Being Sugar-Free: Four Years and Counting

It’s hard to believe that it’s been four years. What started as a personal reset in 2019 to get my postpartum sleep issues sorted, and with that, my sweet cravings and blood sugar roller coaster, has evolved into one of the most profound improvements to my health and wellbeing. I have made a lot of big changes to my health since 2013 when I first began experiencing the symptoms of what became an auto-immune diagnosis, but none were as great as cutting sugar four years ago. I have not looked back.

I have always said that when you transition the way you eat, your body, brain and taste buds follow along in the transition. You just have to be patient, consistent and trust in the process. I had experienced this in a multitude of ways since I started adjusting my diet to support my health back when I was fifteen years old and dealing with eczema.

When I was 18, I adjusted my diet to support my mental health and reduce anxiety, and in my twenties, I used food to help heal from an auto-immune diagnosis. I’ve done many types of resets since then. The reason being is that sometimes old habits crept back in, new ones are developed or simply that my body was making it clear that it was time for a change.

Don’t wait for a health crisis to make a change

The challenge is that we often don’t tune in until it’s too late. One minor sign or symptom creeps in and we brush it under the rug and just learn to live with it. Then another, then another.

If we went from feeling awesome today to feeling absolutely terrible tomorrow, we’d notice. But if we go from feeling good to a little less than good, to mediocre, to meh, to not so good, you’d likely wake up one day and say, My gosh! How did this happen? I used to feel so great/energized/fit/well/happy/inspired, etc. You’d feel like the degeneration just snuck up on you. This is how most of us operate. And usually, we wait until we hit a crisis point before we take action.

It happens without us even realizing it; reinforcing habits in our lives that day by day, week by week, and eventually, year by year diminish our health and happiness. We suddenly become unrecognizable to ourselves. Our light dims slowly, but suddenly we’re in complete darkness and don’t know how we got there.

my breaking point came in 2019

Bad habits, and with it degenerating health, tend to sneak up on us. Most recently for me, in 2019, I felt it sneaking up on me ever so slightly and it didn’t feel good.

I live what I share here through and through. The challenge for me was that the little indulgences like some dark chocolate, a glass of wine, or a homemade cookie, well, all of it was becoming more frequent than I was happy about, and combined with a lack of regular exercise and inconsistent sleep patterns since having my son, I was starting to feel tired a lot of the time. My son was nearly three and I realized that I no longer had sleep deprivation and breastfeeding as an excuse for my tiredness. So, what was it?

For me, that was all it took. I knew I had to make being sugar-free a priority. In 2006, I learned my big lesson when I got sick with Crohn’s. I knew the path of depletion in my body and didn’t want to land there again. My increase in fatigue increased my sugar cravings, which increased my anxiety, which further impacted my sleep and thus the perfect storm for degeneration.

I was at my breaking point in March of 2019 when I resolved to turn the tide. Yes, I live a healthful life, but I don’t take it for granted. I am never coasting. Quality of life is at the core of all of my decisions and when my health falters, I am unable to experience life at its fullest potential.

I don’t have any dramatic before and after photos for you. I don’t have measurements. You better believe I am not posing in my underwear under overhead lighting and taking pictures from every angle. For me, this has always been about how I feel.

Consistent lifestyle shifts do not require drama – they can’t. Consistency is the opposite of aggressive dramatic results because it’s subtle and it’s ongoing. There is never an after because we just keep evolving and doing our best.

The Simple Change: I Cut Out Sugar And Started Exercising consistently

That was basically it. I cut out sugar. Not just cane sugar (which is mostly a fancy word for white sugar) but also honey, maple syrup, coconut sugar, and whatever other sugar you may ask me about. I also didn’t replace the sugars with the zero calorie or zero blood sugar effect alternatives like monk fruit, xylitol, erythritol, stevia, or whatever other one you can think of.

I cut it all out, cold turkey. Just. Like. That. And the same day, I committed to starting 30 minutes of exercise a day, minimum 4 days a week. That was it.

For years, long before having my son and after, I struggled with the best ways to stay active as my life got fuller and fuller. Sure, I knew how absolutely vital being active was to my physical health (and I learned to embrace and love my body long ago) – but more so, or more acutely, to my mental health.

When I reached the point of making this decision, I hadn’t been working out regularly for two years since having my son, hadn’t been sleeping well, and the special treats became daily treats. And then vanity kicked in, too. Why is that always what kicks us the hardest? I was starting to do something I hadn’t done in my adult life – I was getting into the habit of picking apart my body in photos: my shoulders, my belly, and the way my face looked from a certain angle. It was rather confronting.

Of course, I also knew but could not separate from the fact that when we don’t feel great on the inside, it’s easier to pick apart the outside than do the harder work of getting to the root of it.

