Day 1 – Dry July and I Quit Sugar

I am yet to decide if it was a stroke of brilliance or a moment of insanity when I decided to do Dry July and get serious about quitting my sugar habit all at once. Whichever it was I find myself here at 8:22pm on 1^st July 2013 sipping on tea instead of my usual scotch straight up. I’d probably be on my second by now. The second of what has become far too many drinks. Every day. No, no I’m not an alcoholic. I function in a professional job & parent my two children very responsibly all day without a drink. But come night time I like to put my feet up & have a drink, like many people. And at this point in time I’m finding I am just drinking too much. I have tried deciding to only have 1 or 2 drinks but this doesn’t work. 1 or 2 lowers your resolve and you think “Well I’ve had 1, I might as well have another....” until you realise that you’re on your 5th or 6^th scotch. I am a small female, & can easily trot off to bed after 6 drinks feeling very little affect from the alcohol. I wake without a hangover. And you know, it’s not ok. Gone are the days when having what we call in Australia “piss fitness” (alcohol tolerance) is a desirable character trait. Yet I can still drink many men under the table. And while this has served as a source of pride for many years, it really shouldn’t be. My poor liver!

Nutritionally I am a health nut. I eat mostly organic, I cook almost everything from scratch (including condiments & stock) & I don’t use packets. I believe in whole foods, full fat dairy, coconut products, nuts, seeds, veggies, fruit and meat. Thanks to my 4 year old celiac son we eat gluten free, & my IBS symptoms which plagued my 20s have almost disappeared. I eat healthy gluten free grains like amaranth, quinoa & buckwheat. But even so, my cravings are out of control. And once I get started, I can’t stop. Last week I ate a brie. Like, a whole brie. And it’s not the first time I’ve done that. I have “accidentally” eaten a raw cheesecake across the course of a day. Once I start I’m like a demon possessed. And that’s not cool.

See a parallel between those two paragraphs? I control everything I eat and drink. Until I don’t. And then I am totally out of control, with no willpower. And it has to stop.

For the longest time, the health industry has focussed on low fat and low sugar foods. And in the creation of these foods, artificial additives, colours, flavours, preservatives & sweeteners have taken centre stage in the modern “healthy” diet. And that is not how I roll. I could never reconcile being healthy with drinking a diet coke, eating microwaved frozen meals or spreading low fat sugary goo full of unidentifiable ingredients & labelled “mayonnaise” on my sandwich. So I really struggle to find a “fit” when I have been looking for a framework to help “tweak” my diet. And I also can’t work out exactly WHY I get cravings & am out of control.

And then, only very recently, I have found a book called “I Quit Sugar” by Sarah Wilson. And as I read Sarah’s description of her former self, her eating habits and her cravings, it was like looking in a mirror. I could have written it myself. And Lo and behold, in the pages I found gorgeous, whole, healthy recipes, full of REAL ingredients, most of which I had in my cupboard. And it is backed up by science, science that makes sense and science that I can respect. So for the last 2 weeks I’ve been playing around a bit with cutting out most sugars. And today I started for real.

This weekend I have made tomato ketchup (for my boys mostly, but after checking the quantity of sugar in the commercial stuff it is well worth it), coconut butter & coco-nutty granola in preparation for the week ahead. The one thing I’m not doing is giving up the 1 teaspoon of xylitol (not sugar) I have in my tea. I cannot – CANNOT – give up alcohol, sugar AND tea (because I can’t stand tea without it). But all other sugars and sweet flavours (yes, even fruit – a struggle for this “fruit bat”) are GONE.

My hope is that by keeping a blog about this, by posting recipes & pictures of what I’m eating as well as writing about what I’m doing & how I’m feeling, I can reflect and learn WHY I crave these things, WHY I struggle at one drink (and one piece of cheese). And hopefully, after 31 days, I will be able to have a glass of wine of an evening (without having to drink the whole bottle).