Sugar-Holic–Motivational Power, Activate!
The startling truth about the insidious effects of sugar was the main motivator in my licking the sugar habit. I feared a life of surviving, but not thriving. And with knowledge came hope.
Part II of the Sugar-Holic Story
My personal motivation to eat the way I ate prior to reading Lick the Sugar Habit boiled down to three things: insufficient knowledge to eat otherwise; my emotional connection/motivation to the food I ate, and little did I know—the physiological drivers (blood sugar levels and hormones) telling me to eat…eat constantly…and to eat sugar. So, if I wanted it and it was available, I ate it. And when you are an adult, there is no one policing that cookie jar for you!
Motivation to start the experiment of licking the sugar habit came from gaining knowledge (understanding the how and why) coupled with FEAR and HOPE. The improved understanding: how sugar behaves in our body physiologically and why it is not a good thing for us to eat—especially in large quantities.
The fear:
Not of dying, but living! Living with unpleasant health problems—just not appealing to me. I wasn’t so concerned about longevity of life, but very concerned about living a high quality life—and my definition of that is that I’m healthy enough to earn a living, help others, and to enjoy running, hiking and dancing. I couldn’t fathom having cancer interfere with my teaching career, arthritis interfering with mobility to help others, or diabetes taking away a leg and not being able to dance.
The hope:
My list of daily aches and pains were mostly different from the author’s, but suffice it to say I felt hopeful for the first time that daily pain from stomach ulcer, IBS, headaches, creeping arthritis & increasing asthma attacks were not necessarily a fact of life which was unavoidable. I had also been diagnosed with clinical depression 5 years prior, yet another one on her list of 77 maladies. My first hypoglycemic incident landed me unconscious and waking up in the hospital at age 22. There were a dozen more in the decade that followed and they were scary; I had learned what to do to prevent a blackout, but not how to prevent the pre-blackout phase from happening in the first place…and come to find out, this was a symptom of pre-diabetes. I was still young, only beginning my third decade of life and some of these ailments had been plaguing me since I was 17!
Increasing knowledge merged together with my list of physical aches & pains to help me be ready to make this change emotionally. For any change that we impose upon our daily habits, we must be emotionally ready, if not charged for that change. It has to come from within. We have to OWN it! “It” being not only the decision, but also the process.
How I ‘Licked the Sugar Habit’ in practical terms, to be continued…