Do I Dare?

"If you want to know who you are, quit eating sugar" - Deb Rocker

I am summoning my courage to declare myself lost, and to follow one thread, one simple thread to find my way back: no more sugar this spring. For the three months of spring. From there, I don't know. It would be ridiculously easy to return to a sugar-eating life if, after not eating sugar for three months, losing weight, evening out my moods, I find that I am desperately unhappy and want to get back to sugar addiction. Donuts are not going anywhere in three months, I tell myself. If something huge happens and the planet is no more, and silly me I gave up sugar just two months before when I could have been eating chocolate mousse every day, well, that is exactly why I am sitting here on the brink of sugarlessness summoning my courage. Because to let go of sugar, when one is a life-long addict, is no light thing.

I have tried this before. I know the demons who line the path that will appear with this first step, and they know me. At the moment, they are laughing at me. They have won every other time. They do not fear me. They think me weak.

I do not dare say I will not eat sugar for a whole year, because it could set off hysterical laughter, which is similar to crying, and I don't want emotions to get in the way right now. Especially fear. I am holding onto my clarity. I am quitting sugar this spring because I am in a body I would not have recognized five years ago, and there is a mindset that comes with it that I am not ok with. I have gotten shockingly used to being in a fattish body, though never comfortable; I spend every day in discomfort. My memory of my slimmer self is fading, and that is the most shocking of all to me. I am on the verge of having to buy all new clothes because I am bursting out of my other ones. I do not want to make that step. I am so tired all the time. I find too much pleasure in life through sugar, and cannot seem to come up with other pursuits. I want to become an authentic person. I want to create more with my life. I want to learn how to be a disciplined person, so I can actively create what I really want with my life. I want to believe in myself again.

And so, in the search for my own integrity with myself (i.e. when I give my word to myself I keep it), I am following this one thread - no sugar for the next three months. That is all forms of refined sugar (and also maple syrup and honey, brown sugar, anything crystalline and sweet). I believe I will still allow myself Agave, as it does not spike the blood sugar level as it is absorbed, and is not a processed sugar. No refined flours either, or things made from them.

And so it begins. Knowing the path, knowing some of what is waiting, I take this first step. Spring is here.