This month my husband and I are eating healthier, facing some less than ideal nutritional habits  — peanut M&Ms (mine) and Doritos (his)  — and using the Whole 30 nutritional plan to make a go of it. It looked doable as I read the book. I’ve quickly learned that for me, the biggest challenge will be cutting sugar out of my diet.

What does this look like? Adapting. Ouch. It’s really hard, but I’m working on it.

Give up grains. (I am seriously missing my morning toasted English muffin smothered with butter and orange marmalade.)

Give up wine. (Okay, there are just certain foods that go really well with a glass of red wine like pizza and cheeses and dark chocolates. But we’re not eating those foods now, so no matter.)

Give up sugar.

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Giving Up Sugar

Wait. No. This is my dragon. This is my craving. I always knew I had a sweet tooth, but until I gave it up — completely gave it up — and this means no honey, no maple syrup, not even the eensy teensy bit of sugar that’s in catsup, brown mustard (yes!), mayonnaise, and deli meat and on and on and on.

That’s the tough part. Adapting to a month without sugar.

The first morning I sat in church and craved a mint. I had a cup of coffee beforehand, and I wanted to freshen my breath. Just one mint. I fidgeted, crossed my legs one way. I grabbed a tissue and looked around. Nobody else was fidgeting, longing for a mint. How can all these people not want a mint right now? I didn’t focus on the sermon. Seriously? Craving one mint made me lose focus? Later, I told my son-in-law about it and he said, “It’s only been four hours since you started, right? That’s not good.”

How I’m Cutting Sugar Out of My Diet

Yeah. I’m further along in this journey now, and I am slaying those dragons each day by shifting my routine just a tad.

Shift My Routine

I cleaned out the junk drawer and replaced it with nuts and dried fruits. I sip a glass of chilled sparkling water with a lemon slice when I really just want to hop in my car and drive to the local store for a bag of red licorice.

Recognize It’s Just Sugar

But cutting sugar out of my diet, this sugar adaptation, is really not a big deal in the scheme of things. I know that. As the Whole30 team reminds me, this is not childbirth, war, famine, cancer, death.

This is sugar.

And it’s amazing to me how God is showing me good lessons in all of this. I just finished rereading Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel, a beautifully written post-apocalyptic novel that doesn’t dwell on the horror of a flu pandemic and the aftermath but focuses on beauty and how people long for beauty and art and meaning even in the midst of a destroyed civilization with no power, no government, no cars, no grocery stores, and certainly no sugar.

There’s also our women’s study this week in a great book by Sharla Fritz, Waiting. We studied Elijah and the Widow of Zaraphath. Ravens fed him bread and meat. The widow and her household survived on flour and oil. I’m sure they savored every single bite. Precious little but enough.

God Provides

God provided. One meal at a time. One day at a time. Not an overabundance. Just enough. They trusted, they adapted, they received, and they gave thanks.

Yep.

Stuff can get in the way of living free. Sometimes it’s good for me to make a change, to shift my perspective, to get out of a deep rut, to adapt. I’m working on it.

How about you? Is there anything like a sugar dragon in your life that gets in the way of living free?

For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:38-39

This post was prompted by the word ADAPT at Five Minute Friday link-up  where Christian writers encourage each other and share their free-writing weekly. It is a privilege to be part of this community. Photo by Ana Tavares on Unsplash

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