Sugar Addicts Anonymous

[Takes a symbolic 12 steps to the podium.]

Hello. My name is conjunctionjunction, and I'm a sugar addict.

[Pauses for "Hello conjunctionjunction." The sympathy in the air is palpable.]

It started when I was a child. Candy bars bought with paper route money. My grandmother's peanut butter cookies. Easter baskets with chocolate eggs as god intended. The dark bounty of Hallowe'en. Coke or Pepsi (depending what's on sale) guzzled at all family functions and regularly in between.


Pepsi sadly couldn't teach the world to sing

You wouldn't know it to look at me. Always running around or riding my bike, I sweat it off as fast as I can suck it in. But true addiction is born.


Sugarface

Fast forward to early adulthood
Still eating crap, still mostly getting away with it. I'm in deep.



Later…
My wife gets a job at an ice cream shop in Brooklyn. Needless to say it comes with fringe benefits. Chocolate dipped sundries. A gummy menagerie. Ice cream by the pint. Bassetts butterscotch, OMG. By conservative estimate I gain 35lbs. I could blame my metabolism, but really, who's kidding who.


scale says What???

The move to England
Not long after arriving I decide to go vegetarian (thanks mad cow disease) then vegan, also cutting out refined sugar, if not sugar substitutes (hello agave syrup). The weight falls off… then over the years, creeps back up again, though not as much as the Bassetts era. I take up bicycling in a big way, which helps. From time to time I binge. I'm never again clinically obese, but I am clinically annoyed with myself.



Three months ago
After one big sigh too many I completely stop eating foods with added sugar. I'm not obsessive about it – things like ketchup are allowed on the table – but anything that can be unambiguously labelled a dessert is verboten.

The first few days are headache-ridden. I rough it out. Soon I settle into a routine. This involves savouring everything I still allow myself, which is plenty, and not giving in to psychological hunger for empty calories. As long as I'm at it I cut out snacks and keep a food diary, giving myself a reasonable caloric allowance for my activity level.



It's not really that hard. It helps that I often tell myself it isn't forever; one day I will have fudge again. It's just that today, then today, then today again, is not that day.

My pants (after 20 years in this country I still can't quite bring myself to call them trousers) loosen their grip around my waist. No wonder, a stone and the better part of another stone has disappeared, who knows where. I'm no whippet, but I'm fighting trim. It feels good to be here again. Whenever my resolve weakens I hike up my pants and think, well, not today.

I'll always be a sugar addict.

Thank you for listening.

[Sits down without a glance at the table of biscuits and root beer. They don't go together anyway.]

That's me as well.  I never would have thought that I am addicted to sugar until I tried to stop eating it.    Then it was obvious.  I also lost two stone by not eating sugar until I decided that I liked sugar more.

I live in a gluten-free, dairy-free household due to allergies/conditions with the rest of my family.   PLEASE let me keep sugar!   

The sugar-free life is not one I would wish upon others.

I keep these close to my person at all times. They're like a delicious and colorful hairshirt.

Before you eat anything, this is my personal advice....ask yourself, "Is this the food of a warrior?"

EAT LIKE A WARRIOR*

Quinoa - check
Tofu - check
Kale - in moderation, I don't want to overdo things here
Herring - perhaps if we were a pescetarian household
Mare's milk - I use a rice milk substitute for this
Rabbits - !No!



The next time I'm at my favourite restaurant I'll keep an eye out for Vikings at the food boat.

*not a worrier

I've got that particular monkey on my back. 

I'm going to be making a serious effort to give up sugar in the new year.
In the past, I've managed to kick it for several weeks at a time, and it was amazing just how *good* I felt.  I need to get that feeling back again... and lose some damned weight!   

Was chatting about this with my wife as I prepare to receive my 100-day pin tomorrow. She lost 2 stone about 10 years ago, impressively keeping it off ever since. Her advice, based on the theory that to deprive yourself completely is to feed the cravings, is to not cut out sweets, but indulge a couple of days a week to limit despair. Or if that's too cruel, have a little – a very little – more or less daily. She keeps it to about 150cal/day, which keeps her, and to a smaller extent Lindt, happy.


Lindt HQ in Switzlerland: You drool over it, you bought it

I on the other hand am historically a yo-yo:


wrong Yo-Yo

This is my third or fourth plunge down the scales, fingers crossed the last.  The real challenge has not yet begun: the transition to a menu with responsible quantities of the sweet stuff.

[Approaches podium, Hi my name is conjunctionjunction and I’m a sugar addict, etc.]

Well, I knew the day would come. I even cold-bloodedly planned for it in various fantasies, most lately involving peanut-butter fudge. To take my mind off the impending crisis I went shopping. I saw many wondrous things, including designer jeans at an early stage of de-evolution





and a jacket so hideous it was surely destined for the emperor’s new closet.



More to the point, I saw things like candy corn with sorbitol, and brownies with pure goodness, and dusty triple-decker fudge at the Winter Wonderland. These things I did not buy. What I bought were mince pies for my wife, who treasures them but only if they do not contain glucose-fructose syrup, aka high fructose corn syrup or close enough. GFS-free pies now seem rarer than hen’s teeth.


Mmmmm, teeth. Perhaps the dental hygienist can remove those unsightly stock image agency watermarks.

From Wholefoods to home on the train I alternately watched bad sf on my smartyphone, napped fitfully ("Today is a good day to diet" Star Trek addicts meet in the hall on Wednesdays), and dreamt delicious dreams.

After 109 days – satisfyingly over 100, otherwise clunky – it felt time to take the next step: normalcy. [Note to self: this is not normal.] I may be able to survive without sugar, but I cannot thrive. Long lingering looks at forbidden fruit are enervating. Too much hydration is wasted on saliva.

I had a Roots & Wings organic mini mince pie. "10% of profits donated to childrens charities" says the box, but I wasn't thinking of the children.


approximately to scale

Today is the first day of the rest of my life.

[Walks out a free man.]

Mmmm Candy Corn....

I made the peanut butter 'fudge' over the weekend, in tongs as it isn't fudge as I know it. It is fabulous despite my lack of expertise in the kitchen; I immediately froze most of it for safekeeping. It is only available by exchange with ration book coupons.

Homemade candy corn is far beyond my capabilities.

Who are those two guys?  The one on the right seems to share my love of candy corn and fudge.