I have this problem—curse maybe—that I blame entirely on my upbringing: I am a hound for sugar.
My mom, God love her, is the most amazing cook and an even better baker. Growing up, I can always remember getting off the school bus to hot chocolate chip cookies fresh out of the oven. Or brownies. Or fudge. And because of this, I crave sweets all the time. Even when I was on “The Biggest Loser” and virtually didn’t have sugar (other than fruit) for seven months, I had fantasies of sugar so profound that my fellow comrades in weight loss (who shared my sugar love) dubbed it food porn, where we would sit around talking about cakes, bacon doused with brown sugar or cakes topped with bacon and brown sugar. We would all try to one-up each other with our lavish food porn preferences.
I, to this day, attest that rather than a bar crawl I would gladly partake of a bakery crawl. Good sense, and a motive for good health, has stopped this from ever occurring. But lately I have come across two articles on sugar that have swayed me to consider a life less sugary. Sadly.
The first one was about a family who gave up sugar for an entire year. Even having gone seven months sugar-free on TBL, the second it wrapped the first thing I put in my mouth was a chocolate chip cookie, followed by a cupcake. You know, old habits … I am not sure I entirely grasped that a life a little sugar-less was possible.
Then I happened upon this article by another believer in the seductive powers of sugar. I was pretty influenced by this one as the author seemed to share my sugar joy and was loathe to buy into the fact that sugar is satan. But by the end of the article, even he seemed swayed that sugar may not be so sweet after all. Now I was really beginning to worry.
When my nutritionist had suggested that instead of enjoying my weekly Sunday chocolate croissant, I enjoy it only monthly I was aghast and tried real hard to take her advice, but one croissant a month seemed akin to a life not worth pursuing.
Alas I have given all this to sugar or not to sugar business considerable thought over the past few months and have decided I will give the sugar-free life another go. I have officially welcomed my first sugar free summer.
The day before summer officially commenced, I was having dreams of dancing sugarplums—fine dancing globs of chocolate chip cookie dough—and nearly woke up in a sweat of panic over what I was about to undertake. To be fair, the first few days of going cold turkey (as in not even putting ketchup on my sweet potatoes) was a bit dicey. It is true, almost everything does have sugar and sugar is so perfect. Why, why, why was I doing this? I repeatedly asked myself.
But now that I have two days down and said no to donuts and bagels with my sisters on Sunday morning and made a fruit salad for a barbeque in lieu of my standard bakery, I am feeling pretty empowered now on day three. I mean three months to go, but I am comforting myself with the fact that I already did double that at one point in my life.
Honestly, I am starting to understand the hype surrounding sugars less alluring qualities. That and I have a deep fear of diabetes. After a visit with a nurse friend of mine recently where she talked about carrying an amputated leg of someone suffering from diabetes it just seemed like a good time to break-up with sugar for awhile.
So here I am, three days sugar-sober and while the withdraw is intense, I am ready for the reward which is knowing I am a freaking champion, oh wait and that I am healthy. The healthy is most important of all.
-Cassandra