How It All Started

Mine is a lifelong struggle with weight.  As a child, I don't remember be overly heavy, but as a teenager, the pounds started creeping on.  I am a solid gal with a nice strong bone structure.  Being thin has never been a quest of mine.  Being healthy and happy certainly is.  Especially now that I have three children of my own.  I want to be able to keep up with them and be around to enjoy their lives. 

I have tried multiple diets and weight-loss plans.  Too many to really list, but I will say that the dieting portion of my life has spanned from around the age of 10 until I was 35.  Twenty-five years of torture with only a few bright spots.  At age 35, I finally realized that it was detrimental to my health to try to be on any type of diet.  All I had to do was think "food restriction" and I would be off on some type of binge.  So I gave up any effort in the diet area and floated along (including two pregnancies) for 8 years of not trying to diet at all.  Interestingly, my weight stabilized and I remained within a 10 pound range during this time.  The problem was, I was still in the morbidly obese range and definitely not getting the most enjoyment out of my life.

After having my children, I felt a strong need to provide them the best opportunities to grow which included wanting them to have the best possible nutrition.  I floundered in this area and struggled with the best way to provide healthy food.  Some times I found myself scouring the grocery stores for organic apples and making my own bread.  Some times I found myself barely able to feed my kids fast-food for most meals of the day.  Our lives ran the gambit of nutrition:  healthy to poison. 

At one point, I discovered a menu service called The Fresh 20.  This great website provides a weekly menu and grocery list of healthy meals.  I wasn't good at actually using the menus, but I could see how great they were and continued to receive their menus and emails.  During the early part of 2014, I received an email from The Fresh 20 that talked about a new book called "The Blood Sugar Solution 10-Day Detox Diet" by Mark Hyman, MD.  I went to Amazon and read the book synopsis and was instantly intrigued.  I downloaded the kindle e-book and read straight through.  What Dr. Hyman discussed felt so right to me.  I have always known that I had a severe weakness when it comes to sugar.  I was amazed to read and find that there is scientific research available to show that sugar can be 8 times more addictive than heroin.  And unlike detoxing from drugs or alcohol, you cannot be locked in a room without food for 10 days.  I became convinced that I was and will always be a sugar addict.  And, Dr. Hyman's 10 day detox seemed to have arrived in my life at the exact time that I felt I could get prepared and break my sugar habit - forever. 

Knowing and doing are two completely different things.  I spent over a month planning and preparing and eating my way through holidays and family events.  Sugar has been such an ingrained part of my life, I became terrified at how I would be able to move forward without it as a crutch.  But I knew it was exactly what I and my family needed right now.  My sweet husband even became convinced that this was what we needed to do and agreed to go through the detox with me - as long as I would provide exactly what he needed to eat when he needed to eat it.  Lol! 

April 8, 2014, is a day that will go down as one of the top 5 days that changed my life.  I will admit that the weekend preceding this date found me scarfing down bags of Easter candy including an entire bag of Reese's peanut butter eggs.  I will also readily admit that I cried and mourned my loss of sugar.  That first ten days was a complete roller-coaster of emotions.  Anger, cravings, sorrow, depression, etc.  The first two days were certainly the worst, which was not helped at all by the fact that I had binged heavily on sugar that last weekend.  The first morning, I made the first smoothie listed in Dr. Hyman's book and it was horrible (at least to me on that day).  But we stuck it out and followed the day through with a salad for lunch and a dinner of lean protein and lots of non-starchy vegetables.  The second morning, the smoothie was even worse (sorry Dr. Hyman) and I wasn't able to even choke down half of it.  The third day, I finally hit on a combination of items from three different smoothie recipes and finally started to feel like I could do this.  I began to feel better, physically and emotionally.  The changes in my body were quick and amazing. 

We stuck it out through the ten days and haven't looked back yet.  The first ten days, we didn't eat any grains, dairy, or fruit (with the exception of berries in our morning smoothie).  But we were never hungry.  Snacks included nuts and fresh veggies.  Lunch was usually a huge salad with lots of dark greens, boiled eggs, avocado, nuts or sunflower seeds, veggies and oil and vinegar for a dressing.  Dinner was fish or chicken and occasionally beef with lots of non-starchy vegetables.  And lots of water.

My main goal for this detox was to break my sugar addiction.  Other goals were to feel better and lose weight.  And weight I did lose:  15.2 lbs. in the first 10 days to be exact!  My husband lost 3.9 lbs. during the same time so (as all diet plans will say) results are not typical.  He doesn't have nearly as much to lose and takes some medications that make it harder to lose.  But we are both feeling so much better.  Now, seven weeks later, we have worked grains, dairy and fruit back into our diet and I am down a total of 24 lbs. (husband is down 10 lbs.)  Food is tasting wonderful and I really love working to solve "sugar" dilemmas.  Which led me to creating this blog.  Here, I am hoping to share what I have learned to help someone else with their quest to become free of a sugar addiction.  There is lots to learn and know and I certainly only know and understand the very tip of the iceberg.  I welcome any ideas as we move forward in this quest for health together.