Cutting Added Sugar From My Diet Was One of the Hardest Things I’ve Ever Done
And I don’t recommend doing it in 2020.
Let me start out by saying this: I’ve never had a sweet tooth. I’ve always been able to take three bites of my desert and leave the rest sitting on the table like an extremely classy (maybe French?) person. My husband’s the one who makes toast or rummages through the pantry like a 6-foot squirrel at 1am. I’m the one who’s got it under control.
I did, however, have a daily apple habit (for the fiber). And over time, I started to notice that soon after eating an apple, my blood sugar would tank, leaving me hands-shaking and desperate for a Renaissance Fair-sized turkey drumstick. I’d have to eat a high-protein snack just to make it through to dinnertime, and even then, I was a ticking time bomb. I had an hour or two after eating an apple before I’d have crisis-level low blood sugar — and because I’m predisposed to anxiety, an ensuing panic attack.
The effect of low blood sugar on anxiety is particularly magnified if I’m out of the house, alone, with my kiddo. I imagine that, on some nonconscious, lizard-brain level, a dark corner of my nervous system anticipates having a medical event — because panic attacks get interpreted by the body as the presence of a real threat, thereby magnifying the panic…
