Today I finally found a reason that I could use this website for (at least initially) that deemed important enough: saving my life. You see, saying I’ve been battling sugar addiction would be wrong on two accounts: 1) I haven’t been battling it at all, I’ve consumed more chocolate bars that 99.99999% of the population I would presume on a daily average basis and 2) it’s not so much an addiction as it is a way of life, just as I would breathe and blink.

Yesterday after finishing a box of Guylian chocolate and a triple serving of chocolate mousse, I began having a sudden headache and started feeling dizzy and drowsy like I was being drugged and a feeling of being drunk, it was a strange and scary feeling to say the least. I feel fine today, but have decided that now is a good time as any to cut my addiction to sugar and cash out while I still have no glaring diseases that sugar is prone to lead to. If dietitians and nutritionists can agree on one thing, it’s that sugar is a poison that the body really shouldn’t have an excess of.

My mom’s been on my case for some time, suggesting I go on a 21 day sugar detox and that would be enough to beat my addiction. Her brand of medical advice comes directly from Dr. Oz who she seems to swear by, even taking notes during his programs! Apparently there’s even a dedicated program, named appropriately The 21 Day Sugar Detox.

Regardless of the accuracy or validity of that claim or program, given my competitive nature, this kind of 21 day challenge is probably as good a way as any to take on the war against sugar. About six months ago I decided to pretty much quit eating starchy foods and refined grains like white bread, pasta, and rice. That was by no means easy but I’ve seen the positive effects and no longer swear by those foods as I did at one point in time.

Sugar though is a much trickier proposition – anyone who knows me is aware of my ultra addiction to sweets and probably thinks it’s impossible for me to quit. My previous half attempts at ‘quitting’ have been futile and would last no more than a day as I would end it with a quick thought like “Life’s too short not to eat good chocolate”. In fact looking at my Twitter feed, it looks like I had surrendered my fate:

Today is the day I change that, and this blog serves as collateral in case I stray from my purpose, because who would want to publicly be exposed as a weak, willpower-lacking sugar junkie? Certainly not me, and that’s why I’ve taken these steps which guarantees no safe return. My birthday is on the 16th of March, so completing this 3 week challenge would be an appropriate present for myself.

So the rules are: no chocolate, no candy, no cake, no dessert, no cookies, no sugary sodas and no sugary snacks. The only type of direct sugary substance will be in the form of fruits. I’ll be keeping notes each day on this page right here, with updated thoughts on my state of my mind and how close I am to breaking. I’m aware that I might be over-reacting to last night’s scare and the current adrenaline might be misleading me into thinking I can take on this task, but you don’t know if you can or can’t do something until you’ve fully tried it. So here I go.

Quitting Sugar Challenge Diary

Day 1 – First day went by surprisingly well. Didn’t really get a sugar rush at all and didn’t even have a slight urge. I did throw away some left over deserts that were in the fridge which was weird and similar to that scene in “Flight” where Denzel Washington goes home and throws away all his booze to which at the time I was shouting ‘NOOOO!’ because it seemed so wasteful but now I can kind of see where he’s coming from. In the past the sugar cravings usually kick in around end of day 2 or day 3, so lets see how it goes tomorrow.

Day 2 – I’ve officially gone 2 days without any of the snacks I mentioned, and at this point I’m feeling pretty good about the whole project. After a meal, especially dinner, the first thing I usually ask is “what’s for dessert?”. That naturally happened last night as I was having dinner with my family, and quickly I was reminded of my detox and that I couldn’t have any dessert. My brother took it even further and was delighting in the fact of eating a Magnum chocolate ice cream right in front of me. I wasn’t that bothered and instead filled my sweet tooth with a peanut butter sandwich. It’s amazing that peanut butter doesn’t have any sugar in it or any artificial sweetener, I have it to classify it among the few super foods in the world today. I’m sure there are some negative sides to peanut butter as well, but for now its a good replacement.

Day 3 – Today it kind of hit me that I was committing the cardinal sin of ‘diets’ – which is going extreme and not thinking about sustainability. In all truths, I could probably go 21 days without alot of things but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything if I can’t sustain it for a prolonged period of time. I don’t magically expect my appreciation for sugary snacks to just disappear after these 21 days so I also decided to make this an exercise in sustainability as much as proving the addiction is under ‘control’. It was also dawning to me that having desserts was quite a pleasurable activity that I usually derived enjoyment from, so taking it away without a form of replacement was kind of depressing. So I looked at some sugar-free and diabetic dessert recipes and it turns out there is a whole world out there that I didn’t know about. I plan on trying all these different recipes I came across, and if they taste half as good as they look then I can enjoy sweets and not feel guilty about it, which would be the holy grail. Today I made this sugar free peanut butter and banana cookie recipe (I added 2 eggs to the recipe) and while it wasn’t orgasmic, it was certainly soothing and filled that void of having no desserts in my life.

Day 4 – Ok after eating a bunch of those sugar free cookies I mentioned yesterday, I got sick of them pretty fast. I definitely need to work on tweaking those recipes to my taste. I did find a sugar free chocolate bar in the supermarket today and wow, it was just like the real thing. I have no idea how they made it taste just like chocolate, perhaps it was the fact that I didn’t have chocolate for the past 4 days that made me forget about the taste. Regardless, it’s crazy that such a thing exists. Today I seldom find anyone drinking the full sugary coke, and I’m curious to see whether one day we will see a shift to this sugar free snacks as well. I did get flashbacks of that “Friends” episode where Monica tries to create that chocolate free chocolate called “mocholate”.

Day 5,6,7 – This first sugar free weekend has been tough. The weekend is usually the best time to munch on snacks while watching some sports or TV. Peanut butter is lacking abit of ‘explosiveness’ in the taste department. I feel like eating some strawberries and cream right about now. To say I was not properly prepared for my first sugar free weekend would be an understatement. I’ve not even been consuming aspartame laden diet sodas or chewing gum, which would have helped a lot. Apparently aspartame and other fake sugars lead to spike in insulin level so they’re almost as bad as sugar, but I don’t know how accurate that is. If there only was some objective source to check this kind of information, the whole health industry seems to now rely on ‘he said / she said’ arguments and changing constantly like fashion. Anyways I still haven’t broken the streak, so game on.