I knew I needed to make some changes and also knew that it couldn’t be some dramatic and complicated process. Exercise and cut the sugar. I decided that being sugar-free was something I needed to do. Done.

And so with my own simple desire to feel well as my cheerleader, I did two things.

1. Signed up for a 7-day free trial of OBE which I am still hooked on. (Code MEGHAN50 will get you 50% off your first month if you stay beyond your free trial week)
2. Elected to follow my 7-day No Sugar Challenge guidelines – no added sweeteners of any kind, no alcohol, coffee or chocolate, no dried fruit, and limited grain intake.

I started by committing to these two things for a week. That was my only promise to myself. But then something I hadn’t expected happened. I didn’t stop.

I committed to that first week of working out and did five workouts. And then I kept going. I did four or five workouts the next week and the next and the next. I kept the sugar out of my life, my anxiety decreased, my sleep improved and within a couple of weeks, I felt physical and mental changes inside and outside.

being sugar-free: I Lost The Taste For Sugar

Now, this is the craziest thing of all. Prior to going sugar-free, I hadn’t had any refined sugar in a decade or so. It’s unpalatable to me. I tell people this all the time – that as we move towards a more whole and natural diet, our tastes will change. What I hadn’t expected with this shift in my own health was for my tastes to continue to evolve.

I no longer crave sweets of any kind and, more than that, I don’t actually like them like I used to. Now, I am not strict on this. I’ve had some homemade fruit crumble, and will have a small taste of a muffin or ice cream that I make for the boys in my house, but that’s basically it. I have no cravings for dessert, chocolate, or even adding any kind of sweetener to my elixir. I have lowered my set point for sweetness to the point where a few slices of fruit do the trick.

The thing here is that I also don’t feel deprived being sugar-free. If I really wanted it, I’m sure I would have it. But I just don’t. That’s the truth of it.

When You Eliminate The Negotiation With YourSelf, It All Becomes Effortless

Okay, at first it wasn’t easy at all (and I’ve been through a few dietary changes in my life). I was putting in place a lot of new habits. I have long lived by guidelines that ensure healthy living remains effortless. One of the keys is that I make a decision and that is it. I went gluten-free and didn’t waver. And this time, I cut out sugar and that was it. Decision made.

If you take the approach of trying your best to eliminate gluten, or dairy, or sugar, or alcohol, or whatever it is you know you need to kick, you are setting yourself up for ongoing stress and struggle. But if you make the decision that this thing – fill in your blank – is simply no longer an option, you force that negotiation to stop. It’s no longer a question of ‘well, maybe just this once.’ It’s a simple ‘no, thank you.’ No decisions to make, no guilt, no feeling lousy the next day for indulging in something that makes you feel lousy. Maybe most importantly, no energy and stress wasted on self-defeating negotiations.

It’s Hard to Let Go, But It’s Harder To Feel Lousy

I have made a lifetime’s worth of diet and lifestyle modifications over the last 17 years since I first experienced the early symptoms of Crohn’s. Some have been effortless, some have seemed unfathomable. It’s a process.

Let it be a process of learning, experiencing and trying things. Remember – we’re not aiming for the aggressive and dramatic here. We’re certainly not aiming for some perfect version of health. We want it to be easy, consistent and sustainable. Being sugar-free may look different for everyone.

One of the things people will often say is, “But I love ice cream” or “I could never give up wine.”  What if consuming those things that gave you really bad indigestion or triggered a migraine or caused body pain, mood instability, or interfered with your optimal quality of life in any way was also building disease in the body? Once? No big deal. Ongoing could easily become a big deal.

being sugar-free has many health benefits

What if you realized that those symptoms, the result of consuming things, doing things, engaging with certain people, whatever it is that excites some part of you in the moment, was ultimately pushing you down the slope of health, and degrading your well-being with repetition? Symptoms are your body’s way of saying something isn’t working right. Repeating the behaviour that triggers that response cultivates the potential for a domino cascade of health problems. This, in essence, is what builds degenerative disease. It’s gradual. Diseases that are preventable by diet and lifestyle are the greatest threat to our longevity and quality of life and, dare I say it, now our freedom. These are the issues plaguing our overwhelmed disease care systems.

The way I’ve felt since 2019, since being sugar-free, has kept me motivated and better able to be present with my family and my work.

This transition for me, the latest of many I have taken on, has invited me to experience many benefits. The most important for me however is the mental and emotional shift. I feel stronger, and more mentally resilient. The fog of lethargy that had plagued me since having my son in 2017 is gone. I am making bigger changes in my life and at work. I have effectively halted and potentially reversed that degeneration process. And what was once an overwhelming undertaking, one more challenge to tackle, has truly become effortless.