It’s Not Your Fault ~ Blame it on Mother Nature
If you have a sweet tooth, you have an inner child. While you’re out and about today, notice how kids light up when given sugar! That delight in sugar comes from a natural instinct. (If you’ve ever tasted human breast milk, it’s sickeningly sweet.) Mother Nature used sugar (lactose) to get the baby to suck. And the rest is history!
Fast forward to what you are now…an adult who loves desserts, cookies, candy, cake, pie, ice cream etc. If your mouth is watering just reading that previous sentence, and if you’re overweight, my guess is that sugar has a hold on you.
Sugar is addictive whether you want to admit it or not.
I got an email the other day from a lovely woman who has decided to cut out all processed sugar from her life and she’s asked me to help her. She messed up over the weekend and said she didn’t know why she caved and she asked what she should do now?
Here’s what I told her and I know it’ll help you if you struggle with eating too much sugar.
To get your inner child back on track, start by talking to her about how disappointed you are and note how awful you both feel, eating all that sugar. (Of course she already knows how disappointed you are, but actually talking to her helps.) You already know one of the main reasons you slipped regarding sugar is because...it IS addicting.
For that first year my husband and I cut it out of our diet (it’s been four years), I had sugar dreams just like in T'was the Night Before Christmas. The sugar plums didn’t dance in my head, but I was routinely at buffets of delicious desserts and I’d wake up remembering how good it all tasted. Your choice to cut sugar out of your life is courageous and even though you know it is life-threatening and a matter of survival for you and your family, it’s still not easy, but you can do it. And just like drunks who go to AA, you have to do this one day at a time.
I think staying away from alcohol is easier for alcoholics, than sugar addicts staying away from sugar, because we’re constantly around sugar pushers...even at church! We sugar addicts are like alcoholics, if we take one bite of that chocolate cake, we’re going to finish it and get more if we can. There is no middle of the road for us.
Consider this weekend as a message from God, showing you the truth of how addicting sugar is. When you have this talk with your inner child, invite God into the conversation and ask for His help. It’s too bad we don’t have sponsors like AA people do. Trouble is, with the prevalence of sugar, we’d have them on the phone all the time.
Let’s start fresh today and put the bad weekend behind. You can do this. I’d like you to write down what you pass up today that has sugar in it, so tonight when you go to bed you can see how strong you were.
You could get a little note book and start keeping track every day. It’s so fun to look back over a week and see your progress! It’s also very helpful to start noting how many carbs there are in candy, cookies, doughnuts, etc.
If you want to restrict your carb intake to 20 to 30 carbs a day, you’ll need to be mindful of the carb count in foods.
Oh, one more thing, you can do this because your success will help your daughter with her sugar addiction and obesity, your failure won’t.
I totally understand how easy it is to minimize the problem of sugar addiction. My rational mind said to me when I first heard the term, ‘Come on, sugar addiction? Big deal! I’m an addict, but I’m not hurting anyone! When I drive home from church after having cake and punch, I’m not swerving all over the road! Go ahead, give me the breathalyzer…all you’re going to get is a chocolate reading.’
The trouble with this addiction is it’s slow, and it does its damage over time. I just read that the US now has more obese citizens than overweight citizens. Thank you SUGAR! Diabetes is at an all time high. Thank you SUGAR!
If you REALLY want to get rid of sugar you have to read my book The Mouth Trap: the butt stops here!
I will take you through that journey, holding your hand all the way because I've already done it.
Love,