{"id":543,"date":"2026-04-16T20:45:37","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T15:15:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chaoticfly.in\/?p=543"},"modified":"2026-04-16T20:48:44","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T15:18:44","slug":"quitting-sugar-a-philosophical-rabbit-hole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chaoticfly.in\/index.php\/2026\/04\/16\/quitting-sugar-a-philosophical-rabbit-hole\/","title":{"rendered":"Quitting Sugar: A philosophical rabbit hole"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

“The things you used to own, now they own you.”<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

– Chuck Palahniuk<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps the hardest thing I have ever done is quit sugar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I won’t pull you into a drawn-out hospitalization sob story. Here\u2019s the blunt version: a lower spine injury put me flat on my back. It took a couple of steroid shots just to get me standing again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was the day I quit sugar. Not a slow taper. Not a “last meal.” A cold-turkey, blunt-force stop. Alongside it, I slashed my food intake to two meals a day, capping my mains at 150 grams plus vegetables.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It sounds preposterous. You might think the steroids did the heavy lifting, but painkillers don’t burn fat. What got me through was walking 10 to 15 kilometers every single day. Within a couple of months, fueled by nothing but relentless walking and dietary absolutism, I dropped 8 kilos. In a few more months I had further achieved a 25 kilo drop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Two Fronts<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you quit sugar, you quickly realize you are fighting a two-front war. There is the explicit: crystallized sugar, jaggery, honey<\/em>. Then there is the implicit: fruits, heavy carbs, fried potatoes<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quitting either is as gruelling as kicking a high-order narcotic. I\u2019m talking about reaching a level where you are surrounded by sweets and feel absolutely nothing. You can serve guests without a flinch. You can wash the sticky syrup of a rasgulla off your fingers and sit perfectly still while everyone else devours a sundae.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Myth of Zen<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

I used to assume that reaching this state of control required Zen-level patience. A profound mastery over human greed.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Turns out, it\u2019s much simpler and much darker than that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most effective deterrent isn’t enlightenment; it\u2019s fear and loathing. I loved<\/em> rasgullas. But my sobriety started with the raw fear of eating just one and knowing I\u2019d have to work doubly hard the next day to burn it off. That fear slowly mutated into an abject dislike for the food itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it didn\u2019t stop there. If I\u2019m being honest, it grew into a quiet, simmering judgment of the people around me who ate sweets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

De-Addiction is an Addiction<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This physical detox brought me to a deep philosophical realization. Everything in our lives is an addiction. The cities we live in, the cultures we blindly follow, the ideologies we cling to. We are all hooked on something, requiring a massive de-addiction to ever truly be free.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, you start stripping it all away. You optimize. You cut out the sugar, you cut out the noise. You become a master of your own impulses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But here is the ugly truth they don’t tell you about quitting: you never actually stop being an addict. You just trade up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn’t achieve enlightenment by giving up rasgullas. I just replaced the cheap dopamine hit of crystallized sugar with the infinitely more intoxicating rush of absolute control. The smug, silent superiority I feel when I wash that syrup off my hands and watch you eat your sundae?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smug is my new high.<\/em><\/strong> And it’s the hardest drug I’ve ever been on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“The things you used to own, now they own you.” – Chuck Palahniuk Perhaps the hardest thing I have ever done is quit sugar. I won’t pull you into a drawn-out hospitalization sob story. Here\u2019s the blunt version: a lower spine injury put me flat on my back. It took a couple of steroid shots […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-phoilosphy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"RoboGalleryMansoryImagesCenter":false,"RoboGalleryPreload":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"post-image":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"chaoticfly","author_link":"https:\/\/chaoticfly.in\/index.php\/author\/chaoticfly\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"“The things you used to own, now they own you.” – Chuck Palahniuk Perhaps the hardest thing I have ever done is quit sugar. I won’t pull you into a drawn-out hospitalization sob story. Here\u2019s the blunt version: a lower spine injury put me flat on my back. It took a couple of steroid shots…","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chaoticfly.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chaoticfly.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chaoticfly.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chaoticfly.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chaoticfly.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/chaoticfly.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":547,"href":"https:\/\/chaoticfly.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543\/revisions\/547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chaoticfly.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chaoticfly.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chaoticfly.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}