3 Commitments – Part III: Scary Sugar

I remember my great grandfather, my grandmother’s father, who used to visit us sometime when we were kids. He was a very strict person and we were always scared of him though he did not talk with us much. But we always used to like his visits as after entering, he used to call each of us and give a small packet of candies. The candies afterwards went in the custody of our grandmother and she used to give 2 candies every day till the stocks lasted and we used to remain contented. In our joint family, all the sweets were prepared only on the festive occasions and some few Sundays. Sugar consumption was very low in spite of the fact that I used to like it a lot.

After finishing education and doing several job stints in other small sized places, I returned back to Mumbai. The culture developed there was very conducive to satisfy my sugar cravings. In our office, the ever enthusiastic assistant named Minubhai provided us with tea and coffee ad libitum and reminded us to take some if we were not having them while remaining engrossed in the work. As we continuously stressed our brains responding emails, dealing with the complex budgets and wordy proposals, consuming several cups of coffee with sugar, a kind of addiction was created. Sometimes some office colleagues used to bring stuff like cakes, donuts and brownies and it was shared with all. And then my colleague and buddy Kiran, who shared the same liking for sweets, showed me his regular Jalebi spot near office, where we became our regular. Kiran used to be very particular about exercise and I was not.

A few years after, once my sister in law, who is an Ayurvedic doctor checked my naadi. She declared her verdict, “Sachin, you are likely to become diabetic if you don’t do something about it.” Then one other doctor, while treating for one minor ailment, casually suggested that I can think of having less sugar. I had not paid serious attention to them. Then once out of the blue, I checked by HbA1C and found it to be at the level of a pre-diabetic. The alarm was enough to start dieting with immediate effect. One day I decided to not have sugar at all. It was difficult to deal with the cravings. The experiment lasted for two days. In these two days, my mood swings were less, skin irritations had reduced and the frequent headaches had stopped. The change did not last since I have been irregular at efforts of reducing sugar consumption.

There have been enough reports available about how sugar damages your body and reduces your immunity. Not much is done for the awareness about these dangers by the governments. The world sugar industry does not want you to get enlightened about that and they have strong lobby. If you have experienced ill effects of excess of dietary sugar then you are likely to be on your own. Your own cravings, bombarding advertisements, social pressure, attractive displays in shops, your own habits of overeating in order to not waste food and many such other factors are determining what you eat. These factors are like hurdles. While getting overwhelmed by these we don’t pay attention to what our body really wants.

Again, I decide to cut excess of sugar from my diet. I say excess only because I am not sure whether I can skip my morning tea, (probably that’s a mental hurdle). Let me check what happens after 20 days.

Cheers!