While my educational upbringing was born throughout a series of Christian Schools, I would consider my beliefs somewhat of a mix of many religions, yet belonging to none in particular.
Regardless of this, when my wife suggested that she was going to stop eating sugar for lent, I decided to join her.
In all honesty, partly it was because I was impressed at how well she had done the previous year, and that the benefits that she described seemed appealing to me.
I made this commitment without really thinking it through, and in the days following began to consider the kinds of things I would really be abstaining from.
Chocolate comes first on my list but was an obvious one for me, being somewhat of a frequent chocolate admirer… although previously a chocolate fiend!
No, it is the smaller things for me, such as tea without sugar.
Despite the fact that I have the occasional cuppa, and do not feel particularly addicted in any way, the thought of not having a sweet warm brew on a cold and rainy begins to give me the sense of the undertaking I have just agreed to.
Tea without sugar, in my opinion, is rather horrible. That therefore means… no tea!
(Except the herbal kind of course).
I like herbals, but they’re not ‘up there’ on those odd occasions where only a brew will seem to do the job.
Sometimes it’s the little things that one loses when ‘giving up’ a substance of one kind or another.
When it comes to inertia and procrastination with regards to making a change, it would seem that people tend to associate towards the losses of having made the change i.e. no tea, no sweets, no chocolate, no cake, no ice cream, no processed sugary cereal, white flour products that turn to sugar in the body such as bread. This leaves the questions what do I eat for breakfast, when watching films, for pudding, on hot sunny days, on cold rainy days, instead of sandwiches, times when I feel lonely etc, etc, etc.
Obviously, these aren’t the kinds of motivating factors that gravitates people towards change.
It’s the benefits that I now cling to in the hope that, as a friend once said to me, that when you change food types, your pallet will begin to change.
My wife was testament to this recently, when she informed me that last year, she had gotten to the point where putting a bar of chocolate in her mouth seemed like an offence to her body.
This is a surprise to hear. Not that my wife is a chocolate piggy. Neither is she adverse to a high quality fair trade chocolate experience from time to time.
It surprises me because I know how powerful the Addictive side of sugar can be.
Researchers have found that Sugar releases Dopamine, the same pleasurable neuro-transmitters that Heroin releases!
Sugar also works on the same reward pathway as Cocaine and Heroin, and leads some scientists to argue that Sugar is therefore equally as addictive.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, studies show that short bursts of binging on Sugary foods creates the strongest withdrawal, as opposed to a smaller, but more continued use.
The question for me, on the eve of Ash Wednesday facing forty days and forty nights of Sugar abstinence is…
What happens next?
I don’t know the answer to that right now but I’ll keep you updated so check back here to find out the next chapter.
Best Wishes
Kim
