“Part of the ingenuity of any addictive drug is to fool you into believing that life without it won’t be as enjoyable” ~Alan Carr
“I’m okay, thanks.”
See that? I just turned down a Tony’s Chocolonely from our family advent calendar.
I don’t care that it’s a white raspberry popping candy flavor I have never, ever tried before.
I don’t care that I remember being a kid, opening chocolate coins from my stocking.
I don’t care!
Because this year, I’m going into the holiday month already sugar-free. And I am tentatively walking on air about it!!
I’m forty-five, and it’s taken a lot of bingeing and secret eating, regret, and shame to get here.
Shame when the kids accused each other of having stolen bits of their Easter eggs. (I kept my head down, unstacking the dishwasher.)
Shame when I found a whole box of Green & Black’s bars in my husband’s office, because if he buys a treat, I won’t leave him any.
Shame when I had my head in the fridge, scooping teaspoonfuls of Eton mess into my mouth last birthday, while everyone else was enjoying the barbecue in the garden.
Shame because being forty-five and still being silly about kids’ treat food feels ridiculous. Trivial.
But I bet I’m not alone.
I bet I’m not the only middle-aged woman who has Googled “addictive personality,” “food,” and “overeating.”
I bet I’m not the only person who has worked from home, kidding herself that she ‘needs’ a few tiles of 85% chocolate “for the energy boost.”
I expect I’m not the only perimenopausal gal allowing disrupted sleep to turn her into a cookie monster.
I know I’m not the only one who has quit alcohol only to fixate on sugar.
So, if you’re struggling with sugar addiction right now, I feel your pain. I was obsessed too.
But right now, it’s like a switch has flipped in my head, and doing holidays without sugar seems possible. What’s changed? I gifted myself some new beliefs.
Let me share the little self-talk phrases I started to use in case you’re struggling with sugar too.
Maybe you’re not ready for sugar-free holidays. I admit it’s kind of radical, and I’m not saying anyone else ‘should’ do it. But maybe you’re thinking of giving it up next year. Or you’re wondering if it’s possible to let go of some of your attachment to it.
If so, here are twelve brand new phrases to say to yourself.
1. “Holidays are just days of my life.”
I was always trying to allow sugar in my life because I wanted to eat it normally. But ‘normal’ never stayed that way for long.
Every time there was a holiday—Valentine’s, Easter, summer, Halloween, Christmas—I’d start having loads of tiny ‘treats’ that added up to a ton of rubbish and a spiraling habit.
From my first morning honey-laden cocoa until my last secret (what’s in the kids’ treat drawer? Broken Oreos!) self-reward for cleaning the kitchen after dinner, sugar would overrun my days like an invasion of ants.
Eventually, I admitted my position was wishy-washy. I was trying to have my cake and not eat it.
It was a relief to finally be decisive and make a clear code of conduct for myself around sugar, based on what I could realistically expect myself to handle. One way of behaving every day. Including holidays.
2. “I’m deciding what I think about this now.”
The government pays subsidies to the sugar industry. It does international trade deals. We get advertised to, and so we get the message:
“Buy more sugar.”
But their health messaging is the opposite:
“Individuals should make better decisions.”
I realized I was asking a ton from my own free will to resist it, given how ‘everywhere’ it is. I wasn’t being fair to myself when I called myself a willpower weakling. The odds aren’t stacked in favor of resistance.
It was time to stop trying to please society and listen to my own messages.
3. “This is just a commercial product.”
When I looked at the shelves of shiny treats in the supermarket, I saw how clever the marketing is.
Shiny wrappers. Expensive boxes. It reminded me of how cigarettes boxes suggest luxury—how misleading that now looks!
Seasonal flavors keep us wanting ‘new’ experiences: “Look, Mum, this Ferrero Rocher is like a giant Christmas tree bauble. Can we get one?”
I’ve spent my life believing these foods mean treats, fun, celebration, “I love you,” “Let’s relax and share something,” and “life is good.”
But if you look past the wrappers, it’s just stuff. Chocolate is just brown stuff, like wax. Candy is just colored chewy stuff, like putty. It means nothing.
4. “‘Fun’ looks like freedom.”
I imagined chocolate Brazils wrapped in newspaper instead of shiny purple foil.
I visualized all the shops for miles around stacked with sweets, and I could see that they weren’t rare or special but in endless supply.
And I stopped telling myself they were ‘fun.’ Sugar addiction is about as much fun as having a constant snotty head cold. It’s with you everywhere you go, ruining your concentration and making you feel ever so slightly physically gross.
Sure, it’s less life-threatening than other addictions. But it’s misery-making, and that’s serious.
5. “Having more just makes you want more.”
