We all had a different set of sugar rules growing up.
It’s kind of crazy really.
One of the best quotes I ever heard was:
“Food Addiction isn’t inherited – recipes are.”
It’s so true.
Sure I believe that some people have a higher physical susceptibility to sugar but for the most part sugar use or misuse is a learned behavior.
Let me repeat that:
Sugar use or misuse is a learned behavior.
Or simply put – a habit.
Habits can be broken.
Good habits can replace habits that no longer serve us.(we don’t use the word bad)
When we were growing up the only regulation we had on how much sugar we ingested revolved around money.
If it were cookies and candy in the house my mother seriously didn’t want us to eat the all the cookies, ice cream and candy she got at the grocery in one day.
And that’s exactly what would have happened if we were not restrained in doing so. Plus she needed to have a little somthin’ – somthin’ around for herself.
Halloween – fa get about it!
It was all ours – absolutely zero regulation, control or parenting really. That entire bag was ours. I hate to tell the kids of today but those were HAULS! Entire pillow cases full of sometimes full sized candy bars!
It was weeks of gorging.
We also, and I find this totally, totally insane, had 100% complete and unrestricted use of the sugar bowl on the table to put sugar on our cereal in the mornings.
I kid you not – at the end of the cereal, we were left with like an INCH of pure sugar and milk. You just scraped the sugar up and ate it! My poor mother, the dentist bills alone..
She didn’t know back then. No one did.
Five-pound bags of sugar were essentially so cheap that they bordered on free.
Did I tell you about butter and sugar sandwiches? Yup.
Near grocery day there was never any food in the house so we would put nice warm butter (left out at room temperature) on white bread and then sprinkle straight sugar on it.. Yes, I’m serious.
And of course, cinnamon toast – which was essentially cinnamon and sugar (mostly sugar) sprinkled on buttered toast. We never bought the mixture from the store BTW – we made our own. It was one of the first things I ever learned to do in the kitchen – to mix the sugar and cinnamon when it ran out and I didn’t like to much cinnamon.
I’d love to hear the rules around sugar when you were growing up. I hear a lot about grandmothers being the sugar queens.
I tell you our house rules around sugar to let you feel free to think back on yours.
Did your mom give you sugar when you were upset? Was every celebration that much better with tons of sugar products?
We all grew up with different rules.
Untangling them is very helpful in understanding how we use and abuse sugar today. It gives us a baseline.
Looking back is not done in a judgmental or blaming way. We are not here to place blame.
We only want to understand our possible draw to the substance so we can be in control and not be controlled unconsciously.
One of the most important keys to this self-awareness is the idea around how we use sugar to alter our moods. Either by increasing the joy of positive events or feelings and/or the unconscious use of sugar to make us feel a little better when we’re down or not feeling great.
If we can move this behavior from unconscious to conscious behavior we can quickly break your sugar habit and gain control of our lives, our weight, and our health.
If you’re ready to get started and jump right in then visit us right here: Quit Sugar Now.
If you’ve never taken our little quiz to see if you might be susceptible to sugar then take that here: The Sugar Quiz
We look forward to helping you in any way we can.
For a VERY short time, I am giving away a complimentary 30 minute “get started right” consult to everyone who joins our little merry band of very sweet but sugar-free marauders. Hurry though this will not last.
