Sugar: My Worst Best Friend
At my first post-Covid-lockdown medical check-up, my doctor noted what we both could see, just from a casual glance. I had put on a remarkable amount of weight over the past year. Some of this was anxiety weight – eating my way through some stressful times. But, his gaze told me, I needed to be making a change.
As per usual, he didn’t take the initiative in terms of actually telling me what to do. He was more like, “What do you think you should do?” Which is great because I have zero medical or nutrition-based qualifications, so I should definitely be the one making these decisions.
ME: Well, I’m changing the way I’m eating.
DOC: Good! What are you doing?
ME: Cutting way down on sugar.
DOC: So, a low-carb diet?
ME: Heh. Good one. No, I mean I’m cutting down on cake.
DOC: Oh.
ME: And cookies.
DOC: Well, that’s good, there’s-
ME: And ice cream.
DOC: Yes.
ME: Pie, sweets – I mean, candies…
DOC: No nutritional value there-
ME: Puddings…
I suggested that losing 30 lbs would be a good start. He nodded, tapped on his keyboard. “30 lbs,” he mumbled. And that was it. My plan. Get up early, walk on a moving walkway for 20 minutes for five days a week, stay off the cake. See how far that moves the dial in two months.
If it doesn’t work, I figure I’ll just chop off my left leg. That’s got to be worth a few pounds. I’ll suggest it to my doc next time, just to see what he thinks.
The next day, as the results of my blood test come in, he’s grown a little braver, from a distance: “Recommend losing 30 pounds in three months,” he’s written in the online form. Try saying that to my face, I growl at my screen.
I gave myself the weekend to get all the sugar out of (or into) my system.
Like a playboy about to head into a monastery, like a drug addict about to spend hard months in rehab, I was a man about to (make at least an attempt to largely) give up sugar, and this was my last weekend of naturally flavored sweetened goodness. In theory.
I made a list of the things I was most going to miss, and with the help of my ever-willing accomplice (thanks, sweetheart!), I set about hunting them down.
Friday night, we sat outside at Starbucks, watching the world go by and enjoying our usual options: for me, a grande mocha, two pumps of raspberry. I call it the Anti-Toska. We talked about last year’s trip to the UK, and I marveled once more at my wife’s ability to retain sharp, interesting details of our experiences, which I can then mine and re-present as my own in blog form.
Back at home, I searched Google: Best Cinnamon Rolls Austin. The first list I came to shared my own number one pick: The Upper Crust. This would be our first stop on a Saturday Sugar Tour...well, our second, as we needed to get yet another Anti-Toska before heading on our way...You must consume sugar to consume sugar. I think Marcus Aurelius said that.
The next morning, very early – and this is my only excuse, I find myself flummoxed by the front door of the Upper Crust. This seems very badly designed, I think, as I push on both door in the double-door setup and nothing moves. I have to grip a side of the door with my fingertips and pull really hard to get it open. I wasn’t going to let faulty design get between me and my (“last ever”) cinnamon roll.
And yes, it was indeed the exit door; and yes there was indeed a clearly marked entrance door 10 feet further down, but no one was rude enough to mention it. This is your brain on sugar. They could recognize a middle-aged man on a probably doomed lost weekend of sugar, pastry, and raspberry pumps, and they turned the other way.
The intense young baker behind the counter handed over my pastry prize and pointed at my chest.
“En-joy,” he said, intensely. Here was a man who understood a noble quest.
I was sugared up; I was over-sweetened; I was riding high on the sweet white crystals. I was full to overflowing.
My wife asked, “Is this the last day of sugar or the first day of no sugar?”
“It’s hard to know,” I mumbled as I steeled myself for the psychological internal crash, for the other sugar cube to drop.
“So should I bake some chocolate chip cookies?”
“Yes...yes, you should.”
So, we watched Zootopia and ate my (not really) last ever cookies. It was a good (temporary) end to my run of 40+ years of cakes, biscuits, desserts, and pancakes.
The next morning, Monday, 7.15am, I was on the treadmill. As a false start or a genuine turning over of a new leaf, time alone would tell. There were 30 lbs that had to go before I would impress my doctor. And after that? Who knew? I was taking it one step on the treadmill at a time. And, to be completely honest, I never imagined I’d be even a little bit successful.
Some people would call this defeatist thinking. Or a self-fulfilling prophesy. But I call it “being right”.
This is the hard truth of the sweet stuff. The idea of the treat is better than the treat itself, almost every time. It’s like the three-bite rule, which may or may not be a real thing, but a friend of mine told me about it years ago. The first three bites (or sips) of a tasty thing are awesome – after that, the pleasure subsides. Three bites of cheesecake are awesome; the whole slice is a grind. Three sips of thick, comforting cocoa are impossible to better; drinking the whole mug becomes a by-rote process. And you feel a little sick at the end.
