One year living almost 100% sugar-free*!

This time last year, I weighed an incredible and embarrassingly 304 pounds.

As of today, I weigh 259.5. My highest ever weight was recorded by my doctor on August 16, 2011. I was 318 pounds.

Forty-four and half pounds later (and a grand total of 58.5 pounds lost) I'm here to tell you how I did it, why I keep losing and why I will keep losing.

After that awful weigh-in in August 2011, I told my husband that once the lease was up on my SUV at the end of the year, I would go car-free and take the bus and/or walk to wherever I needed to go.

I made good on that commitment despite friends and family who doubted I could live without my own vehicle for more than six months, let alone forever. It's been 20 months. I'm still car-less, suckers!

That's not to say it was an easy decision. Having access to a vehicle leads to an incredible amount of impulsive freedom ... and impulsive eating. Food on the go is more accessible when you can swing through a drive-thru, and this was my biggest downfall. I was notoriously bad for eating and driving on the go which resulted in very poor food choices.

In the Spring of 2012, I bought myself a bike and a bike trailer and I pedaled my daughter to daycare for five months straight. Despite all that exercise where the ride back was uphill 80% of the way, I only lost nine pounds. I was baffled. I wasn't eating more than usual and in fact, I was eating less but the weight wasn't coming off as fast as I had imagined.

My husband is a Type 2, non-insulin diabetic. In an effort to help him cope with his disease, I borrowed several books about diabetes and sugar addiction from the library around this time last year and I made an interesting discovery. This isn't new, it's just that I was slow to make the connection - sugar makes you fat.

In all of the studies mentioned in the books, each of the subjects, once diagnosed and having changed their diets, lost anywhere from 40 pounds or more in the first year of what becomes a life-long commitment to eating sugar-free.

I told my husband that I was quitting sugar. No more Frosted Flakes, no more croissants, no more Too Tall Cakes from M&M Meat Shops. No more chocolate. No more Passion Flakies (god damn, I loved those). No more jams, jellies, syrups, ice cream, fudge, pudding or Dairy Queen. I was done.

The first three months, which saw me go through three major food holidays - Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's, I felt like a junkie who had quit meth. I chewed so much sugar-free gum, that some days it hurt just to smile. By the end of February, I was down 15 pounds. This was with no exercise. Just a change in diet.

In March, I switched my daughter from her daycare centre back to her former babysitter. She was too big for the bike trailer and the daycare was too far to walk to, and back, if I wanted to catch a bus that got me to the GO station and on a train before 8 am. It was a 25 minute bike ride. To walk the same route would take an hour, plus, it would mean walking on a rural road with no sidewalk and very little shoulder - way too dangerous at 6:00 am when most drivers are barely awake, and if they are, they're too busy texting to notice two pedestrians at the side of the road. I had three close calls when on the bike, I wasn't taking any more risks by walking.

It's a 25 minute walk to the babysitter from my house and another 10 minutes after I drop my daughter off to the bus stop. I walk 35 minutes for a total distance of 2.65 km each morning, and walk another 1.9 km to work and back once I get to Toronto. Guaranteed, I walk a total of 4.55 km five days a week and walk anywhere from another 2 km to 5 km on weekends, or throughout the work day, if I want to hit the PATH during my lunch hour. This exercise, coupled with further changes in my diet, has resulted in a loss of 30 pounds in 4.5 months. I also quit bread, aspartame, potato chips, reduced my dairy intake to consuming only 2% milk and ditched red meat from my diet. If I eat steak, it's once every two months.

I now eat more chicken, fish, fruits, vegetables and whole grains. Instead of ice cream, I blend some fruit with watered down 2% milk and add chia seeds for a satisfying smoothie. For additional flavour, I'll add a teaspoon of vanilla.

Some days, I mourn the way I used to eat. I know there are former sugar/salt/cheese/starch addicts out there who lie and say they never could imagine going back to the way they used to be. I can imagine just fine, thank you very much. There are nights where I lie in bed and fight the cravings where I fantasize about Strawberry Cheesecake Blizzards, Passion Flakies, Too Tall Lemon Cakes, Nestle Drumsticks, Chicken McNuggets, Calzones, Pepperoni Pizza with Anchovies, President Choice Double Chunk Cookies and Doritos. Fuck, I love Doritos. Cool Ranch, that was my vice, man.

Saturday, I had a bad day. I don't know if it was hormones, my mood, high tide, some food holiday in a part of the world I've never been to but I could not, as hard as I tried, fight the desire to eat a bowl of Chapman's Blueberry Cheesecake ice cream.

I paced. I played 500 rounds of Candy Crush Saga. I ironed 10 shirts and organized my daughter's sock and underwear drawer, but the craving would not subside. I had the ice cream and I felt awful for hours afterward and all day Sunday. By Sunday night, I let it go. I have to understand the cravings for what they are. I don't know what the hell that is, but there has to be a reason why they happen and I need to learn how to handle them. I realize it's okay to eat a little bit but it's the remorse I struggle with. A cup of ice cream isn't going to pile fifty pounds back on, but it's the thought of how easy it can be to do exactly that. I didn't get to 318 pounds free-basing rice cakes.

I wrote this post because people keep asking me how I've managed to lose what I've lost. When I mention the sugar, people refuse to believe it could be that simple and also refuse to believe they can do it "because sugar is in everything"! No, it's not in everything. Bad sugar is in things you really shouldn't be eating more than once a month. Good sugar is in things you should eat everyday, like fruit. So you're not necessarily quitting sugar, you're quitting bad sugar, the high fructose corn syrup sugar, the added sugar and the junk food sugar.

I've watched people go vegan, gluten-free, low-fat and vegetarian and lose next to nothing after two years of eating this way. There's still sugar in those diets. A quick look at Vegan Snacks is very revealing. You know why all those snacks taste so good? Sugar.

I eat what my husband eats. I'm not a diabetic but I was well on way to being one. If you're obese and you've given up on all the diets, try eliminating sugar. Talk to your doctor. He won't say no.

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*Of bad sugar. Very bad sugar