I work long days. My family needs me the minute I walk in the door, and I rarely get more than five hours of sleep. Something sweet had become the one thing I could count on giving myself. I didn't want to give that up. I just wanted to stop eating candy in the car every night.
Most nights I sit in the driveway for a few minutes before I go inside. The engine is off and the porch light is on. Through the front window I can see the TV, and somebody's backpack on the couch.
Once I open that door I'm on again. There's dinner and homework, and the permission slip that was due yesterday. There's the laundry I started at six this morning and forgot about.
So I sit there first. For a long time, that was when I ate whatever I'd bought at the gas station on the way home.
My day starts before six at the front desk of a busy medical practice. Someone always needs something. Two evenings a week I go straight from there to a second job, because the first one doesn't quite cover everything. On a good night I sleep five hours.
There's nearly always something in the break room. It might be donuts a patient's family dropped off, or the rest of someone's birthday cake. There's also a bowl of candy by the copier that seems to refill itself.
Lunch is twelve minutes at that table between calls. It's usually whatever the vending machine has left. Eating well takes a plan, and by noon I've used up every plan I had.
On a bad day, a donut from that box is the best thing that's going to happen to me before five.
On the nights I work both jobs, I get about forty minutes in between. I used to spend them in the car eating something sweet. Then I'd make two or three trips to the vending machine to get through the end of the shift.
It felt good while I was eating it, and then I felt bad about it.
I've been trying to lose weight for two years. It isn't for a dress or a trip. I'd like to feel like myself in my own clothes again, and I'd like to stop stepping out of photos with my kids.
Every plan I tried assumed I had time to cook, energy at eight at night and a lunch break long enough to sit down for. I don't have any of those. Sunday meal prep lasts until Wednesday.
Every night I told myself I'd earned it. Every morning I told myself today would be different. I meant both of them.
I hated sitting in a parked car breaking the same promise to myself every day. Then I'd walk into my own house with the wrapper already in the trash can by the garage.
If you know those two conversations, here's what I use now. The rest of this is how I found it.
Everyone at work seemed to manage. One nurse ate the same apple at her desk every afternoon. A coworker would look at the donut box and keep walking. I assumed they had something I was missing.
Psychologists at Stanford have found that people consistently underestimate how common other people's struggles are. Part of the reason is that those struggles are exactly what people keep to themselves. I never told anyone about the car.
I wasn't eating in the car because I was hungry. It was just the only time all day that nobody needed anything from me.
Every time I tried to just stop, it didn't last. I'd give it up on Monday and be back in the driveway with a candy bar by Thursday.
I wasn't going to give up those ten minutes. But when I finally paid attention to what I was eating in them, it was almost always something sweet.
Gymnema sylvestre is a plant. Its compounds, called gymnemic acids, block the sweet taste receptors on your tongue, so sugar can't bind to them the way it normally does. For roughly thirty to sixty minutes, sweet things taste much less sweet than normal.
Brain-imaging studies have found that the reward response to sugar drops along with the taste. It has to reach your tongue to work, which is why the taste research has used mints, lozenges and rinses.
I still work fourteen-hour days on too little sleep. All gymnema changes is how sweet things taste, and it wears off within an hour.
Blue Balance Metabolic Support
A liquid herbal blend that includes gymnema.
I keep it in my work bag. Before I leave the practice, I put a dropper in my water bottle and drink it on the walk to the car. That way it's working during the drive home, when I used to stop for gas-station candy.
The first time, I tried it in the driveway with a candy bar I'd bought out of habit. It tasted like almost nothing, like chocolate with the sweetness taken out. I sat there for a minute, surprised, and then went inside without finishing it.
That showed me the taste part worked. It took a few more weeks to see whether my evenings would change.
If you want to try it on your own break, you can get Blue Balance here.
The taste effect has been studied in people, including:
The results on cravings are more mixed. In at least one study, people who rinsed with gymnema actually wanted something sweet more after a meal.
Those studies are about the ingredient. The formula in Blue Balance has one registered study of its own. Over twelve weeks, 63% of participants reported fewer food cravings. It was roughly forty people in a single group, with no comparison group. Everyone knew what they were taking, and they reported their own results. The dose was four milliliters a day in water, split between breakfast and lunch, while the serving on the bottle is one milliliter. The amount of gymnemic acid per milliliter isn't disclosed.
You can tell whether the taste effect works for you on the first day. Whether your evenings change takes longer. The formula's study measured results at twelve weeks.
It didn't change my job. I work the same hours, and I still sit in the driveway most nights. I need those few minutes, and I've decided I'm allowed them.
But stopping at the gas station isn't automatic anymore. On the nights I do buy something, it doesn't taste the way it used to. Some nights I still eat it, but it's my choice now.
Blue Balance is $24.99, and it's buy one, get one free. Order one bottle and a second is added to your cart automatically. It also comes with a 60-day money-back guarantee, no questions asked.
That's enough time to try the taste test on your own break and see how your evenings go. If it doesn't help, you get your money back.
