Day 281 in my sugar battle on my way to Mickey

Today I want to think about my personal addiction: sugar. I came across something on FaceBook and Pinterest today.  It said, “FOOD is the most abused anxiety drug. EXERCISE is the most underutilized antidepressant.”  That one hit me right between the eyes. That has been my life-song in a nutshell.  God is walking me through this painful process of withdrawal from my addiction.  280 days ago when I began making a conscious effort to eliminate (as much as possible) sugar from my diet, I went through a week of headaches, fuzzy-headedness and some mild nausea.  It was not fun facing daily life without my drug, and for awhile I experienced some very scary lows.  Now I know chemically my blood sugar was trying to adjust, but at the time it felt like the lows of depression.  I wondered if I could gut it out.  But by the grace of God and with his help, I got through those early days.  My sugar addiction truly is an addiction, because some days it’s even too hard to take it a day at a time.  Sometimes I have to tell myself, “For the next hour, I won’t eat any sugar,” or “For the next ten minutes, I won’t eat any sugar.”  And then I have to tell myself that again and again and again.

Last week on the Today Show, they said that Americans are eating three times the daily recommended amount of sugar.  We are consuming twice as much sugar in a day as we were in the 70’s.  They went on to say that too much sugar leads to heart disease in adults, and it leads to diabetes in kids.  And doctors are finding a large rise in non-alcoholic, fatty liver disease.  These statistics were from added sugars only, not fruit sugars.

Isn’t that astounding?!?  There is so much sugar being added to our foods to enhance the taste that it is making us sick.  Sheesh!

Those of you who have been following for a while now, know that my dad was a high-functioning alcoholic.  He did a terrible number on his liver, because of his alcohol consumption.  I was so determined not to do the same, and so to this day I rarely take a drink. I have seen what alcohol can do to a home, and I was determined to not raise my kids in that environment.  YET, I did exactly that.  My liver numbers are good, but I was basically doing my best to destroy it with sugar.  And my household was just as affected by addiction.  My dad hid booze; I hid candy.  My dad would look for ways to drink in private; I would look for ways to eat massive quantities of sugary foods in private.  Same thing all over again.  I was so busy trying to avoid his addiction, that I ignored my own to my body’s detriment.

Whew!  Kinda heavy today.  But it’s all cathartic, and I always feel better when I get these thoughts out and quit harboring them.

Thanks for reading! Meet you at the Kingdom!