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Last week I read an article in The National Geographic called ‘Sugar Love: a not so sweet story‘. I have long known that sugar is not good for us, it makes us fat, it rots our teeth, it’s bad for our skin, etc. But this article explained the history of sugar, why we crave it, and why it’s bad for us in the quantities we normally consume it. This made me want to check how addicted my body actually is to sugar.

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This meant not only avoiding chocolate, sweets and soft drinks, but also sweetened juices and any other foods that contain refined sugar. I knew there is sugar in a lot of our foods, but I never REALLY realised how difficult it would be to avoid sugar altogether. I quickly realised the ‘completely avoid sugar’ mission that I set out with had to be adapted to ‘avoid as much sugar as possible’.

So far I’ve done four days (I promised myself to do at least two weeks, and the way it’s going now I’m doubting myself wanting to do any more than that…), and I have to admit to a certain level of sugar addiction… And boy how frustrating life can be without sugar!!!! I’m irritable, tired, annoyed, frustrated and snippy at everything and everyone – yesterday I walked through the centre of Helsinki silently swearing at everyone who was in my way, and a little at those who just happened to walk a little too close to me.

But in some weird way it’s not an all-encompassing annoyance: somehow I’m being aware of the silliness of the irritation at the same time that I’m so darn annoyed! It’s a funky feeling. And suddenly I see sweets and chocolate everywhere! A few days ago, when trying to navigate a grocery store without hitting any of the sweets shelves, I found myself cornered by a couple of massive stacks of packets of sugar on sale. I feel like I have a stalker.

I had planned to write about the sugar-free experience from day 1, but despite having picked up my laptop to start writing, the frustration has, up until now, just led to a great big nothing. No idea what made this post possible. Frustrated writing does not make for good sentence structure. Now off to have some sugar-free desert with grandma, while trying not to look at the chocolate that’s staring at me from the coffee table…