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Footloose and Sugar-FreeThe odyssey of my no-sweets diet.

By Laura Moser
Posted Tuesday, April 1, 2008, at 5:41 PM ET

(Continued from page 1)

Either way, I thought I was sold. But then, on the morning of the New Hampshire primary, seven days after my diet began, I woke up craving a Starbucks chai, and I mean craving a Starbucks chai with every molecule of my being. I called my friend, hoping she'd talk me off the cliff. Before she could pick up, I slammed down the phone.

Ninety seconds later, I was waiting in line at Starbucks, and I was psyched. Would I care for any snack with my beverage? Well, now that you mention it, I most certainly would! Since when was 7:32 a.m. too early to enjoy a delicious triple chocolate cupcake? Five o'clock somewhere, indeed: That cupcake was gone before I'd stepped back out into the blizzard. For my first taste of sugar in a week, it was only so-so, but then I'd never been big into Starbucks pastries. I still couldn't wait for the chai—that chai promised to be the most amazing, explosive taste sensation of all space and time. But here's the thing. It wasn't. Like, not at all. Truth be told, it was actually pretty nasty—monochrome and syrupy and a tad poisonous-tasting. I sipped and I grimaced, but eventually I gave up. I simply couldn't finish the drink—I, who have never not finished a paid-for foodstuff in all my life! And the weirdness wasn't yet over, either. A few minutes after dumping the chai, I collapsed back into bed and passed out. Before 8 a.m.

Over the course of that month, a pattern emerged. After about six days on the wagon, I would leap out of bed gripped by a raging obsession with some very specific proscribed food: pad thai, say, or a plain white bagel or a Mrs. Fields' semisweet chocolate-chip without nuts. I would then hit the streets—often still in my pajamas—in pursuit of that food. Once that food was in my possession, I would consume it on the spot, with or without chewing.

Then, just as inevitably, would come the crash. Proof of sugar's power—the flooding of my system with insulin and the subsequent drop in my blood-sugar level—would knock me off-balance and send me crawling back to bed. After extended periods of living off complex, slow-release carbohydrates, I was clearly no longer inured to these rollercoaster blood-sugar fluctuations. There was another stumbling block, too: I just didn't like fretting over food all day long. My whole life, I've taken pride in not being one of those girls. You know the type I mean: the food-fixated, calorie-counting, scale-owners of our species.

And so, after a month of extremes, I decided to take the middle path. When I wanted to eat fruit, I would eat fruit. If I wanted a slice of pizza or a meal in a restaurant or an entire log of goat cheese while watching cable news, I was allowed that, too. As a result, I found myself slipping up less often than before. I no longer lunged for the bread basket, and I still mostly avoided desserts. (And, Starbucks aside, straight-up desserts had always been my undoing, not soft drinks or store-bought salad dressings or other common sources of "hidden" sugars.) But I was no longer limiting these indulgences as some empty test of self-control. It seemed I'd just lost the urge. Who knew that the sweetness of the milk in a cappuccino could be so satisfying?

These days, I'm mostly surprised by how well I've kept it up. I'm also surprised by how completely unnecessary so much of the food I used to eat was, and how little I miss those ice-cream benders. But I'd be lying if I claimed that my sugar cravings have vanished altogether. Chai is one thing; chocolate is still chocolate. Yet even my relationship with that essential food group has changed. Before going sugar-free, I had never favored dark chocolate over milk. On the contrary: I had only scorn for the pretentious Dagoba devotees of my acquaintance. Now, though, I wonder whether my Butterfinger days are gone for good. Even a bar with the once-unfathomable cocoa content of 73 percent tastes textured and complicated and just sweet enough.

A sharpened sense of taste is by no means my only gain. Have I mentioned my sparkling complexion? When minor flare-ups recur, it is generally within eight hours of a sugar binge. (Laugh if you like; the empirical evidence is too powerful to ignore. And a recent study supports this still-vague link between good skin and a low glycemic load diet.) Another unexpected boon: My periods are as regular as when I was on the pill, and preceded by zero PMS.

But if I'd hoped eliminating sugar would motivate me to balance a five-hour-daily meditation practice with a rigorous course of triathlon training (and I sort of did), I can't help but be a little disappointed with the experiment. I do not feel 10 years younger or sprightlier or even 1 percent invincible. I am still lazy and achy and frequently hyperactive. Still, we measure progress in baby steps. And it's been more than two months since I've banged on the door of Mrs. Fields dressed only in a nightgown and winter coat.

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Laura Moser is the co-author of the Social Climber Young Adult trilogy.
Illustration by Robert Neubecker.
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