TCS 004: A sugar addicts journey – one year with no sugar Tony Cosentino Show

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I have had a long terrible relationship with sugar. As a baby I was given a flavoured sugar syrup as a pacifier which was common in the late 60's in Australia. So from the beginning of my life my body has craved sugar. This is my story 1 year after actually giving it up for good.



Below is the transcript from the podcast so you can easily go to a point of interest and for the hearing impaired to be able to read it.



Tony: [00:00:29] Hi everyone today I want to talk about my journey giving up sugar a year ago. It's been just over a year now. So I want to share some of the things that I've experienced and how it went. Today I've got two co-hosts I'm very lucky I've got Sam and Fynn say hi Fynn, hi.



Tony: [00:00:56] Yep two of the best co-hosts in the business. You know what I've been trying to give up sugar for years I've tried quitting and it'd last for about two weeks and then I'd start saying I can just have a little bit of something a little bit sugar and within an hour or two of having some sugar I was back into full blown sugar addiction. So let me explain my sugar addiction first I guess. I, as a kid when we got pocket money I would spend pretty much all my pocket money on lollies my brother would save it. So he always had money and I always had no money because I was buying as much sugar as I could get with my pocket money. And that was just the beginning and I guess when you fell which then led to tooth decay. I had had most of my teeth filled I think. So really poor teeth from the get go apparently. Apparently also I had a baby I was given a sugar syrup kind of a drink to calm me down you know pacifiers sort of stuff that people used to use in those days. So my taste buds and body were just used to introduced to some really strong sugar from basically a baby. So it's been quite a challenge and also my interestingly my Mum's got quite a high sugar addiction I think. She grew up in a shop. Her parents had a shop that sold milkshakes and lollies and. All kinds of stuff like that. So Like third generation sugar addict I'd say I am because my grandfather was or he was he was. He was a high consumer he got type 2 diabetes in his 50s. So it's been a generational thing I think to deal with. So anyway when I tried to. Give up sugar it just hasn't worked.



Tony: [00:03:40] So I ended up watching 'That sugar film (link goes to preview)' and reading the book first and then watching the film. I don't know how to explain it. It made so much sense to me because the author, Damon Gameau, I could relate so much to his story that it actually made a lot of sense to me. What he realised was that the only way to really get off sugar is to stop having it altogether. I decided to really give that a go. So on the 28th of March 20 17 just before Easter I decided to drop sugar. So I basically spent Easter 2017 watching everyone around me gorge themselves with chocolate while I sat back and watched it was it wasn't too bad actually surprisingly at that early stage and then by the second or third week I was having really strong cravings as you do with sugar and I had things like kombucha to kind of distract myself and trying to reprogram my stomach I guess by having things like that. I let myself type fruit but I got through that cold turkey stage. By the third week the cravings were gone and I really couldn't care less about sugar. It was quite quite amazing how much the addiction stopped. What do you think boys. You've seen me go through this have I stuck to it.



Sam and Fynn: [00:05:42] No he hasn't, stuck to it one little bit.



Tony: [00:05:46] No? What have I not done.



Sam: [00:05:49] Had sugar.



Tony: [00:05:51] What sugar?



Fynn: [00:05:52] Processed sugar.



Tony: [00:05:55] I think what they're talking about is what I'm not having is white sugar, is cane sugar.