Warning – For those of you with a sweet tooth, this post may cause unintended harm. It may interfere with your ability to derive pleasure from some of your favorite foods and may limit your desired consumption levels of sweets. Read at your own risk but for your own benefit!
A couple of months ago, I signed up for a wellness program at work called Naturally Slim. I started it because I wanted to eat better and get rid of some bad habits – like skipping meals in lieu of raiding the candy dish at work constantly. One of the first challenges the program laid out was to avoid sweets and limit sugar for three weeks. I thought I had signed up for the wrong program! I love my cookies and brownies and candy, my sweet tea and Dr Pepper. I’ve never even considered giving those up. Those are some of my favorite foods. However, since it was just a temporary request – three weeks – I decided to give it a try. Then I was sure I would go right back to my old habits.
Little did I know that this journey would become something else entirely and that I wouldn’t want to go back to my old habits.
Week one, every meeting I go to, there are sweets available, and they are calling my name. Cookies, brownies, sodas, you name it. I am so tempted. I am craving them, but I resist. I have to see this experiment through.
Week two, I survived the initial withdrawal and start to be okay without them. I sense that I have more energy and the cravings are not nearly as intense. I can do this… but again, why would anyone want to do this long-term?
Week three, I completely have this under control, so now I can cheat and have a cookie, right? LOL Well, I do cheat and have a cookie, but I am shocked that it doesn’t taste good to me. It wasn’t even worth cheating for. What?! So, of course, I have to experiment again, so I have a Dr Pepper, one of my favorite drinks – it wasn’t good either. What?! My tastes are really changing. I’m completely surprised at how quickly I lost a taste for some of my favorite sweets.
Week four, I go to the dentist and I get the best report ever. My hygienist is completely surprised at how good my teeth look – I’ve never had that happen before. Then I see a report on the news that sugar causes the mouth to release acid which in turn leads to tooth decay. Now I knew that sugar leads to tooth decay, but I didn’t know the acid immediately starts eating at your teeth as soon as you eat sugar. I always thought it was more of a long-term effect. Could my good dentist report be in part because I have reduced my sugar intake? Coincidence or not – I’ll take it.
Week five, I go to the store and fit into a size 6 dress – the first time that has happened in years! (See center picture above.) I feel much better, have more energy, and starting to wonder exactly how bad all this sugar has been for me. I had no idea of all the consequences. I start to get angry that no one told me sooner.
About 7-8 years ago, I was diagnosed as pre-diabetic. My doctor was befuddled because I didn’t exhibit any of the normal risk factors for diabetes. He asked me about my diet, but it didn’t seem like I ate a lot of sugar. I never eat more than one doughnut, for example, and I don’t eat multiple candy bars at once. I don’t do a lot of the things that seem like a high sugar intake. Did you know, though, that a can of soda has 10 tsp of sugar, 17 tsp in a 20 oz bottle? I am a runner, and chocolate milk is one of the best post-run drinks and one of my favorites. Did you know though that a pint of chocolate milk has 54g of sugar? These numbers astound me. Not because I didn’t know that foods have sugar – I just didn’t realize how much and how pervasive it is. Baby food even has 4 tsp of sugar. Really?
All these years later, it makes much more sense to me. I had no idea I was as addicted to sugar as I was, and I had no idea how much sugar I was consuming in my diet without knowing it. I didn’t know that my body couldn’t manage the amount of insulin my body was producing to keep up with my sugar intake.
All the low fat foods that are marketed as being healthy – not so, they just compensate sugar for fat – and sugar is just as bad if not worse. Plus, the average person on a low fat diet consumes 400-500 more calories than someone not on a low fat diet. We tend to eat more maybe because we give ourselves credit for the “low fat choices.” I am angry at myself for not thinking it mattered when I ate multiple sweets a day, when I thought I deserved it. I am angry that sugar is so interwoven in our foods and our culture that avoiding it is really hard – that our office candy bowl is almost always full, that hospitality is just necessarily linked with food, that we market holidays like Valentine’s Day, Halloween, and Easter with unlimited sweets, sugary confections that are not really a gift but a curse. The trick is on us, dear friends.
It doesn’t mean that we have to give sweets up entirely. That is what I was afraid of when I started this journey, and I wanted to opt out of that option very quickly. What it does mean is that I need to pay attention to my sugar intake. I need to save the sweets for the special occasions not the everyday, multiple times of the day staple. And when I do eat sugar, I need to balance it out with protein which helps the body process it. Even with natural sugars, like apples, are much healthier when eaten with protein like peanut butter. Who knew?
Well, now I know the bittersweet truth about sugar. I plan to keep my distance and only have an occasional fling with a good dessert. I am breaking off the intimate relationship. The three week challenge was over awhile ago, but I don’t want to go back to my old habits. I can live without my daily Dr Pepper and even my cookies, because in the end, I can now say they are not worth it and that, my friend, is the bittersweet truth.
For more information on the Naturally Slim program, check out their website here.
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