Sugar is blinding.
I have been addicted to sugar most of my life. It started when I was a little girl and I had my first Coca-Cola. When I was old enough to have my own money, I bought bottles of Coca-Cola and hid them in my closet. I would drink it secretly. It was really the beginning of my sugar addiction.
We didn’t have many sweets in our house when I was younger. If we did, they were hidden and I didn’t know about them. But periodically, my mom would buy Chips Ahoy cookies. I would ask her at bedtime if I could have some cookies. She would say, “Sure. You may have two cookies.” I would wear sweatpants with deep pockets and go into the kitchen to get my two cookies. I would put two cookies in my hand and six in my pockets. I would walk through, hoping no one saw me smuggling out eight cookies. I would go into my room and enjoy my cookies with my soda. I started this at a young age.
When you eat sugar, it makes you want more of it. Before I knew it, as an adult with little children, I was having a Snickers Almond, chips, Mexican coke, coffee, scone, and cookies. My dad would come to town, and it was like an opportunity to dig in and have as many cookies as possible. “Let’s see how many we can make.” “Let’s get donuts.” We ate like crap the whole time he was there to visit. I looked forward to it. I looked forward to any leftovers so I could eat them after he was gone. He would always fill my refrigerator with soda, and after he left, I would drink it until it was gone. Even when I was trying to quit soda, I couldn’t stop drinking it when it was in my refrigerator.
In the fall of 2014, I went to the state fair and indulged in cotton candy. I had three jumbo bags of cotton candy. They are about the size of a pillow. I ate those. I wanted more, but the state fair was gone. So I went to our local Sam’s Club and purchased cotton candy in little tubs that they had. I purchased two cases of them—eight in each case—and I ate them all. I actually went back to Sam’s to obtain more, but I realized I could not eat those. I could not consume those. It was too much. I had gone over the top. I was at my wit’s end. I had already applied to become a client of Size and Shape Fitness, and I couldn’t bear doing it to myself again, eating more cotton candy from Sam’s Club. I had already eaten too many cases of it.
At the time, I was washing down cotton candy with Mexican coke—the soda, not the drug. I was still having Snickers or chips all day long. It seemed like the more I fed the beast, the more the beast wanted. It was a real struggle.
Once I began Size and Shape Fitness, I had to give up sugar. I logged everything I ate all day long and sent the log to an accountability partner. I had paid quite a bit of money to have this accountability, so I followed the rules. I wanted to be free.
But it wasn’t until I became free from the sugar that I realized how much in bondage I was. Sugar consumed my mind. I thought about it all day long. I would think about what my next sugar intake was going to be. When I felt a lull in my energy, I would go for sugar. My mind started to become clear when sugar was out of my diet. All of a sudden, I started to realize how much my mind had been consumed by food, especially sugar. It is blinding how much sugar can control you. It’s where food lust comes from.
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