What Sugar Does

            Soft serve ice cream in a waffle cone.  Hershey’s chocolate nuggets.  Bakery monster cookie.  Concrete (vanilla custard with cookie dough).  Delicious, right?

            Yes, and for me, deadly.  Since stay-at-home and social distancing started seven weeks ago, I’ve been turning to sugar for comfort.  When my son and I venture out for essential errands, somehow a fast food stop has become part of our routine.  I need an occasional treat during this stressful time, right?

            Occasional probably would be alright.  But somehow, occasional has morphed into daily, at least since I foolishly purchased a big bag of Hershey’s nuggets.  The remarkable self-control I exercised for an entire year followed by less remarkable self-control for a second year has vanished.

            Two years ago, I radically changed my eating habits, majoring in fresh, non-starchy vegetables, lean protein, and heart-healthy fats while completely cutting out processed foods, refined carbohydrates, and sugar.  By completely, I mean completely: no packaged foods with more than five ingredients, none of which could be sugar, flour, or artificial ingredients.  The motivator was a whole-body breakout of eczema.  Steroids had made me very sick, and I could not face the next line of treatment (oral chemotherapy), so I decided to try an elimination diet.

            The eczema very slowly faded away over a period of months.  However, most of my fibromyalgia pain and fatigue disappeared in a week.  I felt better than I had in over twenty years.  Gone were exhaustion and malaise.  Gone was most of the daily pain that had plagued me for over twenty years.  Feeling so much better kept me supremely motivated to stay on my new way of eating . . . for the first year, at least, in which I effortlessly shed twenty pounds.

            I began breaking the rules during a lovely twelve-day vacation at my brother’s place on Whidbey Island back in July 2019.  Still maintaining a healthy diet, I felt no ill effects of the sugary treats I enjoyed that week.  When I returned home, it was harder to stay on the wagon, though I did for the most part.  Well, that’s not entirely true.  My eating standards relaxed more as the year went on.

            And then came the pandemic.  My unhealthy way of coping with stress resurfaced with a vengeance, and my self-control disappeared.  At least I retained my cooking at home healthy habits, but verboten* treats kept finding their way into my grocery cart, and drive-through ice cream treats became the rule instead of the exception.

            Yesterday, my routine check-up with my primary care provider revealed just how much weight I have gained back.  You would think that would put a brake on my consumption of sweets, but no.  A large soft-serve waffle cone followed my appointment that afternoon, and an undisclosed number of Hershey nuggets closed my evening.

            This morning was the worst yet.  My body felt like aching lead.  All I wanted to do was crawl back into bed . . . and I did, after a healthy breakfast.  (Here I must admit that the crawling back into bed has become a daily habit.)  My brain feels sluggish.  Even caffeine does not kickstart my afternoon.  My jeans are tighter, and if it were not for a Zoom meeting that starts in an hour and twelve more research papers to grade in the next few days, I would go back to bed.

            When I finally got up late this morning, a title popped into my mind: “What Sugar Does.”  The sudden appearance of titles usually means it is time to write.  Writing is a stress reliever for me, so if more blogs start to appear, it likely means that I’m turning to blogging rather than sugar to help me through the day.  Let’s hope that will be the case.

*German for "forbidden"