I dove into research on whether sugar is actually addictive. Short answer: It is.
You get withdrawal, receptors in your brain become sensitized… All the markers are there. That’s why my urge to have a second treat is always even stronger than the idea to go get the first one!
I had tried to normalize sugar many times. I had kept snacks stocked at home to stop them feeling off-limits. But they never lost their charm.
Now I understood why eating more of it didn’t make me more blasé, as I’d hoped.
6. “I stop when I decide to stop.”
I also read up on whether our bodies can actually send signals of ‘satisfied’ around sugar.
Surprise, surprise: They can’t.
(Speedy science lesson: Our bodies break down sugar into glucose and fructose. It’s about 50/50. The glucose digestion process has an enzyme, PFK-1, to prevent us from overconsuming it. But the fructose part doesn’t have any signal to stop.)
I began to wonder whether eating sugar intuitively was even achievable.
I decided to keep listening to my hunger and fullness around other foods, but not expect them to help me out much around treats.
7. “I only eat edible food.”
I love the idea that all foods are morally neutral. So I didn’t think of sugar as ‘bad’ or tell my kids they shouldn’t have any. I just quietly switched my perspective to no longer thinking of sugar as an edible substance.
Just because it doesn’t kill you doesn’t mean it’s edible.
I ate toothpaste as a kid: Survived. Not edible.
I once drank aftershave at a party in my teens to try to get drunk. Wasn’t even sick. But it’s still not on my menu of drinks for humans.
Sugar is a thing, not a food. That’s how I think of it now.
8. “I’m not a dog, and I don’t need a treat.”
My overeating is largely emotional: the harder I work, the more I rely on food to give me a feeling of reward.
With sugary snacks, I was treating myself like a pet, giving biscuits for good behavior. Sugar-coating my toxic habit of overworking.
Then, during the holidays, when I couldn’t get my usual dopamine hits from ticking off achievements at work, I was at a loss for how to properly relax and was more vulnerable to receiving reward feelings from sugar.
I learned to start giving myself inner high fives instead. And I now expect the first few days of any holiday to feel a bit empty too. That’s normal while I adjust.
9. “Let me see how quickly this passes.”
This was fun.
I felt as though once I had an idea like “leftover banana bread!” I couldn’t settle or focus on my work until I’d scratched the itch.
I’m pretty experienced at surfing urges—I mentioned I gave up drinking a few years ago, right? That was good practice.
But with sugar obsession, my ‘urge tolerance muscle’ felt very limp indeed.
To my amazement, as I made my way through my first two or three days without sugar, the urges died down unbelievably quickly.
I realized my brain sent up thoughts of sugary treats like a puppy that’s used to begging. But puppies are really trainable. They adapt quickly once you stop feeding them under the table.
10. “I’m the authority on feeding myself.”
Nobody told me to.
I didn’t do it to lose weight.
I didn’t do it because I thought I ‘should.’
I didn’t do it out of fear for my health or my teeth.
I didn’t preach about it (or even dare to announce it) to my family.
I didn’t join an online challenge that made me accountable to a community.
I did it so that I have less food noise in my brain. That’s enough of a reason.
11. “Ha ha, brain, nice try!”
I made a previous attempt to give up sugar last January. February 1st, bang! I fell for my brain’s BS.
“I wonder what that dark chocolate tastes like. I can’t remember.”
“You’ve done so well; having just one little bit won’t hurt.”
“Maybe you can eat it normally now—just have a bit from time to time.”
Then, before I knew it, I was having a little all the time again. Throwing handfuls of chocolate chips at my face while the kettle boiled. A ‘dessert’ item after every meal.
This time, I’m ready for the persuasion attempts. I get it, brain. You remember the taste. But, lovingly, no.
12. “I already walked through a doorway.”
Last February, it was as if I’d gotten to my mental finish line, so then I thought I could relax.
Relax, relapse, collapse.
So this time, I decided not to imagine an end point.
I imagined walking through a doorway, and that my life with sugar was already behind me, and I was moving forward one day at a time.
So far, so good.
It actually felt refreshing to tell myself the truth about it all.
I don’t know if it’s forever. I haven’t made a vow or gotten a tattoo.
Don’t label me the ‘no-sugar’ person and then call me a hypocrite if I change strategy later on in my life.
Because I’m not saying I’ve found the way and that you should do what I do. I truly believe that how we eat shouldn’t be about listening to other people’s magic solutions or expert advice.
For me, it is a matter of trial-and-error, evaluating, refining my system, and finding habits and lifestyle choices that I can sustain.
So, this is what I’m doing this holiday. It’s an experiment, and it feels fun to me.
This year, I’m actually looking forward to connecting with the people more than the food.