Sugarholics Anonymous, anyone?

A query by sphynxcatvp reminded me that I haven’t posted anything about this on LJ yet. I’ve had a lot of other things going on. But I am now an addict in recovery. I’ve completely given up refined sugar and chocolate. No cheating, either–no artificial or substitute sweeteners. They only encourage the psychological craving. I bake with honey or molasses, although I try to minimize the amount I use–this is for bread, not cookies or desserts. I added sugar and chocolate to my banned list (along with transfats, corn syrup, refined wheat and refined rice) on September 28th. Today is my 18th day of total sucriety.

I’ve tried giving up chocolate (but not sugar per se) before, and I fell off the wagon after a couple of months. I am a hopeless addict. I’ve been able to cut back on chocolate but not stop altogether, and when things got stressful, my chocolate intake skyrocketed. The absolutist, “zero tolerance” method is the only thing that works with addictions.

I made this decision because my body chemistry is changing, and I was gaining weight despite the fact that I’m ratcheting up the workouts as much as I can now, and trying to cut back on food. My meals are smaller and my workouts are harder, but my weight–fat weight, not lean–was still creeping up. Menopause changes all the rules. Diabetes also runs on both sides of my family. It was time to ditch the sugar.

I’ve been doing fairly well so far–no cravings, no temptations, although I did have one dream about eating sweets, and awakened with a sinking sense of having screwed up until I realized I’d only dreamed it. I used to have those dreams when I did long fasts, too. But one effect caught me by surprise.

When I was much younger, I was prone to fairly severe depressions. For many years now, I have not been troubled by these, although I certainly had other emotional moods around stressful circumstances in my life. But last week, I started to feel very depressed–so down that I was on the verge of tears from time to time. This went on for several days while I prepped for Albacon, and I couldn’t get psyched for the convention at all. I had this awful sense of looming dread. I attributed it to the political and economic news, and I’m sure that had something to do with my mood, because I think just about everyone is being affected by what’s going on. But this seemed to be more than that.

It didn’t click until I was on the way to Albacon. I went cold turkey on sugar and chocolate, when I had been eating rather a lot of it. I’d been off them for ten days and counting. No sucrose…no theobromine…fewer carbs in general…my serotonin levels were bottoming out. I’d realized that one of the major reasons I eat at all isn’t because I’m interested in food, it’s because I want to boost the serotonin in my brain. If there was something like an epi-pen that would allow me to get an instant “serotonin fix,” I probably wouldn’t eat for days.

Once I figured that out, I felt a bit better, because realizing the cause gave me a sense of perspective. But I’ll be interested to see how this goes, and how different I feel after two months, and six months. I think my body chemistry is going to change a lot.