How to Master the No-Sugar Diet Once and for All
Hello, and welcome to my odyssey: For 2018, I have decided to crop added sugar out of the richly saturated JPEG of my life, in an effort to improve my daily function and maybe regain that lower-stomach “V” I had my senior year of college. Do you know what I’m talking about? It's the no-sugar diet, and it's not for the faint of heart.
In truth, I don’t know the benefits of cutting sugar out of your diet, other than gaining the superhuman ability to work your new lifestyle into nearly every conversation you have. Some doctors say you feel less sluggish, your risk of diabetes plummets, and your eating habits, now unencumbered by temptation, generally improve. This is all fine, but I care about looking good now. And unlike a more restrictive diet, no added sugar takes the deceptively simple form of a single directive: Don’t eat sweets. I don’t particularly love them, but I do eat three packs of Skittles every workday because I have no self-control. This will take some resolve.
Several incredibly rude haters have pointed out that my diet does not totally eliminate sugar but only eliminates added sugar, which I’d like to acknowledge is true. Apparently, a no-sugar diet bars most fruits and alcoholic beverages, and what am I going to do, not drink? Nice try. I’m all about health, but I’m also all about free will, and choice, and fun. The best kinds of diets are the ones you adopt and then modify based on your comfort zone—I call mine the No-Sugar Diet with Some Modifications. I felt great, then awful, then fine, and now I am a new person.
Day 1 of the No-Sugar Diet
Day 1! What a wonderful day to not eat sugar for the rest of your life. The first day of a diet is always the best, because it affords you the superiority of being On a Diet without the discipline involved in actual diet-having. The night before this, I had a full pint of cinnamon ice cream, laced with oatmeal. For lunch today, I had a sugarless salad, and for dessert—what’s this?—a nice mint tea. (For dinner, I had a sugar-free burger and fries, and for dessert, another order of fries.) I am practically pulsating with energy. This is great and I love it.
Day 4 of the No-Sugar Diet
An admirer sends me mini doughnuts to my workplace, and I magnanimously share them with my co-workers, feeling no temptation.
Day 6 of the No-Sugar Diet (Day 1 of Withdrawal)
I wake up with a strange lightheaded sensation that quickly erupts into skull-splitting pain—the kind of ache that makes you sensitive to light. It’s Sunday, so I shut my eyes and try to either sleep or invite death. Neither works: Hours later, my brain is still vibrating.
But I have to eventually wake up. Part of being on a diet is being social—how else will people know you are on a diet?—so instead of my evening ice cream binge, I opt to share a tequila soda with a friend. Tequila soda is the best cocktail if you’re on a low-slash-no-sugar diet and the taste of vodka makes you retch. “Won’t that make your headache worse?” my friend Kim asks. It does. But after three, I’m sedated enough to sleep through the pain.
Day 7 of the No-Sugar Diet (Day 2 of Withdrawal)
Good morning! It feels like I have the flu. The weather is forebodingly mild for January, but my body, reeling from withdrawal, decides to soak my shirt in sweat anyway. My headache has not relented in the slightest. On the bright side, I do feel like I have more energy—however, my body has decided to expend it in the form of pervasive full-body soreness.
Painkillers are verboten in advance of the small medical procedure I have to get done tomorrow, so I am forced to suffer the prison of my aching, damp, sugar-starved body. I leave work at four, citing illness (really I’m just a baby), and I’m in bed by 7.
Day 8 of the No-Sugar Diet (Day 3 of Withdrawal)
After God ratcheted my headache meter to Pain Level 9 (out of 10 Levels) in His infinite wisdom two days earlier, I have not experienced a moment of relief. Work is not getting done, and I have become irritable to my colleagues and loved ones. In a moment of desperation, I reach for my favorite, ONLY non-painkiller headache remedy: a cold can of Coke. The aluminum feels like gunmetal against my palm. In a minute, I down the can. In 15 minutes, my headache abates. The vise loosens. Triumphant, I am able to complete one (1) whole workday, but the clock resets.
The medical procedure thing went well, by the way.
Day 1 of the No-Sugar Diet
Rejuvenated and headache-free, I awaken with a newfound resolve and decide I will have to double down if I want to make it through the rest of my life without crumbling under a headache. I decide to turn to my good friend Gwyneth Paltrow, whose lifestyle website, Goop, is basically a compendium of recipes specifically suited to accompany detox diets. I pick out two of her “favorite snacks” and adopt them.
Spicy Cilantro Lemonade: This is good as fuck! The flavor is so rich and tongue-numby that I forget what sugar tastes like, which is great. The measurements take some discipline to nail, but such is the life I am now accustomed to. I also used jalapenos instead of Serrano peppers because I don’t know what the latter is. Then I used another jalapeno to make…
Guacamole and Sesame Chips: Gwyn loves sesame chips, and while I would love to make them myself, as she does so gracefully, I bought mine from Whole Foods. To accompany them: an enormous bowl of guacamole that I make with avocados, red onions, lime, jalapenos, and cilantro.
Day 5 of the No-Sugar Diet
Everything was going beautifully—until the beautiful and twisted Lauren Larson of GQ magazine invited me to join the discount corporate-lunch service MealPal. I receive this as an act of goodwill, but when one meal is accompanied by a gratis chocolate chip cookie (FORBIDDEN), it reeks of sabotage. Scantily clad in thin wax paper, the cookie beckons from the corner of my desk during the nine minutes it takes for me to give in to it.
The diet receives another modification: Sweet treats and unnecessary bouts of sugar can and should be avoided, unless you encounter them in the wild, for free, or as a gift. Invoking your sugar-free diet at your daughter’s Candyland-themed birthday party is worse than annoying—it’s tactless and selfish. It also paves the way for a boring life—one that does not plan ahead for free or gifted sweet treats. By all means, pay attention to the things you eat and how they make your body feel, but remember that food-related joy is as good a reason as any to indulge. Do consult and listen to your doctor on these matters.
Don’t consult or listen to Lauren Larson.
