Learning The Evils Of Sugar (The Hard Way)

I'm going to start this of by saying that I am writing this, not as a health expert or wannabe "Guru". Rather from my personal experimentation and experience. I'm not giving anyone health "advice" or recommendations, simply expressing my health journey.

To give some background and context, I grew up with parents that when it came to food, payed more attention to prices then health benefits. Something that I think a lot of people do. Understandably so, the economics in the western world have not exactly been great for the last few decades. Another factor was time, many unhealthy foods are much quicker to prepare then whole foods. In short, I was an 80's kid drinking cool aid and pop. Eating mac and cheese and a variety of heavily processed foods. Time constraints,economics and poor health advice (a subject I'm not going to touch in this because it will become a novel in itself) all were factors.

As I grew up that eating habit stuck with me, even though I was always very active. Playing every sport that I could (baseball, hockey, football). My physique was far from perfect but I was not obese. I had energy to spare and it seemed that my body was functioning well. But as I made it into the mid to late teen years. Sleeping issues, mild depression and anxiety started to effect me. My weight would drastically shift from obese to fairly "fit" in very short time spans. When my parent consulted our family doctor about these issues, the automatic response was to put me on depression medications. Which had little effect on my mood/physical condition. Other then making me more lethargic. Thankfully my mother saw this and stopped the medications fairly quickly.

Feeling resigned to the idea that it was "just me" and how I functioned. I stayed on this course for many years. Until my girlfriend at the time (and mother of my child) convinced me to try several diets. We did a vegetable and fruit juice diet for 60 days and then vegetarian diet for nearly a year. At the time my mind was so focused on my career and starting a family that I didn't notice much of a difference. But reflecting on that time now, there was in my mood. We eventually dropped the vegetarian diet and when I was 31 split up.

Ever since then I have been very active and tried my best to stay in shape. The constant exercise helped to stabilize my mood and for the most part keep the weight shifts in check. But I have always been the stubborn type and the idea of diets, counting calories etc. was never even a bleep on my radar. It always just seemed like "health scams and fads", which lets face it. A lot of it is.

It was last summer that I hit a really low point mentally and my body responded to that by packing on weight. I was in the biggest health rut that I had ever faced! Through many sleepless nights listening to podcasts by people like Joe Rogan and Jocko Willink, I decided enough is enough! I am in my mid 30's and if I don't do something and do something drastic about this now, I wont be able to. I joined a gym and went 6/7 days a week. From September until January. My muscle mass saw huge increases and there was clear results from all the hard work. But the fat that I had put on and the mental fatigue/depression was unaffected.

Then on a Rogan podcast there was a discussion about the keto diet. I read about the diet, the process of it, the results and the dangers of it non stop for days. I figured the gym rat approach was not having my desired effect, so maybe its time to try out one of these "scam/fad" diets.

I implemented a strict keto diet immediately (70% fats 25% protein 5% carbohydrates). Zero sugar, not even natural sugars (fruits etc). I cut way back on exercise to give my body a chance to adjust to the drastic diet change. Within 4 months I dropped nearly 40 pounds and after 6 months it was a total of 50 pounds. My energy levels went through the roof and most importantly my mood/depression completely stabilized. Even when some hard issues/events happened that would have sent me on a downward spiral. Of course they had an effect, but a normal effect. Very little to no anxiety, no falling into a rut of depression etc.

I began to incorporate a lot more exercise and the drastic results continued. Then I had a carb binge and for several days after that. I could literally feel the inflammation in my joints and lower back. I felt this for almost a week. It really sucked, but I was excited about it. My body was responding in ways that it never has before. It was letting me know what effect those foods were having. I did this several more times over a 2 month span, in a strange way I really liked knowing that my body was functioning the way it should be and that I was being able to directly have indicators of this.

Then about two weeks ago I caved in a big way! This time with sugar. In one night I ate half a tub of ice cream, 2 brownies and a dozen pieces of licorice. My taste buds were in pure heaven but by morning I was in nothing short of hell!

I woke up during the night feeling like I was going to vomit. I didn't and eventually fell back a sleep. When I woke up in the morning that feeling was still there. I was groggy and just felt gross. It literally felt like a massive hang over and it lasted the whole day. I though I'll just drink a lot of water, flush it out of my system and never do that again! I couldn't have been more wrong.

After a long night of a horrible sleep, I woke up with the same mental haze and the feeling of vomiting. But even more lethargic. I forced myself to get up and do my cardio exercise but found myself worn out to complete exhaustion only 1/4 into my typical routine. I went home and fell a sleep, sleeping a big portion of the day. Waking in the evening for a couple of hours then going back to sleep. I slept 16 out of the 24 hours. The next morning, I awoke to severe anxiety and depression. Severe as in I had never felt it in a way like that before! I cancelled everything for the day and surprisingly went back to sleep. This day was similar to the one before, a lot of sleeping. The only difference was the debilitating depression while awake. I remember thinking that I must have caught a flu or a cold, why else would I be sleeping so much? But other then the upset stomach I had no other symptoms of anything.

As the days rolled on, the endless sleeping started to stop. But was replaced by headaches (which I very rarely get). The vomiting feeling had been replaced by severe bloating and the depression, anxiety and complete lack of energy increased. Being nearly a week into this, I began to worry. The side effects of some sugar couldn't be this bad could it? Maybe it's not that and something is really wrong. Which of course just sent my anxiety through the roof.

I began researching and reading heavily, and found that every single one of the effects that I was feeling has been attributed to sugar consumption. Not only side effects but withdraws. It has proven that sugar is more addictive then cocaine.

This lowered the anxiety a little bit but now the question was, when will this end? It has now been almost two weeks and the effects are just finally started to subside. The bloating and upset stomach is gone, no headaches, not proper but more normal sleeping patterns and the depression/anxiety is still there but decreasing.

After experiencing this, there will not be a second sugar binge. The demonstrable effects have completely scared me away from that! That being said, this has been a great learning experience. After more then 30 years of mass sugar consumption, never fully knowing the damage that it was doing to my body and mind. All it took was less then a year to clear the sugar out of my system enough, to experience the truly toxic effects of it.

Even if you do not see the keto diet as something that you are interested in, I highly recommend looking into sugar and the evils that it hides under its sweet amazing taste. You really have nothing to loose by cutting it out of your diet or at the very least curtailing it, and everything to gain!

Have you had issues or experiences like this when it comes to sugar? I would really like to hear about it in the comments!