SUGAR: my story
Thus far in my sugar series, I’ve told you about the damage that sugar does to our bodies (a pitch for sobriety), and how the sugar industry has been cunningly shifting the blame for that damage to calories and fat (the industry’s favorite myths). In today’s post, I’m sharing my own sugar transformation story as a final bit of motivational fodder. I hope it helps you understand why I’m so into shitting on sugar. Enjoy.
Back in the before-times (pre-IC), I thought I was a model of health. I studied nutrition and religiously followed a carefully crafted diet. I refused to eat desserts and refined carbs. I wowed and/or disturbed my peers with my excessive discipline. Yet, the truth is, that I was a sugar addict. I didn’t know it at the time, but the evidence is crystal clear in retrospect. For example:
I was always hungry. I was constantly thinking about food. I would devolve into a hangry mess if I didn’t eat every two hours. I’d strategically save mindless tasks for the hungriest periods of my day, knowing that I’d be mildly dysfunctional then.
I was a puppet of my sugar cravings. Every day, I’d find myself queued up for a sugary beverage (latte, kombucha) around 3 pm as if I were possessed, and I’d rush home in the evening anxious to crack open another (beer).
I couldn’t stay asleep. I’d wake up 3+ times per night, and sometimes I’d be so hungry that I couldn’t fall back to sleep until I’d had a quick sugar fix (banana). My need to feed would also force me out of bed in the morning, often at a painfully early hour.
If you would have told my past self that I could fix these issues by tweaking my diet/behavior, I wouldn’t have believed you. I was a member of the cult of calories, and I’d been indoctrinated to believe the myth that all that matters when it comes to diet is “calories in versus calories out”. Of course, the problem with this calorie-centric approach is that it requires constant suffering (i.e., constantly feeling hungry, constantly exerting self-control) to work. But because I was a devoted cult member, I accepted that suffering, thinking that it was a necessary part of being thin. So try as you might have to save me, I would have gone on living in a deranged, chronically fatigued state, wasting a massive amount of mental energy resisting my cravings out of some combination of ignorance and denial.
For me, it took getting diagnosed with an incurable, chronic disease to wake up and smell the diabetes. While trying to cure my IC, I read Sarah Wilson’s charming book on anxiety, First We Make the Beast Beautiful, and noted her mentions of “quitting sugar”. I was in try-whatever-the-fuck mode, so I picked up a copy of her other book, I Quit Sugar, and embarked on an 8-week sugar detox. The detox forced me to recognize the shocking amount of sugar that was hiding in my “healthy” diet, and it drastically recalibrated my tolerance for sweetness. (Now, I find most desserts nauseating, I get blissed out eating naturally sweet foods like berries and sweet potatoes, and I’ve become one of those sickos that enjoys plain yogurt.) Later, I was introduced to Jessie Inchauspé (AKA the Glucose Goddess) via Aviva Romm’s podcast. I read her books (Glucose Revolution, The Glucose Goddess Method) and have been using her hacks to squash blood sugar spikes ever since.
Life got easier when I got off sugar. My mood became less volatile, my anxiety softened, my weight stabilized, and I regained the ability to sleep through the night. I stopped constantly thinking about food, and going 4-5 hours between feedings became effortless. I didn’t realize how loud the internal noise of my sugar cravings was until it stopped. In the absence of its blaring, I can “hear” my body again and can trust it to tell me what to eat. This is a radical change for me. It means that there’s no more need for dieting, discipline, or self-beratement. It feels like a needless war has ended, and now all the resources that had been getting spent in battle are suddenly free to be used for something more meaningful.
Maybe it’s only by getting sick that we can appreciate what a transient and precious thing our health is and be motivated to change, but I’d really fucking love to save you that trouble. My naive hope is that all my preaching and oversharing has planted a little anti-sugar seed in your mind. I want you to be prepared to nurture that seed if it starts growing one day. So, in my next posts, I’m going to teach you how to use sugar detoxing and blood glucose hacks to free yourself from the sticky grip of sugar.
