Living without sugar: A long year, finishing strong

Maybe she would have just one mint: "You know those pink, green and yellow melt-away mints shaped like Hershey's Kisses, with little white sugary balls on the bottom?"

Maybe a bar of chocolate, or just one bite of that bar. Right at midnight.

"I was fully planning on renting out a doughnut shop and having all my friends and family come," said Portland-based blogger Nicole MacDonald, who was about to end a self-imposed "Year Without Processed Sugar" as the calendar turned over to 2009.

"I was going to buy everyone doughnuts on the house, all night long. I thought that would be so much fun, and I thought that would be the icing on the cake."

MacDonald, 33, gave up refined sugars on Jan. 1, 2008, partly as a test of willpower, partly as a reflection on the impossible.

"I'm pretty self-disciplined," said MacDonald. "Sugar was the one thing that kept laughing in my face. One Oreo has never in my life meant one Oreo."

The task wasn't as clear as it sounded.

Eliminating "processed sugar" seemed an easy enough goal. Corn syrup and high-fructose corn syrup were clearly off-limits, like plain white sugar. But what about stevia? An acceptable natural ingredient, she decided, though her baking experiments with it didn't work, and it wound up as a tea sweetener. What about "truvia"? It's derived from stevia, but didn't pass her sniff test. As readers found her blog, "My Year Without," she started fielding questions. What about eating organic sugar? Is it OK to eat foods that use evaporated cane juice? Raw sugar?

"It's all nutritionally deficient, our bodies can't use it, so what's the point?" she said.

At the beginning, in January 2008, she stuck her head in the doughnut case at the local Safeway, and breathed in over and over again. "I am fully aware of how unsanitary this is," she wrote.

By February, the sugar cravings were so wild her husband once "must have heard me running around the kitchen in a frenzy because he yells, 'Take a giant bite of cottage cheese!' " she wrote.

But she was feeling strong. Every time she successfully resisted, she thought to herself, "The work this took is not going to be for nothing."

And, she admits, she already was feeling superior from her success. It wasn't pretty, but at least it helped.

MacDonald, who had been a massage therapist in Portland, Ore., serving senior citizens who lived in care facilities, said the no-sugar diet coincided with a decision by her joint decision with her husband to "create a simpler life," leave their jobs, and spend several months helping others.

Nicole learned to stock up on healthful treats for long car trips, to figure out a way to follow her goals even in the midst of projects such as building houses in Mexico for people who were desperately poor. It was another kind of sweetness in their lives.

"We don't care about money as much as we do helping people, and we didn't realize that until we started really helping people who truly needed it," she said.

As the year marched on, she ate raw honey from her in-laws' beehives. She baked "sugar-free sugar cookies" and researched the glycemic index. When her mother was hospitalized for surgery, she asked a hospital dietitian why green Jell-O was considered a natural part of the hospital menu.

Some of her biggest surprises were how prevalent sugar, under all its various names, really is in the American diet. She found dextrose hiding in french fries, even refined sugar in a can of black beans she pulled from the pantry. She wouldn't have thought to check the label, but "I must have twisted my wrist out of habit, and sugar was one of five ingredients in a can of black beans.

"I can't help but wonder if there's a conspiracy to keep us addicted to sugar, or if it's just that little added sweetness to a product that will make someone go, 'Ooh, I've got to remember that can of black beans.' "

The consequences of her choice weren't always physical. What left her feeling emptiest, in the end, wasn't the taste so much as the lost rituals.

"Everyone orders dessert, and I sit there twiddling my thumbs, thinking, 'This is my least favorite part of the evening, where before it was my favorite,' " she said.

"There is something hugely significant about sharing something sweet with friends and family. It's special . . . and it seems it's OK if everyone's doing it. It's this group justification, and I never thought of it that way when I participated in it," she said. "Now that I'm sort of off on the sidelines, it's easy to see. 'Oh, so-and-so had two pieces of cake and three cookies. I can too!' It's all these subconscious messages we give ourselves and get from others."

Joining in, even on the "natural" side, didn't help. She made herself a batch of toffee, using honey, after feeling left out as family and friends built gingerbread houses, ate candies, and licked frosting off their fingers.

"I felt totally entitled to pig out on toffee, and so I did. And, of course, I felt horrible, eating too much of anything."

MacDonald had made resolutions before, to exercise more, for example, and read the Bible, but this is the first one she can ever remember keeping. She feels good physically (no sugar rush followed by sugar blahs) and mentally strong. In the end, though, she can't demonize sugar as much as she once thought she could. Refined white flour doesn't feel so good to her body either, she's realized. Our bodies are probably OK with a little sugar, just not the amount in the typical modern diet.

As 2008 drew to a close, MacDonald did not rent the doughnut shop as she had once planned.

Instead, MacDonald wrote on her blog, and ate homemade pizza and cookies of brown rice flour and molasses made for her by her cousin.

And on Jan. 1 she says, she decided that there were not enough convincing reasons to eat sugar again. She faces 2009 still sugar-free and with "a new perspective on nutrition, my willpower, others' willpower, and the overall power that sugar has on people."

Makes 48 cookies (24 servings)

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1 cup butter

1 cup date sugar

1/4 cup dark molasses

1 egg

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 3/4 cups flour (whole wheat may be used)

1 teaspoon baking soda

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1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

2. Combine butter, date sugar, dark molasses and egg and mix well.

3. Sift the cloves, ginger, cinnamon and salt and add to first mixture.

4. Add flour and baking soda and mix well. Dough should be pliable and easy to roll into a tablespoon-sized ball, but not stick to your hand. Place on greased cookie sheet and flatten. These can also be easily flattened as soon as they are taken out of the oven.

5. Bake at 375 degrees for 6 to 8 minutes until they are cracked on top.

Per serving:

128 calories, 2 grams protein, 30 grams carbohydrates, 18 grams sugar, trace grams fat, 9 milligrams cholesterol, 81 milligrams sodium, 1 gram dietary fiber.