About / Why I Quit Blogging

StopBeingSweet.com started in 2005 as a personal blog detailing my attempts to quit sugar. Blogs were all the rage back then, and my site was one of a handful that talked about sugar addiction, which made it easy to find via search engines. The stars aligned (topic, timing, tech), and visitors from all over the world asked me about how to quit sugar.

Up and Running

Blogging was fun—at first. I had a lot to say, and there was an audience for my writing. It was rewarding to help people improve their lives.

I never aimed to be a sugar-free diet guru, and I did not take any of it seriously until people started to write to me and tell me their stories.

I blogged about how to abstain from sugar pretty steadily for ten years, and in that time, Stop Being Sweet helped thousands of people figure out how to cut down their sugar intake. A publisher scouted me for a book deal (it did not pan out), which was an enlightening experience.

Suddenly a Business

My little blog turned into a mission, and I was being called to serve. People began to want things—products, links, offers to buy my site.

Folks told me, “Stop Being Sweet could be such a great brand if you just do it like this.” Their advice was usually stuff like change the color scheme, write for housewives, or go to school to become a nutritionist.

“You could make a killing,” they’d say.

However, I didn’t want to take it there. As the blog grew, it took up more of my life, and I had other things to do. Growing a website as a business requires a lot of website maintenance, and success always felt just out of reach, after one more thing to do... like installing web components, deleting unrelenting spam, or fixing an error that caused a member’s password to stop working. I was doing it all myself. It was too much.

Train Left the Station

It all started to change when the rest of the world caught up with me and the few other no-sugar bloggers who were online at the time. As new I-quit-sugar blogs started to pop up, mine lost traction. Where I used to be in the top search results on Google, I was suddenly several pages in. Without an ad budget, my site was buried by competitors.

The competition was fierce—actress/models, researchers, doctors, and nutritionists. None of which I am. I had done workshops, private one-on-one coaching, and given sugar-free talks at businesses and community centers. I’d still do all that, I enjoy it, but I stopped actively pushing or selling those services, because I had other things I wanted to do.

It was tiring to have to come up with something new every week to compete with the onslaught of recipes, scientific facts, and online programs that competitors were offering. They were all in. I wasn’t.

My site was generating some income, but I was burning out. I found myself more interested in how advertising hypnotizes us into believing we should be eating sugar over healthy foods. I started blogging about that topic, but it required research. Most readers just wanted to know how to quit sugar. I’d written many blog posts to dress up “quit sugar” in different ways, but at some point I got tired of saying the same thing.

Sweet Happens

The web hosting company that hosted StopBeingSweet.com went out of business in 2018, so I had to move my entire website. The database-driven content management system I was using was out of date, so I couldn’t just move everything to a modern server. Ten years of blog was slipping out of my hands, and after all that time I had little to show for it.

That made me think twice, and I took a long break.

While the site was offline, I found myself falling back into my old, sweet habits. I missed practicing with other people, exchanging ideas, giving and receiving support, and participating in something greater than myself. That’s why I’m rebuilding this website, just not as a blog this time.

Join Us

The Internet is swell, but what matters is what happens in real life. If you want to get off sugary junk food for good: Stop Being Sweet.