It’s official. I’ve become someone who posts pictures of healthy food on social media. Feel free to unfollow, unfriend or hide me from your newsfeed because if I could, I’d do the same.
Until 21 days ago, I was on a sugar bender. I was seeing movies in theaters 1-2 times a week. It wasn’t because I wanted to see these movies, but because it provided me a dark place to eat Skittles, Peanut M&M’s, hotdogs, popcorn, gummy worms and a cherry ICEE in one 80-120 minute sitting. I started going to movies alone so that I could spare my friends and family the shame and sadness of having to watch someone they love get Type 2 diabetes right before their eyes. While watching “The Duff,” in a theater full of teenage girls, I couldn’t help but think I had become their TOCWGUOL – The Older Chick Who Gave Up On Life.
I began creating reasons why I had to feed my sugar addiction. I’d tell myself, “Every time I deny myself yogurt ice cream, a kitty loses its home.” With that kind of logic, I was eating it 5 days a week. I even had the Pinkberry app on my phone because they market to women like me – annoying white women with copious amounts of credit card debt. Buy 10 and get one free seemed like a great deal to me!
Once I became a regular, the employees started greeting me with, “You’re back again,” which I think was the beginning stages of an intervention. I felt their judgment and my pants get tighter so I decided to fight the fructose fantasy. I had a come-to-Junior Mints moment. I felt horrible and I hated every minute I was out of my pajama pants and in a pair of jeans just so I would be fashionably acceptable to society. When will society start recognizing that pajama pants deserve the same rights as jeans? They’re tired of being forced to live under the covers. We must let them out and into the daylight so that they may be treated as an equal to their fabric friends and foes (I’m talking to you low-rise skinny jeans).
If you didn’t know this already, sugar is in EVERYTHING! If you want to watch a good documentary that breaks down the glucose game, check out “Fed Up” on Netflix. After watching this documentary, I decided to Google “detoxing from sugar” and found the Whole30 diet, which is really more of a life-style change. It basically asks that you remove all processed sugars from your diet and replace them with fruits, vegetables, nuts, potatoes, eggs and meat for 30 days. 21 days later, I’m still going strong. Normally I would have given in to Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, but once I got over the initial 2-4 day sugar withdrawals, I started to feel better. Within a week, I started to look better and today I posted a picture of my lunch: turkey meatballs, broccoli and cauliflower rice, which was prepared by my partner in life and the Whole30, my husband.
I never thought I would, but I’ve joined the online health cult. I drank the mineral water (Because Kool-Aid isn’t an approved Whole30 beverage). However, I refuse to go so far as to post inspirational nutritional memes like, “Eat Clean. Play Dirty.” That’s where I draw the waistline.
**If you’re looking for a way to break your dependence on sugar, I highly recommend trying this diet. I realize that I can’t hide from cake, cookies and candy forever, but hopefully I will make better nutritional decisions now that I am aware of how harmful binging on these foods can be. However, if in 9 days you see me in line at Pinkberry, it’s only because I have to cash in my “get one free.” **
