For anyone feeling like they’re struggling with sugar
Earlier this year in January, I was on a cross-trainer in a gym and noticed Good Morning Britain discussing the fat-shaming of your partner. Within 5 minutes, the next story was about young children consuming sugar.
The side-by-side nature of these segments reminded me of the complexity that surrounds the wider discussions when it comes to our relationship with food, sugar, how we feel about ourselves and how we feel about others with regards to eating.
In recent years, we’ve seen the rise of the body confidence and anti-diet movement. So much so, that a mild backlash has started. I’ve seen two Instagram influencers recently say they now feel guilty about sharing their enthusiasm for exercising for fear of criticism.
It sometimes appears that you’re damned if you eat sugar. You’re damned if you restrict it. You’re damned if you go to the gym too much or don’t commit to exercising properly.
It seems judgement is flying around left, right and centre, which is crazy because for everyone it’s so contextual. As in, you are the person that can work out what’s best for you and acknowledge where you need to change at any point in time.
Intuitive eating — something I do advocate because it’s been powerful for me and for others I’ve seen — can if you’re not careful, turn into a ‘diet’ itself where you can shame yourself around if you’re not careful.
Oh how could I eat that when I’m not truly hungry. Damn I’m a failure to intuitive eating and should give up!
Because I spent many years talking about sugar and understanding peoples’ relationship with it. I wanted to share some thoughts for us here in 2019 around this substance. Because things have changed and we have evolved in our thinking but for some, sugar still feels like something ‘to be tackled’.
The following words offer up probably quite an unconventional round of advice and try to address a couple of common scenarios that I saw were the most problematic. I’m not a registered professional and you’ll see a lot of this is signposting, but I wanted to share.
This couldn’t be farther from a listicle of the 10 ways to quit sugar. It’s a mulling in my mind of what I’d say to a range of different people based on their challenges.
Number one: Sense check sugar as the issue
A perceived problem with eating too much sugar or gorging on chocolate in secret or not being able to ‘control’ the number of sugary items eaten.
However, it’s more often than not, never completely about the sugar.
Not so helpful sugar habits are often the symptom of other problems — body image, mental health, a few unhelpful belief systems that have never been tested (e.g. I need sugar for energy).
Emotional eating is a habitual coping mechanism used by many over a long period. Sugar is often the emotional eater’s food of choice. But seeing the problem more as sugar rather than the emotional eating can misdirect.
For anyone now feeling that they’re struggling with sugar as an isolated item, I encourage you to do wider sense check. Look at the deeper problem it’s trying to tell you and ask yourself if there are any interventions there you can take to tackle that.
Number two: If there’s binging or overeating, look at the restriction first.
There’s a reason diets are getting a bit of a backlash, because quite simply, the restriction can mess with your head.
Restriction, even in super mild forms you wouldn’t even class as a diet, can lead you down a path of ‘losing control around sugar’. As long as you judge yourself on what you’re eating, you’re at risk.
If you’re eating patterns tend to veer towards a yo-yo style format, then look towards educating yourself around diet mentality and intuitive eating. If you’re becoming overly consumed with the healthiness of your diet where it’s already pretty healthy, try to take a step back and focus on some other hobbies or past-times that will naturally distract you.
It’s also worth checking in on how much you’re consuming content about health, diet, and exercise. Is this balanced? Do you have other hobbies in your Instagram feed? Lesson the focus and you lesson the choker that is an endless list of rules.
Number three: If you need to change your diet in terms of sugar for health reasons and feel overwhelmed, make small habitual changes and seek companions for knowledge share
A portion of my former readers were those who had just found me when suddenly they needed to quickly reduce sugar for a reason. A diabetes diagnosis or other health concern where the doctor has said ‘you need to cut down on sugar — off you go’.
I found at this point you need empathy over everything else and yes some inspiration. It’s so easy for some salad munching low sugar guru to say, hey just eat celery and carrots instead. However, when it’s such an extreme change for you, you need someone who’s going to help meet you in the middle and not make you feel bad by saying it’s really easy.
Because for you right now, it’s not — you need the understanding of where you are and encouragement to maybe make one manageable swap at a time, rather than feeling judgement around the whole of your diet or lifestyle.
See if you can find a nutritionist or even a friend to ask you lots of questions about what you like/don’t like when you tend to eat sugar etc. Then ask them to make 1–2 personalised recommendations that are a realistic compromise. Focus on these for two weeks and repeat the process slowly overtime.
Discovering new things with others is also helpful, so any FB groups or communities of those going through the same transition are a good idea to help you with a bit of accountability and new ideas.
Number four: Make lower sugar health upgrades fun for yourself (and children)
If you’re just feeling a bit meh about things, another seemingly trivial thing if you are trying to change habits or trying to encourage children to eat less sugar, is to make things fun. It’s simple, but I believe it’s really important to inject joy rather than doom into this behaviour change.
I was known as ‘Sugar Laura’ for a good four years of my life. It didn’t always make dessert time and dinner parties that fun at first. And then I learnt just to laugh and make fun of it all.
What does that mean in a practical sense?
- Repeat certain habits in a row as a game. Don’t focus on the outcome goal, just the process completion.
- Indulge yourself in some of the new interesting food innovations that hit the shelves and create habits around that new chocolate flavoured tea or anything else.
- Play around with some recipes and enjoy the mindfulness of the activity in itself
- Buddy up with a friend to hold you accountable and engage in some light banter
- Laugh at yourself lightly when you can
Number five: Recognise the value of emotional processing, mental health, and therapy
A lot of people who emailed me over the years described challenging and upsetting situations. Broken hearts, childhood difficulties, years of depression or desperation beyond measure to lose weight.
When I was emotional eating the most, I was substituting peanut butter for painful feelings around being single and lonely.
Over the years, I’ve urged lots of people to seek professional help and still do today. Find a kind person you can trust and open up to. If your workplace has an EAP (Employee Assistance Programme) then check it out. Workplaces are stepping up to the mark with regards to mental health these days, so if you have that support, use it.
Don’t be afraid of asking for help, even if it’s outside your immediate circle. There are some lovely understanding people in the world.
Originally published at https://www.laurajanethomas.com on April 5, 2019.