No Sugar?!! Week One Challenge!

Audio of the blog post below, click HERE 

No sugar?! NO WAY!! 

Yes. YES WAY! 

I had to laugh when I sat down next to my friend at church today. She is doing the challenge with us and when I informed her that this week’s challenge was No Sugar, she laughed and said, “Well, I won’t be doing that!” Ahh! I love her! Many of you are probably in her same boat right now! But you just have to TRUST TO THE PROCESS! There is a method to this madness! 

I hope you will be loving and patient with yourselves during this time together. We are NOT going to bully ourselves into better behaviors! We are going to use behavioral science, our own experiences, each other’s experiences, inspiration and love! Sound like a good formula?

This month in book club we just happen to be reading an amazing book called ATOMIC HABITS: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results- An easy & proven way to build good habits & break bad ones! By James Clear. YES! Seriously. A "book club angel" dropped her copy by my door YESTERDAY! 

SO- I am going to share with you some incredibly effective and neat ways of looking at our habits and ourselves and changing for the better! Here goes…

LOTS OF TINY  (atom sized) changes to our behaviors, will have big results. He starts off with the story of the Cycling team in Great Britain made a major change in 2003 and hired a new  performance director, Dave Brailsford. From 1908-2003 they had only won 1 single gold medal in men’s cycling and were a complete shut out in the Tour de France. In fact, they were so unimpressive that a top bike manufacturer refused to sell them their bikes because they didn’t want their bikes seen ridden by the team members! YIKES! 

This new director had an approach he called “The aggregation of marginal gains” which is “the philosophy of searching for a tiny margin of improvement in everything you do.” Just improve everything that goes into riding and improve it by 1%. Well, it worked! They made changes to everything from the design of the bike seat, wiped rubbing alcohol on the tires for better grip, switched to indoor racing suits, got better pillows for better rest at night… and many more! They even hired a surgeon to teach them how to better wash their hands so they would get sick less often! There were hundreds of small changes that led to faster cyclists and even faster results! “Just five years after Brailsford took over, the British Cycling team dominated the road and track cycling events at the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing, where they won an astounding 60% of the gold medals available. Four years later, when the Olympic Games came to London, the Brits raised the bar as they set nine Olympic records and seven world records!” 

That same year a Brit won their first ever Tour de France victory and another racer won in 2014, 2015, 2016 & 2017! “In ten years the British team won 178 world championships and sixty-six Olympic and Paralympic gold medals and captured five Tour de France victories in what is considered the most successful run in cycling history.” (James Clear)

Even small differences can make big changes. It just takes a little time and that is where the patience with yourself and your body MUST come in. It takes a while for you to notice results from the microscopic changes in your body. Don’t give up before they have a chance to rise to the surface. James Clear calls this Latent Potential. You think you should see results right away but it takes longer than you think and you feel frustrated in what he calls "the valley of disappointment." (aint' that the truth?!) Meanwhile, change is on its way and it is usually more than we expect when it arrives! Just picture an ice cube on a table in a room that is 25 degrees Fahrenheit. As the room warms one little degree at a time, the ice cube just sits there, frustratingly stagnant and frozen. It looks the same at 26, 27, 28 and still 29 and 30 degrees. The room is changing and still the ice cube doesn’t. Then it hits 31 degrees and suddenly 1 degree later, BOOM, it begins to melt. You NOW see the results that were in the works the whole time! So when you get frustrated, remember you are in the valley of disappointment while you are slowly turning up the temperature. You WILL see and feel results and when you do, they will surprise you!

Ok. Next time we will talk about how we ARE NOT GOING TO WORRY ABOUT “GOALS!” I’ve always hated the word “goals”, what about you? It usually just seemed like an opportunity for me to feel bad about myself! Haha! 

This next section is my thoughts and my experiences with my relationship to food and how I have changed the way I look at it over the years. I hope throwing this stuff at the wall will stick for some of you. Especially if you have experienced any type of eating disorder like I did in my teenage years, and then again for 5 years from age 27-32. I feel like a total superhero for overcoming that monster and I pray for any of you who are struggling. It’s hard but completely and totally POSSIBLE!! Can I have a hallelujah! Call me if you ever want to talk more in detail about this!

FIRST OF ALL- Eating “right” is about LOVE. It is about treating your body like a partner in this thing called LIFE that we live together. Your body and spirit can either be in a constant battle or working together for your best life! Have you heard the phrase, the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak? What if we got the spirit and the flesh in alignment? What if they helped each other out and strengthened one another in the places where they are weakest?

One of the biggest ground breaking things I learned when I began to heal from my eating disorder is that having disordered eating is often a crutch or a distraction from deeper, more uncomfortable issues that we have zero desire to face or confront. So we eat and eat  (or starve and starve) and blame our sadness, depression or dissatisfaction with life on the food and our obsession with it. Or we blame it on our bodies. We trick ourselves into thinking that when we heal from our eating disorder we will be just fine and that keeps us from digging any deeper into scary things. Sadly, it keeps us from healing the real hurts and moving on to a much richer life! So our job is to discover what is the right question we need to be asking. And what is the question behind that question and even the question behind that one? THAT is where we start healing, from the inside out.  

For me, and maybe some of you too, it was about two things. An extraordinarily high bar that I set for myself--achievement wise and looks wise-- because I didn’t have a clue of my own true worth and value as a precious human creation of God (I had been taught my true value and worth, but I had lost it along the way). I equated my looks and achievements with my worth. SO WRONG! … and I was in a terrible marriage situation. Food was a comfort, a friend and also a punishment, a way of hurting myself, (purging too) hoping that he would see that I was sick and hurting and be kinder to me. It was a terrible “idea” (it was totally subconscious) and didn’t work anyways! Silly young and confused, Sarah. I love and honor her so much. She was doing her best. 

