Why I eat sugar, and you can too.

When I first quit drinking and smoking, almost five years ago now, I turned to sugar. This is so common it’s a cliche in recovery communities. Everyone who quits drinking, or smoking, or both tends to suddenly love sugary foods for a number of reasons: something to do, something that feels like a treat (reduce feelings of deprivation), replenish dopamine, and - some say - replace the sugar that we used to drink in wine or other alcoholic drinks every day (though this may not bear out in scientific studies - TBD). In any event, I was normal. However, I wasn’t thrilled to be gorging on sugary foods when I was doing so many other things to make myself healthier. 

My online sober communities told me to keep eating the damn sugar - it’s better than drinking, and I’ll naturally tire of it over time. 

I didn’t believe them.

But, I ate all the sugar (and everything else that I wanted) because I was told to do that, and I was willing to try anything. I did it, but I didn’t like it. 

One part of me found it extremely liberating (I imagine pregnant women feel this), and the other part of me found it utterly terrifying. At some point, I thought, someone is going to have to start constructing a piano-box-coffin for me. I felt utterly out of control, and a little bit sick and headache-y all the time. 

I decided I would wait until I was six months sober to start restricting sugar (really, all carbs) again. Just putting that plan into place gave me some mental relief, allowing me the room to continue eating “whatever” until then.

So, at around four months sober, my husband and I had a huge fight. HUGE. I thought we’d be getting divorced. I left the house in a teary rage and raced to my old studio apartment in downtown Seattle (it was between renters). I hit the nearby City Target and bought up all the binge-y foods I could think of because goddamnit I was not going to drink or smoke over this fight. I hauled my food back to the apartment and microwaved my appetizer: a family-size Stouffer’s Mac & Cheese. I turned on the TV and got started cry-eating.

About half-way through the mac & cheese I started to feel full. Not in a “I’m satisfied, boy that was delicious!” way, but in a “this is boring, what else can I do to feel better?” way. This was a totally foreign feeling for me. I was annoyed. I REALLY wanted to escape. I needed to give a big fat middle finger to the world (uh, I mean my husband), and eating my face off was one of my age-old, time-tested ways of doing that. And… mystery of all mysteries… it wasn’t working. The reliable and powerful high of binging was gone.

But why? 

Looking back now, I can see that giving myself permission to eat all the sugar and carbs I wanted (because I was in early sobriety) had unintentionally taught my body that sugar and carbs were no longer in the “scarce” or “bad” category. Even without actively working on mindful eating, or intuitive eating, or body acceptance, or anything else-- my body had gotten the message loud and clear. Without any conscious help or effort on my part, my body started healing from lifelong restriction/binge cycling. 

I’m sure from an outsider’s perspective this must seem like a special-to-me miracle. You would also likely think I was thrilled. Nope: I felt angry. I had already given up drinking and smoking, and now I couldn’t even get that extra thrill from binging (you know, once in a while - when I really needed it)? I was being forced to reckon with my seriously limited coping skills, and it didn’t look pretty. So I rolled up my sleeves and started working on adding new coping mechanisms (in addition to eating, since eating was still a fun/pleasurable activity for me - it just wasn’t as useful emotionally as binging once was). 

So, why am I telling you this extremely long, clearly just-about-me alcohol-quitting story when this was supposed to be about sugar? Because it’s really not about sugar. If you feel out of control when you eat sugar, if you eat sugar even though you’re medically advised against it, if you feel like you’re addicted to sugar - all those feelings are rooted in sugar restriction. 

Sugar is an extremely efficient energy source (it’s what they put in IV fluids, right?) It’s also delicious! Our finely-tuned (by evolution) bodies perceive sugar as delicious because it’s packed with energy. Like with sex, our bodies are wired for pleasure in order to survive. Sugar is integral in most major life celebrations. And NO, it’s not actually an addictive substance (here’s a nicely written article summarizing new research that debunks that old “sugar is the same as cocaine” study: https://www.outsideonline.com/2410282/sugar-addiction-fake)

Sugar is a super simple food that delivers energy quickly, but it also has myriad life-affirming, divine purposes: bringing pleasure, comfort and taste-balance.  In the olden days sugar was used as a way to drum up your appetite for a larger meal, and today it’s used as a way to end a meal with a contented sigh.

“But sugar makes me…” break out, sleep poorly, feel sick, get headaches, experience blood sugar spikes and drops, etc.

The reason we have a ton of personal evidence around “sugar is toxic” is because we restrict it on most days, and then go a little - or a lot - nuts when we do eat it. So, it makes us feel icky (or dangerously spikes our blood sugar). These are legitimate reasons to moderate our sugar intake - I mean, I’m not saying everyone MUST eat all the sugar. It’s just that when we try to “moderate” sugar intake, our brains interpret that as restriction (sugar is bad, I’m bad for eating it, I will stop eating it tomorrow…) which invariably leads to over-eating sugar when we do allow it. It’s a vicious circle, right? How does anyone just eat moderate amounts of sugar? Paradoxically, choosing to eat more or less of a particular food - through a weight-neutral, total wellbeing lens - comes from your body knowing, fully, that you will never restrict access to that food again. Your body requires evidence from you that there is and always will be tons of sugar available to eat whenever the body wants it. Just using willpower to moderate sugar intake really doesn’t work. Our bodies have to believe us, and our bodies really only “listen” to action: we have to intentionally eat sugar in an un-restricted way for a period of time so our bodies will truly believe we can be trusted to never restrict again.

“But I really can’t eat sugar for medical reasons.” 

There are actually a lot of other ways to manage blood sugar aside from eliminating sugar. Medication is one way. Another is to make sure you add in fiber, fat and protein whenever you eat sugar. If you are struggling to reduce your sugar intake yet you have a medical reason to do so, it’s worth really thinking through (and discussing with your doctor) how to sustainably manage your blood sugar levels without abstaining 100% from sugar (which causes over-consumption of sugar down the line).

“But sugar isn’t necessary, and it makes me gain weight.” 

Ah yes - here’s the central thing right? You don’t want to stay or get fat. You want to be thin (because our world is hateful to fat people), and eliminating sugar helps you to do that. So, here’s my question: does it?

This is a topic for many more blog posts, but I’ll try to summarize here: if 98% of diets do not work longer term, 2/3 of diets result in weight gain, we know weight cycling is far more dangerous to our health than being fat, AND we know that restricting any kind of food is the engine behind emotional and binge eating… is eliminating sugar really going to get you what you want?

Let’s say you are able to abstain from all refined sugar for the rest of your life (the odds are against it, but it’s possible): is that the life you really want to live? Skipping the birthday cake, never touching the dessert that your loved ones make for you, never sitting in a Parisian cafe eating a fresh-baked chocolate croissant? Always feeling like you have to maintain control around food, and can’t participate fully in your family and community celebrations? Wasting your precious mental energy on something so insignificant, when you could truly just see sugar as one tiny part of a vast world of food choices that you can (and need to) make every day?

With all of that said - we all have total body autonomy. I would never tell anyone that they HAVE to eat sugar for any reason. It’s simply that if you struggle with sugar-eating (or restricting), there is another way to approach healing from the struggle. You don’t have to struggle at all.

The fastest path to seeing sugar in a neutral, happy, normal-eater way is to eat it until your body truly trusts that you can have as much sugar as you want. That’s the healing path in a nutshell: eat all the sugar until your body shifts FOR you. 

You can do this. I promise you it’s worth it.