Still Working on My Sugar Dependency

After getting a diagnosis last year of prediabetes, I cut all sweets from my regular diet, out of pure fear. I didn’t know it wouldn’t last. I thought finally — at the age of 56 and after 28 years of trying to kick the sugar habit — I’d found the motivation I needed to never buy another snack cake or cookie. I was completely wrong.

With drastically reduced sugar intake, I gained energy, reduced hunger and lost weight. But life stress had me back on the sweet stuff by Halloween. After reading a book about reversing cognitive decline in December, I went back off the sugar habit, but when I got the flu over New Year’s weekend, I wanted comfort food. The flu hit again at the end of January and wanted more comfort food.

And that was it. I was back on my daily sugar habit.

Because of my lifelong tendency to hate myself, it was too easy to decide I’m a loser who can’t even kick sweets when there’s the possibility of diabetes. Diabetes, for god’s sake. The disease wouldn’t just shorten my lifespan. It could cause real problems with vision. It might affect my feet and mobility. And, of course, there would be the never-ending managing of a chronic condition that would include obesity (many with diabetes aren’t obese, but I would be). How could cookies be worth risking all that?

Despair piled on self-loathing and the sugar eating continued through the winter and into the spring. My energy and mood declined. I put back on some of the weight I’d lost. I felt terrified that I’d never…