On February 27, 2009 I posted the following entry on Transformation.com:
My sugar habit started as a little kid. I would eat sugar by the spoonful, literally. I ate sugar laden candy, cookies, cereal, cake, chocolate, ice cream, kool-aid, soda, pastries, etc. If it had sugar in it, I was eating it. Miraculously, I never had a weight problem from it. In high school I remember wearing size 1 clothes.
In my first apartment living alone, when I was 20 yrs. old, I had a waterbed with a built-in cabinet headboard. One of the cabinets was always stocked with candy. People couldn’t believe how much junk I was eating, yet maintained a great body. I guess I had a great metabolism back then. Plus I was dancing four nights a week at the club with my friends. Even the alcohol I drank had to be the sweet, frozen drinks with whipped cream on top. It was crazy. I didn’t have a weight problem until I got pregnant. After my daughter was born, my great metabolism vanished.
The last decade has been emotionally painful with the sugar. It is as much uncontrollable compulsion as addiction. I would eat all of the ice cream in the house and then go to the store and buy replacements and eat them down to where the originals were eaten down to, so nobody knew I had done it. I did the same with candy or cakes in the house. Every time I would go to any store, I HAD to get a candy bar or two. I wouldn’t even be out the store door before starting to eat the candy bars. For a long while I was getting 3 to 5 large size, fast food milkshakes each and every week. I would hide candy. After every holiday, I would stock up on the candy that was on sale. A lot of times while grocery shopping, the first stop was to the bakery and I would get a pastry or brownie and eat it while shopping. I would buy boxes of snack cakes and eat them in the store and on the way home. Before hitting the door at home, I would stop at the dumpster and discard the empty boxes so nobody would know. It was so disgusting. But it was a vicious cycle. I would eat the sweets, feel guilty and disgusted with myself for eating so much that I had to hide it, then I would be depressed and the depression caused me to eat more out of the stress. It was never ending. I will never forget this one visit to a K-Mart that was going out of business a few years ago. Everything was on sale. The first stop of the shopping trip was to the snack isle. I got a couple boxes of different snack cakes, a box of cookies, a bag of candy bars and soda. I opened them all and was eating them while shopping. It was like there was no tomorrow. I was compelled to eat it. Then I ate them on the ride home. Once again, on the way to the door, I discarded the empty cartons and bags of sweets so nobody would know. I was so ashamed, I knew I was poisoning myself, but I couldn’t help it, I couldn’t stop. Another thing that bothered me was that I had dreams of being at parties and gorging on the sweets and hiding it. Not only was I living it, I was dreaming about it too, all the time. In the dreams it was the same, I couldn’t stop myself and I was trying to hide it from the other people around me.
Numerous times I tried to quit and tried to diet. But I would only gain back the weight and then some. It was so depressing and disheartening. Then a couple years ago I got a wakeup call. I had gotten bronchitis very bad and was on Prednisone. This time on the steroids, I blew up like a balloon like never before. I had stepped on the scale one morning and weighed 253 lbs. I am only 5’ 0” tall with a small frame. I was mortified. I was disgusted. I was miserable and in physical pain. The Dr. gave me some medication to get rid of the edema and that helped a lot with the water gain. I extremely slowly began to walk and was able to cut back on the sugar. I had to, or I felt I would surely kill myself from obesity.
I stopped carrying money so that I wouldn’t stop for milkshakes and I would talk myself out of getting candy bars at the checkout lines. Over a few months time I lost 50 lbs. Then I reached a plateau and the weight stayed between 200-210. I still ate sweets, but I was able to limit them for the first time. But, when I did give in and buy candy bars, I still had to start eating it before I made it out of the store. It was still like a “fix”.
Then just recently I found Transformation.com. For the first time I feel in control of my sugar addiction. A couple of weeks ago, before my official start date of the Challenge, I went to the grocery store and allowed myself to get a candy bar. I started to open it while still in the store, then I stopped and told myself that I didn’t NEED to start eating it right away, that I could wait until I got in the car. And, that’s just what I did. I waited until I started driving to start eating it. It might not sound like a breakthrough, but to me this was a HUGE breakthrough. The first few nights of truly eating clean, I did have the dreams about being places with all the sweets for the taking, but they were different. It was like I was trying to get the sweets, but I kept getting interrupted by something and was not able to eat them each time I tried. At first I was upset by having the dreams again. But by the third or fourth night of the dreams, I was saying no to the sweets and being okay with it. This again was a breakthrough. Now, I only have sweets on my “free” day, and I’m good with this. I was at the store today and looked at the candy at the checkout, but since it is not “free” day, I moved on through the line without getting one and was at total peace with it.
Since that writing, I have gone on to lose more weight and now weigh under 130 lbs. I still love sugary treats and chocolate. I do eat them, but in moderation. I use sweets as treats instead of meals. At one point in time, I remember eating candy for breakfast every day. It was crazy. I believe that if I can kick a sugar addiction, anyone can. If you struggle with sugar addiction, there is hope. If you need a support buddy, email me and I will be happy to help.
Please visit my Team Beachbody website. You can join for free and get addition support and help there.
