By Dr. Mark Richards
My last post I talked about going back to NY, and how it was fun and was a great time, but I left some of the story out. Amanda and I both got sick while we were there along with my son Eli. Besides being sick we pretty much felt like garbage the entire time we were there, from what we were eating. We completely dropped the straight 60 rules and basically ate cookies and pizza for a week. So, you can imagine how awful we were feeling and I think that lead to us getting sick, or at least made it worse.
So I was actually planning on writing about this a week ago, and my plan was to write this with a pretty intense almost angry tone, because it was just stupidity to revert back to eating like that, to that extreme at least. Having a few cookies and some pizza wouldn’t have been horrible, but the extend we did it was just dumb. So I was pretty upset with myself, especially considering I knew that it would make me feel like garbage. So my big point was going to be WHY do we do this to ourselves? It wasn’t just Amanda and me, I’ve talked to quite a few people that pretty much did the same thing during Christmas. We all know its not good for us, and that we will feel sick after eating that way, so why?
I think addiction is the main culprit. We are addicted to sugar, and its a hard one to break. I showed myself over this break that I was not over it. So my next thought, how was I able to avoid it, if I still have such a strong addiction to it? I think the answer is commitment. We were 100% committed to the straight 60 our first time through and we had great results. Second time through we were not completely committed, which was evident in our minimal results. When completely off the diet, and left to just myself, I obviously wasn’t ready for that.
The reason I waited a week to write this post was so I could have this past week to add. We were much better, followed the straight 60 a bit more, still not strict, but I started feeling much better. Its amazing to me how much better I feel when I limit the sugar, which still when I think about that makes me angry that I don’t recognize this all the time and just avoid it all together.
The point of this, is that the sugar addiction is very real and very strong. Committing 100% is really necessary to reap the full benefits of this straight 60. Amanda and I are committing ourselves to this again, and this time I’m not stopping until I’m where I need to be because taking time off from the plan in the past has obviously set me back and slowed my progress.
See you on the right side of this, January 26th at 7pm. – Dr. Mark