I’m a sugar addict!

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been a sugar addict and besides wanting the energy, I’ve not completely found out yet why that is.

So far, I’ve been addicted to refined sugar. As a kid, I’ve always liked candy. With my own money loved to buy them in the local paper magazine shop on the way from and to school. With the family groceries, I loved it when we went to some dedicated supermarket close to where I lived, where they would sell everything more for other shops to resell. Really in big quantities, and I could thus buy of some candy that I liked, 2kg packages.

Luckily my parents understood that we should not buy that too often, since I would eat them at a speed that nobody could imagine. I would also take such a package with me, typically on a travel trip and they would be very useful to keep me awake when I wanted.

Besides candy, desserts like ice-cream (minimum 500ml) and crème brûlée has also been something that was very addicted for me. I used to make, or buy big quantities of those, and regularly use them as a meal (breakfast, lunch or dinner) replacement.

And last but not least, pastries would be very delicate as well and I think that the whole family still remembers how unfortunately selfish and greedy I was for those. When I would come back from a basketball training or match in the evening, having a little hunger, finding the 4+2 ‘éclair’ pastries in the fridge, I sometimes eat them all 6.

Looking back to it today, of course I can’t believe I did that and behaved that way. Now, seeing that apparently some studies show that refined sugar provides the same addictive effect in the brain as cocaine and heroin does, I understand, why I always wanted more of it and it never felt like enough.

With my changing food habits I started by removing the refined sugar and basically replacing them by natural sugars.

Was it easy?

Not at all, it was a serious detox period and I can imagine it to be pretty similar to get off drugs or alcohol (since the effects in the brain are similar). I started by mainly only drinking water, appreciating the pureness of it, when it gets into my body, which helped me very well starting with this. Afterwards, if I dug deeper into it, I found out that refined sugar was in almost everything I eat.

Ah ok, yeah right, since sugar is very addictive, legal (not like hard drugs) I can assume a lot of food manufacturers add it to their products, so I get addicted to it and I buy more of them, all what they want in this capitalistic society unfortunately. Why did nobody tell and explained me that? No, no, nobody to blame, why did I not listen and found out about that earlier? Way too busy with other stuff I guess…

Was it worth it?

ABSOLUTELY! Like I explained here above, I find it unfortunate to find out only now and find like I explained here, that it should be something for sure somewhere part of the education for the future. My freedom and independence from refined sugar has been an amazing gift on this journey.

Today I’m even more active in sport than I used to before, so I still like sugar very well and I believe I somehow need it for my energy.

The main difference with before, is that I get my sugar intake from fruits (fresh whole food or dried ones), plants who contain quite some sugar (like e.g. beetroot) and that I’ve no intake anymore of any refined sugar today.

My intake of sugar today is also in line with the activities I do. If I’m very active, I eat quite some of them, if I’m less active, I eat less of them.

Great feeling of freedom, especially no addiction anymore and which is something I wish to everybody!

I could not imagine in the past, that someday a vegetable like ‘fennel’ would taste to me, way better than the taste ‘calish candy’ used to provide!

I’m very happy that nature took over on refined create products out of laboratories!

How do you work on addictions and what worked for you?

#peace #goodfood #nature #fruitsandvegetables #wholefood #sugaraddict #needenergy #removerefinedsugar #refinedsugaraddictiveeffectbrain #sugarfromfruits