Today I welcome JAINA from the OH MY BODY blog on a subject she knows well. We leave him the place. Find her on her blog
My name is Jaina . I am a former obese trying to stabilize her weight. But I leave with an additional difficulty. Because I am addicted to sugar . Margaux invited me to tell you about my fight. Throughout my story, I want to warn you about sugar and the restrictive diet trap.
What is the sugar addiction?
Who can resist a nice slice of chocolate cake that they put right under your nose, and its little raspberry coulis that goes well? It’s normal. Don’t panic!
Our brains are naturally programmed to be attracted to the taste of sweet. This triggers the neural circuits of pleasure and reward .
Sweet is good and it feels good!
Where the risk of addiction arises is when you start to mix the affect with the chocolate square.
All those for whom sugar is a soft toy are more vulnerable to developing an unhealthy relationship to sweet. I do.
Sweet taste, I look for it everywhere. All the time. Hungry or not, it has interfered in my relationship with food and taken an inordinate place in my life. It has become a real drug .
Like most sugar addicts, my story begins in childhood. I have always had a stronger taste for sweetness than others. No one ever turned me away from it either.
Your entourage loves you and wants to please you. So if you have a smile bigger than the sun when you are given a donut, we will keep giving it to you.
This tendency turned into a real disease addiction when I went on the Dukan diet. And yes, the famous bestselling high protein diet of the late 2000s.
Danger of a too restrictive diet for a sugar addict
In 2010, I weighed 92 kg for 1.70m and was at the bottom of the hole. I couldn’t stand my image anymore . I found the motivation to embark on a diet that promised me rapid and lasting weight loss while consuming sugar. Between this regime and me, it could only stick.
Because this regime does not impose quantity restrictions. He cuts out food groups altogether, but the rest is at will and most importantly … he encourages the use of sweeteners to stay the course.
Bingo! A diet where I could continue to make desserts and drink zero cola! So this diet didn’t teach me to control my sweet tooth at all. On the contrary, he messed it up completely, if not increased it tenfold , because he made me believe that it was not a problem.
I have to admit that it worked : 9 months later, I was down to 67 kg. A true fairy tale for the former obese that I was. I finally had the figure I dreamed of. I had taken a thousand points of self-esteem, it was magic.
Except that the fairy tale of my 25 pounds less, I paid dearly. After a restrictive diet comes the impossible stabilization and the big blow of the yoyo. My biggest fear was going back to my old weight. I didn’t know how to eat a balanced diet or measure my portions.
The worst part: I was obsessed with desserts. I thought I had to eliminate them or limit them as much as possible, but I wanted more and more.
And things started to go wrong.
Sugar, a legal hard drug
I filled a Pinterest account with more than 2,600 photos just of sweet dishes, carefully cataloged between mousses, pancakes, desserts, cookies, layer cakes …
I spent hours browsing food blogs and salivating. At the supermarket, I wandered past the cakes for ten minutes, trying to convince myself not to buy one.
And by dint of fantasizing, what had to happen happened: the cork jumped . A totally out of control excess has become two, then three, then four.
During the week I was careful, I mean very careful, really very careful. I was definitely well below the calories I was supposed to eat on a daily basis.
But as soon as I was out of the house, I lost control.
Going out with my friends had always become an opportunity to bake a completely decadent cake of 4 floors or to go to tea rooms to try out new pastries. I had to taste everything . I didn’t have one pastry, but three. I was testing what the others had taken, too.
I was like a socialite alcoholic.
All the outings were pretexts to appease my urges. And it was a friend who once pointed out to me that my problem was obvious.
What a shame to hear you say, “You know, the way you eat sweet and the way you fill up … I think you should be careful …”!
When we are in the middle of a compulsion crisis, the worst comes when our loved ones realize it. Because our daily life is denial and cover up .
As part of my job, I had to attend small buffets once a week. Each time, it was the same story: I was anxious for hours while making scenarios in my head of the number of macarons or small glasses that I could afford. And once in front of the table … I was never quite there.
It even got worse. I ended up buying all the chocolates and cakes I wanted and eating them in one evening. Quick, quick, there shouldn’t be any left over so as not to be tempted again in the following days!
This was the start of my descent into hell with bulimia.
The Sugar Detox
But the story ends well! There is a light at the end of the tunnel! It’s now been a year since I learned to manage my sugar addiction and came out of bulimia.
Detoxification is no easy feat
Especially when you travel to the other side of the world all that to find an all-you-can-eat dessert restaurant, but it is possible.
If you know you have trouble controlling yourself when you are offered sweets. If you consume a lot of added sugars in spite of yourself in your meals. Take the lead!
If you tend to think of sugary foods as emotional cuddly toys or havens. Be vigilant!
5 tips to stop eating sugar
- Track your sugar intake in a small notebook
- Get to know the good sugars
- Do not deprive yourself completely overnight and stop feeling guilty
- Surround yourself with the right people who will help you
- Consider a sweet detox to leave on a healthy basis
A healthy relationship with food, including sweet, will keep you in good health and in achieving your weight goal!
