal.
What I do remember is that the cone did not become permission to return to eating ice cream every day.
I had cashed the promise. I had eaten the thing I wanted. Then I returned to the routine I had been building.
In a strange way, the disappointment made that easier.
There was nothing left to chase. I had tested the fantasy against the actual experience, and the fantasy had been better.
That did not mean I could never enjoy ice cream again. It meant I no longer had to believe every craving’s advertisement.
A craving could tell me that one food was going to produce an enormous emotional payoff. I could want it intensely. I could picture it, smell it, and almost taste it.
None of that guaranteed that eating the entire serving would feel as good as wanting it had promised.
That was the part I had missed when I used to inhale food.
I had been eating for the feeling I expected food to create, not necessarily for the food itself.
Slowing down gave me enough time to separate the two.
It also changed what ‘cashing the promise’ meant.
The system had not failed because I finally ate something I had postponed. The permission had been real. I could choose the food, experience it deliberately, and then make a new decision afterward.
One cone did not require a second cone. One dessert did not require an entire weekend. One choice did not erase the months of choices that came before it.
The regret was real, but it did not need to become shame.
The cone had given me information.
I learned that I could enjoy a food without pretending it was nutritionally ideal. I learned that I could eat something outside my normal routine without allowing it to become my normal routine. I learned that a few slow tastes might contain most of what I had actually been waiting for.
Most importantly, I learned that wanting and enjoying were not always equal.
I had spent weeks consuming that ice cream in my imagination.
The actual cone was only dessert.
The anticipation had sold me a miracle.
The cone delivered ice cream.
And once I understood the difference, the craving lost some of its power.
Want to see how I connected the dots?
I wrote The Journey Back to share my experience and explain the Four Metabolic Loads framework. The physical paperback is $12.95 with free U.S. shipping.
→ See The Journey Back Paperback ($12.95)
Educational only, not medical advice. Charles’s experience was alongside physician-supervised care and prescribed medication. Individual results vary. Talk to your doctor.
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