The Week Without Sugar

I was a bit of a glut over the Christmas holiday.  Truth be told, glut is probably an understatement.  I was the cookie monster reincarnated.  I was the person who had thirds on dessert.  I toured a chocolate factory and sampled almost every single one of their chocolates (including their fig, fennel and almond bar, which was fantastic).

I am not super-uber-overly conscience healthy, but I do try to keep all good things in moderation.  But then the holidays rolled around and I figured: hey, it's Christmas!  Take a break, eat the cookies!  Which, fits into the whole moderation scheme if you only let loose a day or two.  It absolutely does not fit if let loose your whole entire 17 day vacation.  Which is, more or less, what I did.  And I have been paying for it ever since.  Clothes are a little tighter, my face just a little pudgier, and I am incessantly reaching for snacks, especially of the sweet persuasion.  Weight-wise, pre-eat all the goodies in sight mode, I was at my healthy, could lose a few pounds, but in general I am happy with the number on the scale weight.  However, that weight has now creeped up a few pounds and I am flirting with the scary "DO NOT CROSS" weight line and I'm not happy about it (curiously, the range of weight between "content with my weight" and "holy moly, get off the scale now and eat nothing but broth for the next month" is about 6 pounds.  Not a ton of wiggle room there).

Anyways, all of this is to say that I need to pull back and reset my system, and get myself back to that generally healthy attitude I was before the ugly gluttony monster took over my life.  In other words - I need to get the voice in my head that has me constantly reaching for the peanut butter covered pretzels to shut the hell up.

Or, you know, I could simply stop BUYING the pretzels...

I talked with Ben.  I told him that I needed to stop making butterscotch pudding and brown buttered hazelnut cakes draped in dark chocolate ganache.  I said I wanted to try one week with no added sugar.  No maple syrup on my oatmeal in the morning, no cookies sneaked from the office communal table for dessert after lunch, no handful of dark chocolate covered almonds with my evening glass of tea (or, you know, red wine...).  Resetting my sugar intake for a whole week.  7 days, zero sugar (ending conveniently before Valentine's Day, of course).  He seemed to inherently understand that the upcoming week was likely going to be murderous for him, but he decided to support me nevertheless.  Good guy, that husband of mine.

This little experiment may kill me, or just as likely, kill my husband

 We set up a few ground rules for me, to help me keep my sanity.  It would be a no added sugar week, meaning that the Kashi bar I eat for a snack nearly every day was a no go, as well as most bread, and jam and all chocolate.  I would be allowed to compensate with "naturally occurring" sugar, aka fruit.  I personally decided, much to my own dismay, that maple syrup and honey would not fall into the naturally occurring sugar category.  Anything sweet would be entering my gullet only through grown plant matter.

And so the week without sugar starts.  On a Friday, cause that makes a whole bunch of sense.  Or at least it will make more sense when it ends on the Friday before Valentine's day - leaving my February 14th open for guilt-free (and hopefully, very moderate) consumption of chocolate goodies.

In other, somewhat related news, apparently these ads actually existed at one point in human history:

Apparently, sugar aids in your willpower.  It's science.