Crushed Diaries

A blog for Young Adults

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Giving Up Sugar

I should have done a PhD on Chocolate. I knew more about chocolate bars than anyone I knew. I was a chocolate fiend and gourmet. I knew exactly how long it took to fry a Mars Bar to perfection, so that it became almost too gooey to eat. Once when I went swimming with a chocoholic friend, we had a competition. Whoever named the most chocolate bars, while we were ploughing up and down the pool in the fast line, would win a chocolate bar of our own choice. I won (a rich Cadbury Creme egg) easily. ‘Galaxy, Caramac, Turkish Delight, Cadbury's Fruit & Nut, Rolos, Lion bars, Curly Wurlys, Bounty, Milky Bars, mint Aeros, Walnut Whips,’ we intoned. But when I said ‘Crunch’ on our final lap, I knew I was the victor.

I’ve always had an uncontrollable sweet tooth, so the year after I miraculously managed to stop smoking, I decided to cut out sugar. I was so used to clutching a cigarette, that I found I didn’t know what to do with my hands when I was no longer waving my cancer stick around in the air for dramatic effect, or shoving the cigarette into my mouth for another salacious puff. I also discovered another disadvantage after quitting nicotine, cold turkey. I was actually tasting my food for the first time in years, savouring every mouthful. My escalating daily consumption of cheap chocolate tasted so yummy, I became obsessed with the delicious stuff. At hourly intervals, I would slope off to the local newsagent and stock up on all my favourite candy bars, then guiltily devour them before I returned home. ‘Oink Oink Squeal Squeal’ should have been my middle name.

Chocolate didn’t make me fat, but it gave me peculiar side effects. After compulsively stuffing my face on sweets, I found myself unable to think. I also developed loads of unappetising, bulging red spots on my face. Not a pretty sight. And, although I thrived on my immediate sugar rush after gobbling my contraband chocolate, a short time later I would usually feel so lethargic, I had to force myself to consume another Bounty bar or an equally sickly chocolate bar to rise my energy levels. Unfortunately, chocolate wasn’t the only sugary food I was addicted to. I was mad about cakes, and craved biscuits so badly, that if there was a packet of my favourite custard creams in the house, I was unable to rest until I had consumed the entire packet. Just before I had made up my mind to cut out sugary food from my diet for life, I binged on as many chocs I could sink my decaying fangs into. Then after that fatal New Year’s Eve when I obliterated sugar from my existence, I felt so poorly, I was forced to lie down in a darkened room for a week with a blinding headache. I wasn’t afflicted with a brain tumour. According to my doctor, my rocking head was due to all the toxics coming out of my body. Yuck!

I'm extremely proud that I no longer devour sweets, but I make an exception to Belgian chocolates at Christmas, which must be the sickliest chocs known to a demented sugarholic, like myself.

Copyright: Frances Lynn, 2006

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