What’s Your Sugar Story?
“The doctor of the future will no longer treat the human frame with drugs, but rather will cure and prevent disease with nutrition.” Thomas Edison
Speaking to people about food and diet can turn a calm conversation into a full blown debate very quickly. Everyone has an opinion. Low carb. Low fat. Keto. Vegan. Balanced. No sugar. Only natural sugar. Cheat days. No cheat days. Fasting. It usually sounds logical until you realise something important.
Most of our food opinions are not actually about food.
They are about family habits, childhood treats, comfort, control, guilt, culture, stress, and how food feels in our own bodies. Two people can eat the same meal and have completely different physical and emotional reactions. I’ve seen this with glucose monitors!
What I have come to realise, both as a doctor and as a human who struggles with sugar, is that everyone has their own Sugar Story.
Your Sugar Story is not just what you eat. It is how sugar entered your life. How it was used. When it shows up. What it gives you.
Becoming aware of your Sugar Story starts changing things.
When you understand your own patterns, it becomes easier to make sense of them. And understanding almost always makes healthier habits feel less forced and more natural. Just like we are all different, there is no single path to health that works for everyone. What works well for one person may be a daily battle for another.
A simple example from my own life. My husband can genuinely say to me, “Just eat less sugar.” For him, that advice works. He can eat two blocks of chocolate, feel satisfied, and move on with his life.
I cannot.
Once I taste those two blocks, my brain lights up like a Christmas tree. I think about the rest of the slab and will feel restless until it is finished. At the moment that’s just what happens. It is my Sugar Story interacting with my biology and genetics.
Becoming aware of your Sugar Story is not easy. But neither is living with constant guilt, self doubt, and that awful feeling of losing control around food. For me, the goal is not perfection. It is peace.
I want to feel in charge around food, grateful for it, able to enjoy it, and able to walk away without self criticism. I do not want to shame myself, but I also do not want to eat recklessly.
Sometimes overeating is not really about food at all. It is a signal. You are tired. You are anxious. You are overwhelmed. Food becomes the fastest relief available.
Other times, certain foods start hijacking the brain and biology so powerfully that clear thinking becomes difficult. In those moments, what looks like emotional eating is also a real biological loop. Craving feeds craving.
Sugar Stories can get complicated… But nobody likes a boring story. I also think that your sugar story can be reimagined and rewritten…. This is not a quick fix, but a deeper fix.
“Knowing others is intelligence. Knowing yourself is true wisdom.”
Lao Tzu
This is an invitation to get curious, not critical. To notice patterns instead of fighting them. To begin understanding your own Sugar Story, so that any change you make comes from insight rather than punishment.
Awareness first. The rest will follow.
I have a course coming soon where I guide you to discover and rewrite your own sugar story. Watch this space.
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4 Comments
jam
It’s not easy to say why one person gets diabetes and another doesnt. I think there’s more than food involved. Genetics, infections, trauma (emotional or other) and even inherited trauma. When it comes to food, it’s not necessarily sugar that raises glucose! While monitoring people’s glucose, many times pasta raises glucose more than chocolate! Salty chips, like Simba chips raise glucose a lot. Maybe it would be a good idea to try a continous glucose monitor some time.
Jane myburg
Brilliant!!!!
Sarie Steenkamp
Your story is really inspiring.
For me it is easy but for hubby not so easy.
Hopefully he will soon realize the importance to control his sugar intake
Marion
Enjoyed reading your sugar story…. and I remember full well how you and your mom used to raid my storeroom every year after Ulf arrived with all those fantastic German chocolates he used to bring us he! he! but heres my question. Like Marcus, I’m not really a sugar person. I do like a bit of sweetness every now and again… but my choice would rather be something salty. Yet I developed diabetes in our family first, (Don’t know whether any of our ancestors were diabetic… didn’t hear of any cases… so don’t think its inherited. I want to give you a typical daily diet that I’ve been eating these past couple of years. I wake up to a cup of coffee (which Jurgen usually brings me… it is black with a half a sachet of (Hulets equisweet or 1 tablet from Candarel. (Wondering whether the different ones make a difference? (That’s usually at about 7am. Later (anytime from 8 to 10:30 we have breakfast. Jurgen likes a hearty one of 1/2 grapefruit, eggs, plenty of his own baked rye bread, cheese, cold meats or smoked salmon, avo (sometimes) bacon other times, own home made james (lemon, orange, apricott, strawberry) and another very large cup of coffee. I have a smoothie which is made from 1 banana of which I cut 8 slices from each end of banana (rest of it, the middle section I share with my 4 birds (2 canaries, 1 african grey and one ringneck), To the banana I add 1 teaspoon of honey, a large mug of milk and ground coffee. Mostly I just drink that for breakfast, but on occassion, will have the other half of grapefruit with 1 sachet of sweetner, and a small piece of the smoked tuna and a thin slice of avo…. no bread ever… or if there are no bananas will have bread and jam instead. (But this is seldom) – We don’t eat lunch… but have a cup of coffee instead with cake that Jurgen usually bakes (either his madeira type without icing or apple tart/crumble – This time I usually add 1 teaspoon of cremora and 1 candarel tablet. For supper I try mostly to stick to chicken meals, sometimes with tumeric rice, and vegetables, but we do (at least once a week have a take away meal thats quick and easy when we go into town and lazy to prepare something when back – so its either a steer or Burger King burger, kentucky chicken, or a supermarke grilled chicken just eaten with a bun. Other meals of the week could be a stew with lots of mixed vegetables. with rice or potatoes… pork chops with potatoes or sweetpotatoes, veg and gravy or sometimes even a quicky of microwaved boerewors on just a slice of bread. I try to exercise doing at least 100 x 4 or 5 different Tai chi exercises and I walk about 600 meters each day. So tell me (Tai chi says in just so many days you will loose your belly) I’ve been doing it for months and maybe I’ve loost just a milimitre or two… but nothing major shows for all my efforts… what do you suggest???? And though I am feeling mostly better… I still find that I get heartburn, pain down my left arm and a bit of jaw pain after doing exercise. Am I eating wrongly? Or yes and I drink mosstly water, or a mix of soda water and Roses Blue Berry cordial during the day.