Sarah Wilson: "How Quitting Sugar Has Changed My Life"

Before I quit sugar, I thought my diet was great.

I was eating all the so-called ‘healthy’ sugars—honey in my chai tea, porridge with plenty of dried fruit, dates and bananas. It looked like I was super-healthy but I just didn’t know the full story—that sugar is sugar. In truth, I honestly didn’t realise the effect it had on me.

Then I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s disease.

My adrenal glands were in hyperdrive, my nails fell off, my hair was falling out in clumps and I was incredibly fatigued. I was told by my doctor not to eat sugar because, with an autoimmune disease, you have blood sugar problems at the best of times, and I was on a blood sugar roller-coaster. I was really resistant to the idea, but there’s nothing like a magazine column deadline to get you to do something like that. I gave up sugar for one week [for Sunday Life] after which I got an overwhelming response from people wanting to know more. I started researching the answers to their health and nutrition questions and, as a result, began getting all this content for my blog. At the time I was hosting MasterChef and it was a good time to go online because one foot was still stuck in the door of mainstream media and the other was in new media. It all started with the column which grew into blog posts, then an I Quit Sugar ebook, an ebook cookbook, the print book and now an online program that employs 11 people!

MasterChef put food back on the agenda.

And that’s fantastic. I also think the bigger food movement is that people are no longer trusting the traditional food messages we all grew up with. It’s becoming increasingly clear there’s a vested interest behind a lot of them. In its place, there’s a new movement of nutritional thinking being driven by people outside the mainstream—everybody from scientists to nutritionists to bloggers to people who’ve had an illness: people speaking from experience. We need to go back to the way our grandparents and great-grandparents ate, before we got all these complicated metabolic diseases.

This year is a busy one for me.

I have a new online program that kicks off in February which is like a new year detox, and we’ve come up with a vegetarian version of the I Quit Sugar meal plan. A lot of vegetarians have a very high sugar-based diet, so we’ve put a lot of work into creating it. We’ve got a kids’ sugar-free cookbook out mid-February offering healthy lunch box options, and my second book, I Quit Sugar For Life, about eating for whole wellness in a sustainable way, comes out at the end of February. I’ve said to my mum before, “I can’t quite believe it! This wasn’t meant to happen to me!”

I’m amazed by the juggernaut my blog is now.

But partly because I’m 40 and because I’ve been a journalist for 20 years, I feel comfortable with the responsibility that goes with sharing the sort of information that I do. The wonderful thing about blogging is that I was able to explore going sugar-free in real time, so I had a following that grew with me as the topic heated up. Almost three years later, I feel confident that I’m authentic and that it all happened in a natural way.

My day on a plate looks a little like this:

For breakfast, I make a green smoothie with heaps of vegetables, half a kiwifruit, some ginger and fresh turmeric. I always supplement that with a handful of nuts or a big scoop of nut butter. For lunch, it’s what I call a mishmash meal: steamed vegetables, whatever’s in my fridge with some kind of protein and fat stirred through it. Either a couple of eggs, a tin of tuna, a quarter of a chicken, some fetta cheese, homemade mayonnaise, olive or macadamia oil. For dinner, I’ll have slow-cooked pulled pork or beef cheeks. I make a big quantity and freeze it into portions so I’ve always got a meal ready. I’ll have it with broccolini, zucchini, parsnip or sweet potato mash. And I definitely have a glass of red wine.

I’ve just turned 40. I was really excited about it—I feel like I’ve arrived.

It feels like I’ve climbed the mountain and now I’m at the top. Finally, I can enjoy the view.

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