It wasn’t really about the food at all! It was about hidden trauma, and unhealthy ways of seeing my true self. 

One way that I was able to discover my underlying aches and pains was that I simply pray to be healed. I believe that me, letting go of the tightly held control and putting it in the hands of God, angels, and the universe, created a lot of resources and experiences to come my way that taught me how beautiful my soul was and helped me heal! I would love to write a book about it someday! I will share some of those stories with you later. 

Because of my issues, I have contemplated and introspected quite a lot about food and my relationship to it. Besides the fact that treats and snacks are so darn yummy, maybe you are like me and you ate because food kept you company. I LOVE curling up with a good book and a bowl of Corn Chex mixed with m&m’s and a diet soda with crushed ice. When you and your spouse fight a lot, like I used to, that sounds like the best night possible. It was a good endorphin or dopamine hit. Seeing WHY I eat when and how I do really helped.

When I worked at an accounting firm as the office manager, I would sometimes have to do some computer data input that was as boring as watching paint dry. I would have a little bowl of Peanut Butter m&m’s to snack on just to keep me awake and help dull the repetitive boredom of clicking and typing the same things 600 times! My sisters and I had a joke when we were little. We would say, “I’m bored, let’s eat!” How many of you are boredom eaters?

It gets so bad sometimes that I can’t drive in my car without my crushed ice and soda and a little handful of treats for the road. It’s like I need my little friends right by in case I get lonely or get stranded in the middle of the desert on my way to Fry’s.

THAT’S JUST SILLY! I AM A BIG GIRL. My friends are HUMAN and they don’t give me love handles. I think when we can step back and see the humor in the fact that we use food as friends, lovers and companions we can put it in its place. 

Food is there to nourish us, to replenish nutrients in our cells that break down and need rebuilding and repairing. It satisfies us and lets us rest. Junk food is just that, it doesn’t satisfy, it doesn’t nourish and it doesn’t heal. It leaves us more tired, more apt to store fat instead of burn it and it’s full of chemicals. 

We can start looking for other things, usually connections with actual humans (no, you are not allowed to eat them) that will fill our CRAVINGS. When things are going badly with just about anything, the answer is often “You need more connecting with humans.” Try it out. Also- we need a connection with the Divine. One that feels safe and comfortable, reliable and available. Then we are never floating out there alone in space and reaching for sugar to comfort us.

Like I said before, I have run these challenges before and I always participate fully. I have cut out sugar every time, for the whole time (except on cheat days- but I found that I felt pretty terrible on cheat days) and every time, when the challenge is over I stay off sugar (especially chocolate) for months and months… sadly, the holidays usually do me in. Then I cheat a tiny bit, then more and more and then I am back to being careless about how many sweets I put in my body and my body reflects that. I have not ever gone back to my bulimic habits since I healed 17 years ago, but I could treat my body much better! I LOVE THE WAY IT FEELS TO BE SUGAR FREE.

You will be amazed at how quickly you lose the desire for sugary things! Especially if you are exercising too. Carrots and almonds become sweet to you. Apples and grapes are almost too intense. I swear there is a switch or something in your body that tells you that “you are a healthy person now and healthy people wouldn’t do that to their body” It actually sounds kind of gross. I know you might not believe me, but once you get about 2 or 3 days into this first week, it’ll get a lot easier! It’s an addiction cycle you have to break. I am glad this challenge takes us through most of the holiday season. Hopefully I can last until Easter -and hopefully past it- which is usually a really hard one for me. 

The inevitable pendulum swing… Be careful of extremes. My husband and I are always talking about balance. The answer is always BALANCE! It’s important to allow ourselves to indulge, to relax, to have a little fun. This is not a Nazi regime. We don’t want to slip into anorexic and super restrictive eating. That is so dangerous. just as I was healing from my bulimia, but still being pretty hard on my body, and I had a trainer at the gym. I was also eating very low carb. I was lean and strong but I was working so so so hard at it. One day, I had a salad at lunch and it came with some pita bread. I ate it. Oh my goodness, I felt so amazingly calm and relaxed that afternoon. I probably took a nap and slept like a baby. Looking back, I realized I had been restricting way too much and my body was always amped up and on edge. The precursors for serotonin (which our brains need to feel good) are in bread and those babies hit my system like a sweet lullaby. I am glad I had that experience to realize how starving I was.

On the other extreme, after I had been doing the challenge for a while, I allowed myself to have a couple small slices of cheesecake because my neighbor was having a dessert party and I didn’t want to be rude and not even try any! Haha! Oh man, I felt sooo gross afterwards and I just kept thinking to myself, how did I used to eat sugar (and fat) like this all the time and not just want die? I think we get so used to functioning with too much of this or too little of that, and then when we find that balance we realize how much better, lighter and more fun it is to live in the balanced center! Not massive, cruel restrictions, not childish, silly indulgence all the time either. It is possible because that’s what our bodies were made for!

LITTLE TRICKS OF THE TRADE

• Not buying things that are too tempting
• Shopping when we are full.
• Don’t turn a cheat day into a GO CRAZY with desserts day

QUESTIONS TO ASK OURSELVES

• WHY am I craving (or eating) this food right now? 
• Am I actually hungry or just bored, lonely, depressed, lashing out?
• Is food a reward or a punishment? 
• What is a better way to view food and my relationship with it
• What am I really trying to distract myself from? 
• What is the underlying thing I don’t want to look at right now?
• Is now the time? If not now, when?

I love you! You can do this! Stay tuned for more stories, ah ha moments, memes and miracles!! Please share your thoughts on the blog comments or facebook group or you can email me back! I would love to hear from you and answer any questions you have too. 

GOOD LUCK and have a great week and don't hate me!!

Love-

Sarah