The Sugar Battle (Part 1)

Today I decided to change things up a bit. Normally when I wake up in the morning I sip warm lemon water while writing “Morning Pages” in a cute journal at my desk. This morning routine has been something I’ve done since going back to school for health and nutrition. Today, however, I decided to publicly share my morning pages with you. I’m sharing my thoughts on “The Sugar Battle” in hope that this might inspire, educate, and motivate you as well.

As I studied nutrition, health, and wellness last year I quickly learned that there is no one magic way to attain the goal of wellness. Being healthy requires more than just selecting the right foods for your body. My education focused on 12 different dimensions of health and wellness. Of those 12 aspects, nutrition and seeing how food can be medicine to the body really spoke to me.

If food can be medicine to our bodies, its not hard to imagine that it can also be the opposite. There are foods that help heal the body, mind, and soul and ones that cause sickness, digestive issues, food sensitivities and allergies, and auto immune disorders. What we eat matters just as much as what we choose not to eat. I learned the importance of Organic Produce, Eating the Rainbow (eating as much color as possible in meals), adding more Fruits and Vegetables on a daily basis, consuming fermented foods for the gut (kefir, kimchi, sauerkraut, yogurt), the importance of Cooking at Home, how to Read Labels, and the absolute need to cut Sugar. The Sugar Battle is real!

Being plant-based and already cooking all meals at home, the biggest change I wanted to make was reducing my daily sugar intake. Motivated by the fact that I learned there is nothing good that happens in the body when we eat sugar. Nothing. Sugar fuels inflammation in the body, which is the root of all disease, and it also makes us hungry.

Cutting sugar sounds like a relatively easy task, until you start paying attention to the amount of sugar in foods and learn all the ways its disguised and the different forms of sugar. Then you are faced with the reality that it’s in almost everything we eat, even fruits and vegetables.

As I set out to cut sugar (even the Organic Cane Sugar I usually baked with) I found a few helpful steps along the way.

• Start by reducing the amount you add to coffee and any baking or cooking recipe
• Read labels and learn the various names used for “sugar”
• Avoid processed and ultra-processed foods
• Substitute natural forms of sugar for refined sugar. Try Organic Pure Maple Syrup, Local Honey, Medjool Dates, and/or Coconut Sugar.

It’s interesting what happens when you slowly reduce the amount of sugar you consume – your body and taste buds adjust. Foods with too much sugar suddenly become to sweet to consume and don’t even taste good anymore. It becomes easier and easier to eat less sugar. The same goes for salt consumption but that’s a post for another day.

Now for my confession… I woke up this morning with sugar on my mind. You see, yesterday I went to coffee with a friend. We ended up at a coffee shop I haven’t went to for years. I placed my order for what I remembered as a pretty unique and delicious coffee – a honey lemon coffee with a sprinkle of cinnamon and lemon zest on top. At least that is how I remembered it was made. What I didn’t remember was if they added any sweetener other than honey.

As we chatted for hours, I sipped my coffee without even a thought about sugar. Until… I got home and noticed something strange was going on with my body. I was jittery, shaky, hungry, and my thoughts were flying everywhere. At which point, I realized… that was more than just coffee with honey, lemon, and cinnamon! It had to have additional syrup or sugar in it.

Since I essentially “detoxed from sugar” this past year my entire body reacted to even the small amount added to that coffee. Now, more than 12 hours later, I am still feeling the affects of that sugar. My body recognized it, didn’t like it, and I feel terrible. Which led me to wonder, would that have happened if I never cut sugar from my daily foods? I don’t think so. This even further motivates me to reduce the amount of sugar I consume.

Sugar is addicting and it seems the more you consume the more your tolerance increases and its negative affects fade, making it harder for your body to recognize. The other thing about sugar and sweetness is its an acquired taste. Sugar only tastes good when you eat it consistently and build up a tolerance for it. If you reduce the amount of sugar and then “accidently” consume it, it makes you feel awful. We can get away with eating too much sugar for a while. But not for years. Its affects eventually catch up to us and sickness and disease are what we are left to deal with.

Join me on a journey to cut sugar. Start small by making slight reductions in the amount of sugar you add to cooking and baking creations or to your morning coffee. Read labels and simply don’t buy foods where sugar is at the top of the ingredients list. Reduce the amount of processed foods you consume and instead add more fruits, vegetables, and whole foods to your diet. The sugar battle is real and its up to you to fight it. Make this the year you go to battle against sugar. The benefits will be “sweeter” than you ever imagined!

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