How I tamed my sweet tooth and gave early-stage diabetes the boot

A while back, when I was trying to break a sugar habit, I made a small change that brought about surprising results.

Sugar is not exactly one of my biggest weaknesses, but I knew I had a problem when little by little I found myself adding more and more sugar to my cereals, and to my coffee and tea.

What started out innocently enough as one teaspoon of sweetness eventually turned into two teaspoons of sweetness. But I did not stop there.

Three heaping teaspoons I would put on my already sugary cereal, and yet I didn’t notice just how sweet it was.

It was as if my taste buds had somehow become numbed to the effect of sugar.

If I was around other people putting sugar into my coffee, I would try and sneak extra sugar into my drink. I did this by opening two sugar packets at once, and dumping them into my coffee at the same time, holding the two packets as if they were one.

I hoped no one noticed this, but somehow I’m not sure that I am really that sneaky.

After all, the amount of sugar coming out of those packets certainly was twice what I would have gotten if I had opened just one at a time.

Crumpling the packets up into a tight little ball when I finished, I would try to conceal the evidence.

As I was doing this, I was quite conscious of my weight. I knew I shouldn’t be doing this, and yet somehow I was doing it anyway.

I wasn’t being honest about it either, not with other people; and by not doing anything about the situation, I wasn’t being honest with myself either.

Something needed to be done.

Fortunately I came to that on my own after a while. The search for sweetness.

I’m not sure where the idea came from, but for some time I had been on a desperate search for a natural sweetener to replace sugars.

After all, for me, artificial sweeteners don’t taste sweet, they taste quite bitter. I never got used to them. Some people do, and then perhaps there are people like me who just can’t wrap their tongues around the idea.

I was happy when I noticed the sweetener market changing. Agave nectar started making an appearance on grocery store shelves.

My curiosity peaked and I bought a bottle. It wasn’t the first natural sweetener that I tried. I just hadn’t found one I liked until I found agave nectar.

I wasn’t sure if I should try it only in a hot drink or in my cereal because this nectar was a syrupy substance.

I’m not sure which way I tried it first anymore, but I found that no matter which way I used it, I liked it.

The best part of my experience with agave nectar was that it helped to tame my sweet tooth quite significantly.

After only a couple of weeks of using this new sweetener in my cereal, I was able to drop it altogether and eat my cereal completely without any added sweeteners.

I did not crave any additional sweet foods in its place either.

I still like to use agave nectar in coffee or tea, and sometimes I still do use sugar from time to time, especially if there is no agave at hand. But it was an amazing change — this one small move was an important one.

It made skipping desserts easier too. I grew up in a household where desserts were eaten after every meal except breakfast. Cookies, fudge, cake, ice cream, whatever it may be, we had some.

Sweets weren’t my first love, but I did need to learn how to tame their presence in life.

I eat sweets from time to time now, but definitely not nearly so often as before.

Since I have had this wonderful experience using agave nectar, I have heard some reports that agave nectar may still raise blood sugar.

I’m not surprised by this, really. It’s sweetener. So anyone trying to watch their blood sugar may want to keep this in mind if they use it.

Also, because not everyone reacts to different foods the same, I don’t know if what happened for me will work the same for someone else. It’s about the concept. Who knows? Maybe another product can help someone achieve the same ends, even if what they used to get there was different.
Turning around a diagnosis
Prior to this change I made to my diet, my doctor at the time had my glucose and glycohemoglobin A1C (the number that reveals an average of blood-sugar levels over the course of 90 or more days) tested and I was told that I had early-stage diabetes. This news was shocking. It scared me. I needed to do something, and fortunately I did.

The timing of all of this came together quite nicely, because I had a solution to my problem, at least part of one.

Three months later, with my next blood test, I turned the situation around. My doctor told me that my A1C was normal. He even elaborated to say that it was not only normal, it was very normal. It dropped from a 6.3 to a 5.5 in three months.

The next time I got it tested about seven months later, it was even lower. It was 5.4.
Controlling my sugar habit was one of the ways that I brought those numbers down, but it wasn’t all that I did.

I took the time to learn as much as I could about diabetes. I used that knowledge to beat that disease right from the start instead of letting it beat me.

I know I will have to stay vigilant, perhaps for the rest of my life, but the thought of that is nowhere near as intimidating as it would have been before reined in my sweet-tooth.

What else did I do to beat early-stage diabetes?

I tried to eat protein with each meal, including breakfast. By tracking my foods online, I also was able to easily track my intake of carbohydrates, keeping them within certain levels at each meal each day. I ate complex carbs and got my fair share of fiber. I took the time to understand the effects of food and exercise on blood sugar and used that information as strategically as I could each day. I also lost some weight.

I read articles and books, and even attended a hospital-given diabetes education lecture about learning how to count carbs.

I may not have been required to learn that information yet, but the knowledge has turned out to be powerful.

If you want to follow my weight-loss journey, read about it occasionally in my column, “Healthy steps” or you can watch my weight-loss journey unfold and show your support by liking the page https://www.facebook.com/GretchenGetFit on Facebook or following me on Twitter @GretchenGetFit. Contact the writer at gbalshuweit@thedailyreview.com.

Healthy steps is written by Gretchen Balshuweit, news editor and now health and wellness page columnist for The Daily Review in Towanda, Pa. as she pursues her own journey to health and wellness in hopes of losing a total of 200-250 pounds of excess weight.