I’m about to mark my sixth month of sugar sobriety. That may not impress those afflicted with more consequential addictions, but it’s an important milestone. I made it halfway through an entire year. I’ve never survived this many days without eating refined sugar. I started writing about my struggle to kick sugar out of my life in case it may help others similarly afflicted.
When I search “sugar addiction” on the innerwebs, I find loads of posts on health websites about how to stop eating sugar but no stories from people who have kicked their addiction. The “expert” advice all sounds the same: eat more vegetables, cut out soda, don’t eat candy, read ingredient labels, don’t buy processed food, stop eating ice cream, cake, pie, etc. Worthless advice, at least for me.
I know how to stop eating sugar. It’s obvious. Stop. Eating. Foods. Containing. Refined. Sugar. Anyone can do it. End of story.
Ha. Nope. Not me.
Food is personal and emotional. But those “how to” articles that tell us, dear readers, how to quit sugar, rarely address the emotional side of food. Why do we love sugar so much? It tastes good, yeah, but I associate sweet treats with rewards — a sweet dessert after we clean our plate, a visit to the ice cream shop, a pouf of cotton candy at the county fair, a candy bar at midnight while studying for an exam. If you’re a sugar addict, you know all this. What I’ve needed help with, and never found, was how to cut out eating sugar without cutting out all my happy sweet-sugar-eating memories, divorcing my life from those moments when, say, fresh from the beach, I cooled off with a root beer float, or a cake of sweet, gooey fudge. I want to repeat those moments when I go to the beach, but alas, I can’t. Those days are gone.
What has worked for me, so far, is to take it One Day at a Time. That approach got me through those first terrible weeks when my body craved sugar intensely. I managed to keep those unbearable cravings at bay by focusing on getting through One Day at a Time. That’s still my approach, but I’ll admit, it’s easier. I don’t think about eating sugar all the time. It’s become a habit to bypass deserts and other sweets. And whenever I’m tempted (all the time), I tell myself that I can’t allow myself to fall down that bottomless hole into sugar-sweetened misery again. My health depends on it, as does my mental health. I can’t give up.
However, I allow myself a few slight indulgences that I’ve decided are OK. They keep me from feeling utterly deprived. One indulgence (a necessity for me) is that I allow myself to eat one Kind bar a day. Just one, but it’s enough. It has 8 grams of refined sugar, well below the 18-gram-per-day limit that my nutritionist says is the amount of sugar an adult body can metabolize daily without damaging our health.
We all have comfort foods, stuff we eat because it makes us feel better, possibly because we ate it as a child, and it brings us back to the safety and security of those long-ago days when we were cared for and had no worries about careers, mortgages, paint colors, clogged drains, schools and kids.
My comfort food is cottage cheese drizzled with honey. My mother used to feed it to me as a snack after school. Some may find the flavor combination odd, but one bite brings me back to sitting opposite my mother on a high wooden chair at our beige Formica counter in our tiny kitchen when I was in elementary school.
In my made-up rules for fighting my sugar addiction, I allow myself to use small amounts of natural sweeteners, including honey, maple syrup,and date syrup. I quit using coconut sugar, which is no healthier than refined sugar made from sugar cane or beets.
I’m not sure if honey is significantly better for sugar addicts than is regular refined sugar, but I think it is. There’s a bit of nutrition in honey (none in refined sugar), and it has some health benefits when eaten in small quantities. When I really crave a sweet treat, I treat myself to my old favorite: cottage cheese drizzled with honey! This won’t work for you most likely, but it works for me.
As for my goal–stated in my first post on the subject of my sugar addiction–to create sweet desserts that contain no refined sugar, well, that’s been a bit of a bust. I have found no great sweet alternative to sugar that works in baking. Nada.
I’ve stopped using erythritol because I’m now convinced it’s just as dangerous to eat as are artificial sweeteners such as saccharin and cyclamates (remember those?) sucralose, aspartame. I was fooled by erythritol because it’s mixed with monkfruit (an OK nonnutritive sweetener), so I’d thought it was “all natural” too. But it’s not.
My main nonnutritive sweetener is SweetLeaf stevia. My nutritionist says it’s the only brand she recommends, and she does a lot of research, so I’m going with her advice. The drops contain water, organic stevia and “natural flavor,” an ingredient which makes me a bit nervous, but I’m using it for now. The powdered version contains silica, another suspicious ingredient, but it keeps the stuff from caking into a hard block.
No sweetener is perfect, so I try to choose the least harmful ones, and stevia seems OK for now.
I’ve been making avocado mousses with stevia and dates, which work pretty well. I miss eating cookies, but I can’t figure out how to make them without some form of refined sugar. I’m still working on it, and I won’t give up until I find a healthy way to create sweet baked goods with no refined sugar of any kind, including honey and maple syrup.
My sugar sobriety has not been without its ups and downs. People offer me sweets, and sometimes, out of politeness, I have to take a bite. I enjoy those bites, BTW, but I know I can’t eat any more or I’ll fall down that slippery slope back to eating sugary sweets every single day and feeling achy and bloated as a result. I don’t miss the physical downsides of sugar, but I do miss the sweets, which continue to clutter my dreams on occasion.
My recurring nightmare is that I’ve fallen off the wagon and have eaten pounds of chocolates. When I wake up, I feel relieved, but still sad that I can no longer eat those delicious chocolates.
I’ll post when and if I find any alternatives to refined sugar that I can use to create sweet and delectable cookies, cakes, pies, chocolates, etc. Please wish me luck, because I really do miss eating those sweet treats.
But for now, here’s a recipe for dairy-free bacon-wrapped dates. It’s so simple to make that even my non-cooking husband has mastered it. They’re my go-to appetizer, and everyone who tries them, loves them. I stuff the dates with non-dairy cream cheese. I tried using blue cheese, but the flavor doesn’t work with dates — it’s too bitter. If you aren’t allergic to dairy, you can use regular cream cheese, which works fine too.
Dairy-Free Bacon-Wrapped Dates
These dairy-free bacon-wrapped dates are simple to make, and delicious to devour! Your guests will love them. They are a sweet, savory appetizer that contains no sweeteners aside from the sweetness of the dates.
Ingredients
- 20 slices bacon, cut in half
- 40 Medjool dates, pitted
- 8 ounces cream cheese (regular or dairy-free)
- 40 raw almonds or walnuts
- 40 toothpicks
Instructions
Cover a large baking sheet with parchment.
Open each date, and spread 1/2 teaspoon of cream cheese in the cavity.
Place one almond or walnut on top of the cream cheese, and fold the date closed.
Wrap 1/2 slice of bacon around each date, and secure with a toothpick.
Place the bacon-wrapped dates on the parchment-covered baking sheet.
Set the oven to 375 degrees, and place the baking sheet in the cold oven.
Bake for 25-35 minutes, checking part-way through to make sure the bacon is browned and the dates are not burnt. (Baking time will vary depending on the size of the dates and thickness of the bacon.)
Remove from oven and allow to cool slightly, then serve immediately.
Notes
You can make these bacon-wrapped dates ahead of time, allow them to cool, then place the cooled dates in a sealed container in the fridge for up to 3 days. When ready to serve, remove from fridge and allow to come to room temperature--about 20--minutes, before serving.
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