Scott Sonnon: Born to Fail - Made to Succeed

Can You Get Sober (from Sugar)?

What if you were addicted to a drug so socially acceptable that it was interwoven with childhood, lovers and families, with success, celebration and holiday, with being treated well and treating others well. What if others treated you as “crazy” for not “using”? What if even the feeling of the drug (”sweetness”) were associated with good behavior? How difficult would it be for you to get clean?

There are no short-cuts or back-doors. “Sweet” is opiate of the masses. Food tastes so much better, energy so much higher and stable, attention so much clearer, and performance so much stronger… once you get off the sweets.

Let’s look at one of the biggest “pushed” drugs on the market: sodas and “energy” drinks:

• 1 soda or energy drink = 10 teaspoons of sugar.
• 1 can / day = 15 pounds of fat in only one year.

Sodas and “energy” drinks are specifically designed to addict you, and the manufacturers are aware of this: the world’s most powerful drug pusher. Being able to consume a couple cans of energy drinks with little effect is a bad sign. Your tolerance isn’t just to sugar, it’s also to the caffeine. Double the trouble.

There’s even a researched connection between the removal of soda machines in schools and improved grades across the entire student body! But don’t think giving them juice boxes are the solution. For example, a box of grape juice can have MORE sugar than some cans of soda!

Artificial sweeteners, even “natural” alternatives like Stevia, are still “sweet” which plugs our neuroreceptors like an opiate.

Study: Artificial Sweeteners Increase Weight Gain Odds - ABC News

Just get off the stuff. There’s no way around it. But when you’re addicted (when you can’t choose to not take a substance for two years), it’s impossible to imagine living any other way.

Displace the Withdrawal Symptoms!

Getting dizzy, headaches, nausea, energy crash, angry and moody, shaky and weak? When you’re strongly addicted, like I was before I got clean, it almost killed me. I went into hypoglycemic shock at the top of a mountain. I collapsed unable to even scream, even if someone could hear me. It took me a day to crawl down. Never again.

Don’t try to stop using cold turkey if it’s causing severe distress. Instead, displace it by filling the system with more of the good stuff.

• Start by eating breakfast within an hour of waking including 1/3 your bodyweight in grams of lean protein, healthy fats and complex carbs.
  
• Do this for 3 weeks then get back to me here and I’ll give you the next step.

The detox is the problem because people try and “stop using” rather than converting the cells from burning sugar to burning fat. If you front-load the conversion, then you marginalize the severity of detox and withdrawals.

The key to keeping sober (sugar-free) long term!

The question includes a false presumption: that you have to keep on top of this long-term. It will not always suck this much. Two years of being “sober” from sugar, and you’ll have MORE energy, health, performance, ideas, libido, etc.

Two years from now, you will NEVER give up the quality of life you will have. At that point, you’d never consider throwing away all of your incredible power, energy and focus for some piece of chocolate; just like you would never throw away your entire family - a beautiful loving wife and children - for 2 minutes in the sack with some trollop.

You’re not weak and undisciplined!

Remove the emotional burden of being perceived as “weak” for using when it’s conveniently available. You wouldn’t expect a meth addict to be “strong” and live in a meth lab. The biochemical addiction of having cells expecting to burn quick energy rather than slow takes around two years of being “sober” until you can be around it and feel confident.

My family lived on welfare when I was a child; steel had pulled out of Pennsylvania for Japan in the 70s. We could only afford what foodstamps would assist. That may be 35 years ago, but look at today’s WIC social welfare: mostly empty calories supported. Couple that with poor nutritional education and the bottom of Maslow’s pyramid dominating food-energy choices (fast-now is better than slow-never). Only our “leading by example” (investing more for less volume of higher quality food-energy) will make an effective, grass-roots change.

This is an OLD Message… 

But now we may be ready to hear it.

I was not the first to have a prohibition against sugar. Here’s one of my teachers - Jack Lalanne, who I had the distinct pleasure of co-presenting with at the Arnold Fitness Classic Active Aging Festival 2 years ago.

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Scott Sonnon

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