I'm still a bit munted when it comes to sugar. Just spent an intense 2 weeks going through my manuscript for the last time before returning it to the publishers so they can get it printed.. reliving all my horrible last drinking months and the bloody roller coaster that was the start of my sobriety.. what an intense process.
So what do I do? Slowly over the course of the two weeks my diet turns to shit and I start eating loads of wheat again, cakes and sugar. Even doing my awful dysfunctional sugar binging trick of having a tiny bowl of cereal heaped with 2-3tbsp of white sugar on it right before bedtime.
Reaching for destructive external substances yet again when faced with stress or angst or an intense book-editing process. Nice one Mrs D. At least it's not shit-loads of red wine.
Anyhoo… I nervously returned the manuscript today, there's no going back now, and will get back on track with my healthy lifestyle and quest to be the calmest and most perfect human being ever invented in the history of human beings. Ha ha ha.
No but seriously after I stopped drinking alcohol, I replaced it with lots of sugar which after 2 years I realised was also a bad idea.. so I did the Whole 30 programme to sort my diet out, reset my digestive system and get some bad habits away (sugar) and it totally worked and today my diet has changed dramatically. I pretty much don't touch wheat, dairy or sugar most of the time. And that 'base line' diet, while a shock to the system at first, is now not that hard and I've lost lots of weight and feel 'light' and energetic most of the time.
Unless I've got a particular stress on in which case all the good habits go out the window and I binge. Oh well.. can't be a saint all the bloody time.
The good folk at the Malibu Recovery Centre very kindly sent me their new cookbook called 'Dopamine for Dinner' which is rather exciting because I do love collecting cookbooks. But this one is interesting because it has the subtitle 'An easy-to-follow 4 week meal plan to help break the cycle of addiction'.
It's full of amazing recipes (must be a pretty lush rehab) which is great and I've already made one delicious pudding .. but the really interesting stuff comes at start when their 'experts' talk about the diet they have developed over years of treating addicts. They say sugar is the number one transfer addiction (helloooo) and 'sugar spiking' is the main thing they want to avoid for their clients because too much sugar impacts the levels of dopamine in the brain and that complicates issues of brain healing, depression and mood.
There's a lot of info and as I say tones of recipes but basically we addicts need to eat foods that are low in sugar, low on the Glycemic Index. Foods that 'trickle' glucose into the bloodstream not 'gush' it. Eat the tricklers, not the gushers, ok?!
I'm just going to cut it all out again - wheat and sugar particularly. Knowing myself by now.. that I cannot moderate to save myself.. I'm better off just never touching it. Maybe I will end up being that perfectly healthy saint after all.
Ha-bloody-ha.
Love, Mrs D xxx
