It happens. It surprises. It feels like a glitch in the senses. Stamina, staying power, perseverance, and resilience all playing their role efficiently, when unexpectedly a flash of weakness leaks, nudging into a solid foundation. Unsuspecting, its stealth entrance barely announces itself. Reaction time is a crawl, observable, but unavoidable. Motivation, determination, and energy wanes slightly from wintery weather, limited sunlight, and frigid temperatures. Smiles dim, attitudes darken, and shadows brew to slow response time, increasing the weakened state of being, until actions snowball and solidify.

This degradation crept silently, in the form of time gaps between meals, allowing healthy, prepped food to dwindle to scarcity, and laziness to linger abnormally. Generating hunger causes cravings, the discomfort developing into unconscious decision making. Unmeasured and unrecorded food intake breaks a cycle of responsible journaling, emotions withdraw from recognizable discomfort and acknowledgment, yet actions cease to pivot to mindful behavior.

Specifically my healthy, radical craving leads to an over consumption of blueberries, raspberries, and shredded parmesan cheese. Sugar-free gum enables me to chew uncontrollably, wanting, needing, pleading for relief of the internal disorientation. Some argue this response is containable, a recipe of healthy choices, and minimal damage to a healthy lifestyle. Yet a binge of any measure, the unconscious actions and uncontrollable behavior tell otherwise. This tumble has potential to increase in gravity and avalanche with great intensity and destruction. The physical reaction of an imbalance of sugar levels trying to right itself, the psychological ramifications alleviating guilt, disappointment, and failure, and the emotional toll taken from numbed, unexpressed feelings that crave an outlet are ripened responses for falling apart at the seams.

Whether the weather, low vitamin D levels, or hormonal reasonings attribute to weakened reactions, they enter in ninja fashion, fast, stealthily, and knowing the opponent’s weakness, drawing upon them with precision. This attack’s defense can only be fought with mindful awareness, something in limited supply when conditions flourish. To counter is to track and journal the consumed, binged food, recognize the mishap and how to respond differently in recurring conditions, and awaken the senses when triggered into submission of silence. Not much has to happen for imbalance to infiltrate and alignment to falter. Resuming control is a matter of mindfulness, eliminating the elements that downgraded energy delineated from the core’s center. Returning to equilibrium matters most when weakness begins to peek.