Giving up sugar is about a lot more than simply passing on a piece of cake or saying no to a bowl of ice cream. Conquering sugar addiction isn’t really about sugar at all. Initially – yes. But once you’re free from a chemical dependency on sugar, maintaining abstinence has everything to do with you: how you see yourself, how you treat yourself, how you think about yourself, what you believe, what you fear, and what you feel. (Ready to try? Start by reading my book, Overcoming Sugar Addiction. Then you can complete the companion sugar addiction workbook, a gentle 6 week transition to create a joyful sugar abstinence.)
As you navigate a sugar free life, all of those things will come into play. It’s as if giving up sugar opens a giant Pandora’s box: Are you ready for the consequences? Are you ready to dig deeply into yourself?
Giving up sugar will change your life, and not just because you’ll lose weight, or heal your depression, or stabilize your moods, or eliminate the shame and low self-esteem from binging on sugar. It will change your life because it will put your habits, beliefs, thoughts and feelings under a microscope, and force you to take a good, long look. You will confront all of your weaknesses. You will face the many ways you deny, hide or disguise the truth. Giving up sugar will shine a light on all of those fears that you haven’t faced.
It’s only by being willing to look in the mirror, and face those fears, that you will conquer your sugar addiction. This is how you stay sugar free. I wish there were an easier way, but I haven’t found it.
While self-examination can sometimes feel like a burden, it is, in truth, a gift. This process will help you grow. It will transform your life. It will bring you to new heights. It will help you gain mastery on all levels of your life, and not just with sugar.
I tell you this not to frighten you, but to embolden you. If this all sounds like too much – I just want to learn how to say no to the brownies – understand that sugar is not the real enemy. This isn’t a battle. But you are learning how to make wise food choices, food choices that give you a foundation of health from which to live a full life.
Rainer Maria Rilke wrote in Letters to a Young Poet: “How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples – those myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses. Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses, only waiting to see us, once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible in our lives is, in its deepest being, something helpless, that wants help from us.”
Sugar addiction is a princess, disguised as a dragon, not for you to slay, but to love; something helpless that wants your bravery and your courage.
You can order the new edition of Overcoming Sugar Addiction as well as the follow up workbook, Growing Human(kind)ness: How to Befriend not Punish Your Way to Sugar Sobriety, at sugar-addiction-book.com. Want more help? Join my October Kick Your Sugar Habit small group class. I’ll be offering additional classes in 2011.
