Something I’m happy about and something I’m embarrassed about: In the last year, I’ve dropped 20 pounds. I attribute my success to exercise only because frankly, I eat too much junk. In fact, I’m gonna ‘fess up…for lunch, I just consumed peanuts and candy corn. Washed it down with Starbucks caramel macchiato I had in the fridge. #deconstructedPayday. #diabeticinthemaking.

I could lose more weight if I’d stop with the sugar. I forget how many pounds of sugar Americans consume each year, but it’s enough to render us all Type II diabetics. Trouble is, sugar is every bit as addicting as cocaine or heroin or cigarettes or alcohol. It lights up the same areas of your brain as any one of those substances. Scientists have seen this on PET scans. Humans actually build up a tolerance for sugar…the more we have, the more we want.

I’m 67 years old, so addictions are harder to overcome. Not using age as an excuse…it’s just a fact. However, I know people who have done it – beat the sugar addiction. And the flour addiction. And all the processed crap addiction.

We weren’t meant to eat the way we do. We adopted it.

Did you know sugar helps generate inflammation? Bad stuff comes from inflammation – arthritis, heart and liver disease. Even cancer.

Anyway, I’m so thankful for Silver Sneakers. Otherwise, I’d have to cart my gut around in a wheelbarrow. I work out hard so I can try to burn up the calories my sugary goodies provide to me. FYI…it’s hard to out-exercise your intake if your intake is sugar. Just want to warn you about that. When you leave exercise class, you better be sweatin’. A LOT.

Now, I do eat healthy food, too. I love every kind of healthy food with the exception of anything that comes from the water, whether it’s a lake, river, pond, or ocean. No fish or seafood, please, unless you like watching people throw up. My experience is that most people do not care to watch you throw up. Anyway, I love pretty much every vegetable God invented, and I like most fruits too (skip those gritty, weird pears, please). I’ll eat beef, turkey, and chicken. Oh, and bacon – not healthy, but the only pork I’ll eat. Sadly, after I consume a healthy meal, it’s not long before I’m prowling around the kitchen looking for something sweet.

But see, even after the healthiest of meals, I feel…incomplete…without dessert. I feel it in my chest. Oh, the emptiness.

Can you imagine what someone who’s starving would think of my whiny sugar rant?

“You Americans are so spoiled! For lunch, I had three barley heads and and a handful of clay.”

Seriously, that’s how bad it is in some countries. They would have more food if I’d stop eating all theirs.

For all the sugar addicts out there, I feel you. I know I’m not alone in this struggle. I’ll keep trying because I want to live well into old age and be as healthy as possible for whatever time I have left. You fellow sugar fiends hang in there, too, so you can be around for those you love and for those who you love back.

Hope you got a laugh out of all this…I just learned that Vanderbilt University Medical Center discovered laughing for ten to 15 minutes burns between ten and 40 calories. Apparently, that’s enough to shift between one and 4 pounds per year. So keep laughing. At that rate, it’ll only take 5 more years to lose another 20 pounds.

Oh, and walk past the doughnuts.

Peace to all.