Mind over Platter
No sugar, no alcohol and plenty of realisations
I often try to give myself little challenges to keep my character in check. Forcing myself to wait for something, walk somewhere or face my fears, in an attempt stop traits like impatience, convenience or anxiety become second nature to me.
This month I decided to cut sugar and alcohol completely from my diet. Mainly for fitness reasons but also because I’m always looking for ways to take control of automatic behaviours that I don’t believe will serve me in the long run.
I’ll be honest, at first it was pretty easy… Once I had set my mind to it, I just didn’t buy any of the usual sugary things I would go to and avoided drinking at social gatherings.
Cutting out alcohol wasn’t too bad for me. I have missed drinking wine in a beer garden, restaurant terrace or in a friend’s garden now that the sun, and warmth, has finally appeared in London, but, for the most part, I mainly drink alcohol at social occasions.
We talk a lot about our dependence on alcohol as a society and, for some, it can be a real battle. Fortunately, my relationship with alcohol is generally healthy, although this month has made me confront that relationship.
I enjoy the turn-up as much as the next person. I like the feeling of being a little bit more ”happy” when out with my friends. Stood in my living room with a speaker blaring karaoke covers of old school RnB classics, this month I remembered that I am a good time with or without a drink.
That, like everything, I want to return to enjoying alcohol in moderation (keyword being “enjoy”) Going forward, I think I’ll stick to alcohol I like instead of grimacing my way through shots of Wray and his Nephews.
No sugar. This was easy at first too. At the start of the month, temptation came like an over-confident ex-boyfriend in the form of brownies and Costco’s new mini-apple crumbles.
I dealt with multipack-sized temptation in my kitchen for over a week and I didn’t crack.
It probably sounds flippant, but the ease with which I resisted the temptation to each of my favourite desserts in the world was a milestone moment for me.
Flashback to a younger version of myself, over-eating, comfort-eating, not understanding that the relationship that I had built with food in my childhood would require years of undoing in later life.
I walked back and forth past those brownies like they were made of cement, opting for my Greek yoghurt and peanut butter corn thins instead.
I noticed, at a point in the month where I was feeling emotionally low, the Uber Eats app magically opened in front of me. “Ugh, forget this” I said to myself, ready to throw all my discipline and self-control into the bin to soothe my mood with a quick pick-me-up.
But I didn’t. Somehow instead, I got up and went to Tesco’s to buy food.. and not just any food, I bought ingredients. I’m talking Broccoli, Spinach, Chicken… more greek yoghurt.
I bought food that I could cook to nourish my body instead of soothing my mood.
As we know looks can deceive us into thinking that people who look healthy are healthy. As we know, food, like money, is just as much an emotional thing as it is practical.
I’ve written before about the ways in which food carries our culture with it. But on a smaller scale, food also carries out personal histories with it too. How and why we eat what we eat becomes second nature to us. Sometimes, it takes the absence of a thing for us to recognise the value we placed on it.
I don’t have answers, just observations and I write to share a glimpse of life through my perspective.
This is the end of my relationship with refined sugar. This is the end of my relationship with sugar as it once was. I don’t think there’s a version of me, where I never eat brownies or apple crumble again. But I think I’ve unlocked a version of me who consumes all the above far more consciously.