'What would your attitude to a substance that, if ingested, would immediately double your waist size as well as your risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes, and make you a candidate for Alzheimer's disease and a range of cancers...sugar won't do that to you immediately you need to remain addicted for 20 years (in most cases)' [pg 40, Quit Plan]
Bother, I'm over 20 years old!
He goes on to say that 'once you are no longer an addict, it's very hard to see any benefit at all...The sugar hit momentarily returns you to normal; it doesn't lift you to a better place. If sugar wasn't part of your life, you would feel 'better' all the time. You want sugar because it takes to a better place (for a moment or two), but the very act of taking it pushes you to a worse place until you have it again."
Please forgive me for quoting so much from his book but it really is so crucial to my journey. I have to see my addiction another way. I have to reconsider my whole relationship to sugar.
On page 42, he talks about the need to 'Perform the flip', in regards to your attitude. I quote:
"So, there are a lot of downsides to sugar addiction and the only upside is that you feel normal when you have a hit. Do you really have cause to feel deprived? No, but willpower diets demand that you feel deprived...The only way to break the addiction is to perform a Necker Cube flip and see the co-called deprivation as a desire not to be poisoned. Or you could consider yourself to be suffering from an intolerance to fructose, and when you consume it you become fat, bloated, lethargic and sick... In that sense, we are all fructose-intolerant, and if thinking about it like that helps you stay away from the addictive toxin in your diet, then it is an important mental tool in your armoury for getting through withdrawal.
If you want to succeed, you mustn't feel you are being deprived of anything. You need to take pity on the poor hopeless addicts who are all around you ingesting poison. You need to view any offering of sugar not as a temptation to be overcome but as an attempt to poison you (perhaps a little extreme, but you get the idea).
So don't feel deprived. You are not giving up anything. You are simply stopping a dangerous and harmful addiction. If you have the right attitude, staying sugar-free becomes a lot easier than you could possibly imagine."
Rule 1: Believe you are not being deprived or Have the right attitude.
I've read David Gillespie's 'Sweet Poison' and 'The Sweet Poison Quit Plan' books. This is about my journey into sugar awareness. I am the biggest sugar addict out so it should be quite a ride! [I took this photo at Yosemite National Park in the USA. I like the way that the river can go two ways here just like me, at a crossroad, trying to change my whole way of eating]
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