Addiction, we all have one.
What’s yours?
Mine used to be cigarettes, God, I loved them! But it moved on to sugar quite quickly after quitting the nicotine! Instead of having a cigarette after a meal, I’d have sugar and that’s where this story starts!
I eat sugar because I’m sad, because I’m happy, sugar to celebrate, sugar because I achieved something, because I’m knackered and need a pick me up! Oh, the addiction is real, just like a drug, alcohol, gambling, or an online sex addiction!
Dopamine is released when eating and consuming sugar and it’s proven to alter your brain, so you want to eat it more and more, to get a similar ’hit’ or ‘high.’ It’s a massive win win for the sugar companies out there! Reading that you would think I was talking about heroin but I’m not I’m talking about SUGAR!
Apparently, sugar affects the minds reward system, so the more you feed it, the more rewards you are giving yourself! This reward system is how us humans survive but of course the downside to this is addiction.
Why couldn’t I have been addicted to running or going to the gym or doing something healthy! Oh no my addiction is sugar!
The sugar monster is within me, wanting to be fed, wanting to grow bigger and bigger, wanting to take over my thoughts and desires! I’m an addict to sugar and always have been! Sugar is my enemy, its not my friend, or my companion when I’m sad, happy, celebrating, or simply just tired.
And I can tell you sugar withdrawal is just as horrid as nicotine withdrawal. It took me years and years to give up nicotine, with plenty of really good attempts in between! I gave up during my 40th year, due to a massive 'telling off' I got from the dentist!
And similar has happened this time; a wake-up call from the doctors – osteoarthritis in your spine and being overweight don’t mix! I am not going into my fifties, knackered and overweight! I’m NOT!
It’s a complete mind f&*k giving up sugar, you aren’t hungry, but your mind is telling you; you are, repeatedly telling you, you are missing something! That something isn’t right or complete - until you have given in to the sugar. It’s hardcore giving up sugar both physically and mentally and the withdrawal symptom list is endless, but it is all mainly psychological rather than physical! Depression, anxiety, cognitive issues, and sleep deprivation. Who’d have thought it would be so hard!
But I’ve been on this journey for almost a month now and I’m still here, doing it, having bad days and good days but most if not all of the days without sugar!