Some people can take a bite of refined sugar, forget about it, and move on with their life.

I am not one of these people.

This past weekend, I went shopping with my mom at Target and she bought a bag of Lindt truffles (little spheres of smooth non-gluten-free bliss) on the fly. As we were loading stuff in the car, she nonchalantly took a truffle out, ate it, savored it, commented about how delicious they are, ate another one, put them away, forgot about them, and got on with her life. She helped me do stuff around my home for hours with lots of energy. She looks amazing and I have never seen her overeat in my life.

This is not a trait I inherited from her.

No matter how many times I try to prove otherwise, I cannot eat sugar moderately anymore. Back before my diet was squeaky clean, I used to eat one of those truffles every day. Sometimes multiple times a day. For years. Bites of cookies and brownies and chocolate and ice cream and cake. Just one bite. Maybe two. Bite, savor, and move on. I prided myself on this “everything in moderation while remaining skinny” type of self-control.

This is no longer my reality.

Now that I’ve cleaned it up, any exposure of refined sugar wreaks mental and physical havoc on me. Frankly, words are incapable of conveying its effect on my super sensitive body and brain. I used to think I was a lesser human for being affected so profoundly, as sugar (along with its not-so-distant cousin, alcohol) is so commonplace and studs most special occasions and celebrations. If you’re not eating sugar, you’re the weird one. The one that doesn’t want to get fat. You’re being “good”. You’re not loosening up. You don’t know how to enjoy life. You’re on a fucking diet. You’re isolated.

People don’t get the fact that you can actually be dependent on sugar and underestimate the power it has over well-being. Like, it’s actually a thing. Can you imagine if you were a heroin addict, quit it and felt amazing, and heroin was the thing used to celebrate some sort of life event? When you didn’t want the heroin, people began to ask you questions. {GASP} Why aren’t you having some of this delicious heroin?!?!?!! You’re so high and mighty because you can resist. Not really, but kind of the same.

During times that I get swept up in the shitshow of eating sweets, I feel like some person has come in, removed my brain, and replaced it with one of a crystal meth addict. This is fitting because when the French began to import sugar a hundred years ago, they, no joke, called it crack. Because it is. There are videos that show what sugar does to us, how its ability to light up the pleasure censors in our brain is stronger than COCAINE. Awesome. We might as well be doing lines of pixy stix.

I think of this every time I walk through our sugar-stuffed supermarkets. Literal avalanches line walls and aisles and shelves and are strategically marketed to children. Making our country overweight, unhealthy, and characterized by disease. Sugar’s packaging is brightly colored and enticing. It holds false promise and hope. It’s a prize and the light at the end of our tunnel. Sugar symbolizes safety, love, coming home, arriving.

It’s easy for humans to be sugar addicts. I know because I am one. It took me a long time to accept this, given that my identity relied a lot upon the fact that I am an excellent baker and I used to shove my sugar-laden baked goods on all my loved ones. This kind of makes me feel like a hypocrite. I’m sorry? Things change.

I know sugar is a drug-like substance because as a put-together individual of society, it has made me {REAL TALK}:

1. Think I am still hungry after having unbuttoned my pants following a substantial meal.

2. Think I am above science (and the general facts of life) and that my stomach can magically stretch to fit either an entire pint of ice cream // bar of chocolate // twenty peanut butter cups // jar of dulce de leche // half jar of peanut butter // multiple bowls of cereal // candy or any super creative combination of the aforementioned.

3. Re-evaluate my good taste in food and succumb to the food-scouring ability of a cockroach. This chocolate that’s been sitting here for six years and tastes like stale plastic, it’s amazing!

4. Pull worse things than Miranda from Sex and the City eating cake out of the trash can. Like buying a bar of chocolate, eating three squares, throwing it away, taking out the trash to the curb, waiting an hour, and then going BACK OUT to the trash, removing the chocolate, and eating it. My sugar-brain justified it because it was tax season, and this thin chocolate bar packaging could totally pass for important tax documents that MUST be taken out of the trash IMMEDIATELY because my accountant can’t do my taxes without them.

5. Instantly go from blissful to full-on depressed while the sun is shining on a beautiful day and I’m surrounded by my friends, family, good music and good food.

6. Sugar-high-dial an ex I DO NOT want to be with to ask them out to dinner, only to have them tell me they are happy with their new girlfriend.

7. Have a hangover without any alcohol whatsoever.

8. Look pregnant after a period of celibacy. #sugaryimmaculateconception

9. Act at such a high level of bitch that I thought I was the re-incarnated human version of a Spanish bull.

10. Think I had been taken over and possessed by the devil and an exorcism needed to happen, stat.

11. Gain fifteen-ish pounds after a knee injury in a few months time and want to stay in bed all day long eating fun-size mediocre candies.

12. Attempt to take a bite out of a too-thick chocolate bar and subsequently look like a dog eating a rawhide bone. While driving. Attractive.

13. Made me think apocalypse/armageddon/death would occur if I didn’t eat it RIGHT NOW.

14. Think my life is incomplete with a severe case of FOMO (fear of missing out) if it doesn’t have sugar in it.

15. Not deal with life/face reality and made me miss out on life events, varying from workouts to social time with those I love.

The last points are the most important because although 1-13 occur when I eat sugar, my sugar-brain still thought that a life without sugar would be subpar.

Lies. All lies. Sugar and aliveness are inversely proportional for me: when one is up the other is down. This is just the way it works. I can’t deny that there will be moments when I might still eat it, but at least I know its feel-like-shit repercussions. This is just my reality and I won’t dwell on it. Will I miss out on tasting some things? Sure, but sugar’s after-effects obviously make it unworthy and undesirable for me, which make me not care about the FOMO.

In the meantime, I will stick with my protein, vegetables, and fats. And fruit once in a while. Especially the summertime ones, shout-outs to mangoes, figs, apricots, and peaches. Because sometimes, things feel and taste sweet enough on their own.