A Year Without Sugar - (she did it!)

:flowerforyou:
From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer Newspaper Jan. 2, 2009
Link: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/food/394522_sugar02.html
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Friday, January 2, 2009
Last updated 10:40 a.m. PT

No sugar for a year: A triumph of willpower
Woman beats cravings and hidden ingredients
By REBEKAH DENN
P-I FOOD WRITER

Maybe she will have just one mint: "You know those pink, green and yellow melt-away mints shaped like Hershey's Kisses, with little white sugary balls on the bottom?"

Maybe a bar of chocolate, or just one bite of that bar. Right at midnight.

"I was fully planning on renting out a doughnut shop and having all my friends and family come," said Nicole MacDonald, who was about to end a self-imposed "Year Without Processed Sugar" as the calendar turned over to 2009.

"I was going to buy everyone doughnuts on the house, all night long. I thought that would be so much fun, and I thought that would be the icing on the cake."


MacDonald
MacDonald, 33, gave up refined sugars Jan. 1, 2008, partly as a test of willpower, partly as a reflection on the impossible.

"I'm pretty self-disciplined," she said by phone from Battle Ground in southern Washington, where she and her husband have temporary headquarters. "Sugar was the one thing that kept laughing in my face. One Oreo has never in my life meant one Oreo."

The task wasn't as clear as it sounded. Eliminating "processed sugar" seemed an easy enough goal. Corn syrup and high-fructose corn syrup were clearly off-limits like plain white sugar. But what about stevia? An acceptable natural ingredient, she decided, though her baking experiments with it didn't work, and it wound up as a tea sweetener. What about "truvia"? It's derived from stevia, but didn't pass her sniff test. As readers found her blog, "My Year Without," she started fielding questions. What about eating organic sugar? Is it OK to eat foods that use evaporated cane juice? Raw sugar?

"It's all nutritionally deficient, our bodies can't use it, so what's the point?" she said.

In January, she stuck her head in the doughnut case at Safeway, and breathed in over and over again. "I am fully aware of how unsanitary this is," she wrote.

By February, the sugar cravings were so wild her husband once "must have heard me running around the kitchen in a frenzy because he yells, 'Take a giant bite of cottage cheese!' " she wrote.

But she was feeling strong. Every time she successfully resisted, she thought to herself, "The work this took is not going to be for nothing."

And, she admits, she already was feeling superior from her success. It wasn't pretty, but at least it helped.

MacDonald had been a massage therapist in Portland (she's also a former Seattleite), serving senior citizens who lived in care facilities. Her husband of two years was a veteran of TV, including KIRO/7 in Seattle. But the sugar diet coincided with their decision to move forward with their marriage vows to "create a simpler life," leave their jobs and spend several months helping others.

Nicole learned to stock up on healthful treats for long car trips, to figure out a way to follow her goals even in the midst of projects such as building houses in Mexico for people who were desperately poor. It was another kind of sweetness in their lives.

"We don't care about money as much as we do helping people, and we didn't realize that until we started really helping people who truly needed it," she said.

As the year marched on, she ate raw honey from her in-laws' beehives. She baked "sugar-free sugar cookies" and researched the Glycemic Index. When her mom was hospitalized for surgery, she asked a hospital dietitian why green Jell-O was considered a natural part of the hospital menu.

Some of her biggest surprises were how prevalent sugar, under all its various names, really is in the American diet. She found dextrose hiding in french fries, even refined sugar in a can of black beans she picked out from the pantry. She wouldn't have thought to check the label, but "I must have twisted my wrist out of habit, and sugar was one of five ingredients in a can of black beans.

"I can't help but wonder if there's a conspiracy to keep us addicted to sugar, or if it's just that little added sweetness to a product that will make someone go, 'Ooh, I've got to remember THAT can of black beans.' "

With the current backlash against high-fructose corn syrup, she even found that some of her readers were glad to see a label had "just" sugar, not a more processed form of it.

Even labels aren't always enough. Her one slip-up so far came from a bottle of root beer, on which a front label with what the company later called "romance copy" listed no sugar, but -- as she saw partway through her drink -- the small print on the back label did. She was disappointed, but went forward.

The consequences of her choice weren't always physical.

What left her feeling emptiest, in the end, wasn't the taste so much as the lost rituals.

"Everyone orders dessert, and I sit there twiddling my thumbs, thinking, 'This is my least favorite part of the evening where before it was my favorite,' " she said. "There is something hugely significant about sharing something sweet with friends and family. It's special. I feel I've missed out on it."

Her husband, who enjoys chocolate chips on top of his morning peanut butter and toast, kept up with his usual eating habits. Nicole said she didn't mind, that eradicating all sugar from the house would have been unfair to him and unrealistic in a world in which it's everywhere. But she noticed more than usual the way others eat, especially during the holiday indulgences.

"It seems it's OK if everyone's doing it. It's this group justification, and I never thought of it that way when I participated in it," she said. "Now that I'm sort of off on the sidelines, it's easy to see. 'Oh, so-and-so had two pieces of cake and three cookies. I can, too!' It's all these subconscious messages we give ourselves and get from others."

And joining in, even on the "natural" side, didn't help. She made herself a batch of toffee, using honey, after feeling left out as family and friends built gingerbread houses, ate candies and licked frosting off their fingers.

"I felt totally entitled to pig out on toffee, and so I did. And, of course, I felt horrible, eating too much of anything."

She's made resolutions before -- exercising, reading the Bible -- but this is the first one she can ever remember keeping. She feels good physically (no sugar rush followed by sugar blahs) and mentally strong. In the end, though, she can't demonize sugar as much as she once thought she could. Refined white flour doesn't feel so good to her body, either, she's realized. Our bodies are probably OK with a little sugar, just not the amount in the average modern diet.

And yet, she hasn't rented the doughnut shop the way she once planned. So far, there is no icing on the cake.

"It's really weird, but I feel like I'm disappointing everyone who was going to celebrate with me," she said. But if she feels this good without sugar, would she go back?

She still feels like a sugar addict in a sugar-free body, she wrote. If in the end she does not get her doughnut, she still has other plans.

She may go back to school for a master's degree in public health to become the expert she said her readers assumed she already was. She likes the idea of having some say in public policy, especially when it comes to sugar in hospitals and schools.

And she has a new confidence in her own abilities, knowing she once couldn't have imagined success in her "Year Without."

It means, she said, that "other impossible things -- or things that I view as impossible -- aren't."

P-I food writer Rebekah Denn can be reached at 206-448-8117 or rebekahdenn@seattlepi.com. Read her Devouring sEATtle blog at .