How I Broke Up With Sugar

My Wake Up Call

Now that I am an adult I have begun to realize the importance of a well balanced diet. As things like high cholesterol, type 2 diabetes, and various other preventable health conditions run in my family, I have been thinking about what I can do to avoid them. About a year ago I was hit with the reality that my dad has been diabetic for over 5 years now and is having to deal with further damage caused by diabetes; I had to accept that I would be on the same path if I didn’t change my diet. That’s when I decided to start cleaning up my act. I started with a simple yet difficult step; cutting out sodas. This may not seem difficult to some of you, but when you consider the fact that I had been regularly consuming 2-4 sodas per day for at least the last 3 years…that’s a big habit to break. There were days it didn’t bother me a bit to walk by a vending machine full of those sugary drinks…then there were other days that I had to practically peel myself away from the soda isle in the gas station or grocery store. Now that I have been away from sodas for about a year, I feel like I can finally look back and reflect upon what that one decision, to cut out sodas, has done for my life.

 

The Domino Effect

So I cut out soda, and I will admit it may not have been completely cold turkey. That was my original intent, but I stumbled backward a few times and had one here and there when the craving for the sugar and caffeine would become too overwhelming. In about 2 months I went from drinking 2-4 sodas a day to 2-4 a week. By the time six months had gone by I was down to drinking a soda maybe twice a month. Now, a year later, I drink maybe one soda a month if that. I don’t crave them, except for a Mountain Dew every blue moon (that was my poison of choice). I also noticed something else I stopped craving as much: sugar. You see, I grew up on junk food essentially. I ate loads of cookies, cakes, brownies, candy bars, potato chips, and any other empty carb you can think of. That was my foundation for my diet. That was how I grew up, and that was what I was addicted to. Sugar, sugar, and more sugar. So when I made the choice to cut out sodas, I never thought about the effect it would have on the rest of my diet. I never thought that removing one item from my diet would actually decrease my desire for sugar. I noticed that if I bought cookies, which was a staple in our house until about 3 months ago, I didn’t eat them near as quickly as I used to. I could buy cakes or pies but they would go bad before we could finish them. Understand that my husband only eats dessert if I do 90% of the time, so he wasn’t eating any more sweets than I was. It took me a while to connect the dots, as I continued to consume less and less sugar (since I stopped buying cookies because we would end up throwing half of them out), I found that I actually craved less. Who knew that removing one item from my diet could cause this domino effect to happen with the remaining parts of my diet?

 

Where I am Now

Now I am proud to say that I can actually go to the grocery store, walk by the cookies, candy, cakes, and brownies and not even have the urge to eat one. Now this doesn’t mean my diet is where it needs to be, I still have a long way to go, but I am so happy to be on the road to recovery from my addiction to sugar. I don’t even want to think about where I would be if I hadn’t made the decision to cut soda out of my diet. I now know that I can avoid going through most, if not all, of the health problems my family members have and are going through. I can also provide my children with a better foundation than I had growing up with respect to food choices so that they can avoid even starting the addiction to sugar in the first place. Please don’t think that I am saying eating a cookie is bad or having a slice of birthday cake is like dooming yourself to being enslaved to sugar forever, that is absolutely not what I am saying. I believe having something sweet every now and then is perfectly fine and part of a well balanced diet, but we should not become addicted to it, and for some people (myself included), that is very difficult. I have had to say no to eating a particular cookie because I knew if I had one I would want another, and another, and another. I have to know when I can have just a small piece of cake and not then want to eat the whole cake. Addiction to sugar is very real and can be very scary when you think about it’s consequences. It can, however, be stopped and controlled if you choose to do so. After all, if I can do it, anyone can do it!

 

What are you doing to improve your lifestyle? Please share so that together we can support each other in a journey to better health!