August 14, 2017.

Me and my roommate Roy are completely broke. The salary from our part-time job comes in a week. We look around our house for leftover coins. We look everywhere from old backpacks to the underneaths of sofas and beds. We accumulate around ¥1100. We are ecstatic. We feel on top of the world. Guess what we did? We bought 5 bottles of 1L Coke and 5 cans of 500ml Coke. That’s how addicted I was to Coke. We were broke but we needed a week’s worth of Coke.

That was almost 3 years back. At present I call myself a passive consumer of Coke. Why? Because I haven’t bought Coke by myself since the beginning of 2019. That’s when I decided to quit coke, sugar in general. Nowadays the only time I consume coke is when a friend buys it or if I am at an event where they serve coke. Other than that I don’t buy it myself. My coke addiction was in reality sugar addiction. That is what I have been able to overcome in the past 1 year. I want to share how I managed to do it and some tips for anyone with a similar addiction.

Back in fall 2018 I had my final annual health check up as an undergraduate student. Everytime I had a checkup I was told I am obese and some problems related to obesity. But I never paid heed to them. I always convinced myself that I am too busy with life right now and my health can wait. That was stupid. Very very stupid. Never think like that. That should be on the list of things you should never do. But I did. I repeated it 3 years in a row. But on the final check up the clinic told me that I might be at a risk of getting diabetes.

Being from a family with a history of diabetes it wasn’t surprising, but I never expected that being in my 20s I would be facing this. I didn’t tell my parents about it. I shut myself out for a few days. I kept on talking to myself. I kept on telling myself, ‘‘I can’t let this happen. Not now, not ever. I am going to beat whatever is coming after me.’’ Might sound dramatic but I was really scared. I hate hospitals and I try to avoid them as much as I can. But having a serious health condition means more time near hospitals. So, that was it.

Within the next week. I had my last can of coke. I said goodbye to sugar. The target was a month. But then it became two, three, four and finally a whole year without touching a can of coke. I slowly started adding the required amount of sugar into my diet but I was no more addicted. I have been addicted to junk food my whole life. But not anymore. I beat whatever was coming after me. And I am going to keep on beating it every single day! That’s the goal at least.

Although I summed up a whole years effort of quitting sugar in one short paragraph, it actually took a lot of work. You should keep the following things in mind if you are on a similar journey.

I believe this is the most important part of the process. You need find out why you are trying to quit sugar. Because this why becomes the fuel of your motivation that lets you continue. You need to have a reason which drives you. For me, it was in simple terms the fear of hospitals. I want to stay healthy because I want to avoid hospitals. Sugar addiction wasn’t going to keep me away from the hospitals. That was the drive that I needed. When I got that wake up call, I just kept on going. I am still going and I beat my addiction. So, the first step is to find your why!

Our environment is full of triggers that push us towards any behavior or habit. For this reason we need to control the triggers in our environment. In my case those triggers were foods that contained sugar around my house. If you want to quit sugar, you need get rid of anything and everything that has sugar in it. I not only said goodbye to the can of coke, I also started finding any products that had added sugar in my house and I started reducing them. I used to love coffee with milk and sugar. But the sugar had to go. I used to love nutella but it had to go. One triggers another. So if you want to quit sugar, start controlling your environment first.

Environment also includes the people you surround yourself with. If you have a circle of friends who have a tendency to eat junk food, avoid them. My friend Roy had a similar addiction to coke. But he is a skinny dude. Whatever he eats, it doesn’t matter. He is just one of those guys. Thankfully, he was not my roommate anymore when I started quitting sugar. So no awkward moments with him.

There is a reason that our brain craves sugar. It gives us instant gratification. Our brain loves it. It gives us a boost of energy, but sadly that energy depletes. Then we again need a boost. We again consumer sugar. And the cycle continues. Our body gets used to this pattern. So if we are planning to quit sugar we need to find an alternative to whatever we were consuming in the past.

For example: for me coke was a regular thing that gave me a boost of energy. My first week was really hard because I didn’t feel that energy. For this reason I needed substitute. I started drinking black coffee instead. It’s not the healthiest addiction but it’s better than coke. It helped me get through the first few weeks. I am not addicted to black coffee now but I needed it during the first few weeks.

Whatever sugar product you are trying to quit, finding a healthy alternative will help. At the beginning it will be hard but slowly you will beat a bad habit with a healthier habit.

Those were the 3 things that helped me get over my addiction. The idea is pretty simple but like all good things, the execution is harder. Find your motivation, create the environment and just stick to it. You can do it!