We have to examine this question.
As a society and as individuals.
Just what is the draw to it that makes even short breaks from sugar super hard to do?
Is it cultural?
Is it purely physical?
Is it biochemical, in the brain or the body?
Is it mental, like a dependency?
Is it an addiction, as they say, “a real addiction” like drugs or alcohol?
Now I’m talking about difficulty quitting when you seem really committed to doing so. Not just “maybe I’ll give it a try.”
I’m talking about really wanting to but having a tough or seemingly impossible time doing it.
What the heck is that?
If I hadn’t lived this myself I wouldn’t be asking the questions.
As I’ve written it took me over two years, with no real help or guidance, to even string together thirty days off sugar.
And I REALLY wanted to do this thing.
I’m still not 100% sure how or why my best thinking kept drawing me back to it.
I’d swear off it every day.
Then I’d somehow rationalize that I could “have just a little” today and be good or start again tomorrow.
What the hell?
If I did that in other parts of my life I might be dead.
“I’ll just roll through this red light today, there’s nobody around, – tomorrow I’ll just wait for the green.”
That’s the hard part for me and most of the folks that I work with. That adamant desire, verbal and mental commitment to do a thing and then the, I don’t know, black hole we fall into?
The black hole that we enter that just throw’s yesterday’s good intentions out the window and takes over our whole existence to get sugar back into our bodies. DAMN.
Black Holes Be Damned.
We need to live in the reality and facts of the moment. We can not let a black hole or a reality distortion field or our biochemistry be the boss of our brain, our bodies, our desires, and our wishes. We just can’t.
Or we’ll just keep on rolling through that red light till that one day…
– well, you know what happens on that one day.
So exactly how do we do this thing and stay firmly planted in reality?
We ask for help.
We get both feedback and encouragement.
We get information garnered from experience, not wishful thinking.
We let others help us.
We do it together and not alone.
It didn’t take me two years because I didn’t want to or because I didn’t “know” something.
It took me that long because I couldn’t pick up the phone and talk with someone who was doing the exact same thing, at the exact same time, and was having success.
Sounds simple.
Sounds too good to be true.
But in over 25 years of helping folks quit sugar, it has been the only true constant. The only thing that remained exactly the same in our approach.
If you’d like to just pick up the phone and get the feelings of this mental black hole off your chest just give me a call.
I can only do it for a little longer but why not vent? Why not learn? Why not join the coolest crew of sugar-free and sugar reduced folks around? Quit Sugar Now.
I look forward to our little chat.
If you’re “not a joiner” we have a way for you to be a participant but just observe till you’re ready to reach out. (I would have used this option, honestly) Quit Sugar Now.