I think about this a week or so later when I think of having some shortbread cookies with my Friday afternoon coffee. And then I have a banana instead, which might have the same amount of sugar, who knows? What I do know is that you shouldn’t dunk your banana in a cup of hot coffee.
Not a euphemism, but could be a euphemism.
One difference from previous efforts to get off the sweet is that I’m partnering better eating with some kind of half-arsed exercise regime. The treadmill is out of its semi-storage world and back front and center, every week day. 20 minutes of purposeful striding and podcasts, every step recorded on my Apple Watch. More or less. Sometimes when I think I’m exercising, my watch is not convinced and so doesn’t give me credit for it. These I consider wasted steps.
But, yes, I added an Apple Watch to my collection of “gadgets I must have to do this thing right”. I didn’t originally see the point of Apple Watches, but then my wife wanted one to track her exercising. So I went with her to pick one up, the salesperson told us there was a two-for-one deal, and now we both have an Apple Watch.
For full price, I don’t think I’d recommend them. There are cheaper options out there that do much the same thing. For half-price, I love my Apple Watch. It measures my steps, my heart rate, how often I take a standing break during the day. It congratulates me when I meet or beat my daily goals. It enquires about my health if I don’t move my little tracking bars. It informs me, without judgement, that I’m not getting enough sleep.
It’s measuring my life, and I love it.
The worst thing to happen to my fitness levels in this period was moving from a small apartment to a nice little rented detached house in a fancy part of town. And we have a yard – which, for me, will be referred to as “a garden”.
This garden has been life changing. Gone are the four walks a day we had to give the pugs when we lived on the second floor of an apartment block. Three or more times a day now, we let them run around on grass, barking at any suspicious folk that pass by (which is everyone; pugs are apparently not a trusting breed). In the evening, we take them for an actual walk. They have each lost weight with this new system
I…well. I have not.
Because I have also gone from four walks a day down to one. But I am not running around my garden shouting at strangers. But perhaps I should. On January 1, I did what millions of people all over the world do on New Year’s Day: I stood on a scale for the first time in months. I was not expecting good news; it’s been a long time since I expected to be happy based on what my scales tell me. And I had not been totally virtuous in my calorific consumption. But the bad news I got was 10lbs worse than I was expecting.
So back on the skinny horse. Again.
My brother-in-law talks about two days of fasting. Which are really two days of eating food that makes you wish you hadn’t bothered. Anything that’s close to calorie-free – so, salads, essentially. And, as I prepare my first batch on a Sunday evening for the new start of a new week in a new year, I feel that familiar misguided smug feeling of Finally Doing Something. This time it’s going to be easy. I’ll eat salads on a Tuesday and a Thursday, which will go well with the exercising I’m now doing Monday, Wednesday, Friday.
One thing I learn in the kitchen that evening is that making salads is good for my morale. I feel great chopping up the veg, roasting the chicken, mixing it all together in little daily servings for the week. I feel righteous. I feel like a good person. This is why really healthy people are so incredibly smug. I get it now. They really are better than us.
But, on the other hand, at least on my team we get cake.
In two weeks, according to my bathroom scales, which are approximate at best, I have lost three pounds. Suddenly I feel svelte, Olympian; this weight-loss thing is easy. I just had to find a way that worked for me.
That night, I have a couple of slices of pizza as a reward. I have earned this.
The long hours of heartburn-induced sleeplessness that follow are a justified and entirely deserved punishment.
And life goes on in much that way for a long time. I try lunchtime salads and then give up and just eat nuts and fruit like I’m a castaway. And then I snack as I make dinner...and just about get to the end of my evening meal before mentally checking if there’s any ice cream in the fridge.
It’s not really dieting itself that’s hard; it’s the breaking of habits that have developed over 50-odd years. That’s what they should be developing pills for – not appetite suppression, not super-strong-pee-pills – but pills that can break bad habits. Do that and you’re talking epi-pen levels of profit.
Because all it takes is one not-great weekend and the fragile wall of my self-control comes tumbling down. Having to work all Saturday afternoon? Then I deserve to go out and feast! Sunday afternoon as well? Beer and pizza!
And a Monday feeling like a swollen whale washed up on a particularly judgmental beach.
It’s come to this: stronger actions are needed. I resolve to cut out all sugar - all cakes, all biscuits, puddings, desserts, sugary cereals, sugary sodas. “And your cocoa and your weekend mocha with the two pumps of raspberry?” my wife wonders.
Obviously not. I want to lengthen my life, I tell her, not hate my life.
But here we are again. On a familiar-looking road following a familiar plan to a predestined final location. The land of occasional lunchtime sugary treats and eventual weekend binges. Follow me – I’ve been here before.
