Sugarpie, Honeybunch, I can't help myself

Oh, a nail is being hammered between my eyes. Day three of no sugar did not go well. It started out well enough until I couldn't stop coughing. I reached for a cup of tea and remembered no sugar, no sweeteners, no honey. I debated with myself about the consequences of having just a little honey in my tea. I couldn't believe I was allowing some media quack to get me think of honey as the new gateway drug.

I sighed and poured a teaspoon of honey into my tea. Oh, it was delicious, and the gates opened. I planned for the teaspoon of honey to be my treat. I was so certain that would be my one slip today. That is until lunch rolled around. I've been at home most of the day fussing with my thesis and I thought "I want to get away for a couple of hours." I decided to drop off some items at Half Price Books and use the cash to buy a new book. I was heading home when I realized it was two in the afternoon and I hadn't eaten anything since 8 in the morning. Even though I was hungry I decided I could wait for a can of soup when I got home. I'm still nursing a cold and have no idea why I decided to go anywhere as snotty as I am.

Around the corner from my house is a Sonic. Any junk food or cream slush lover knows that Sonic serves half price drinks from 2 to 4. Perfect window. I rolled through the drive-thru and ordered a large Sprite and a iced mocha latte. I normally don't like cold chocolate but something in me just had to have it. I took two sips of the coffee and threw it out. The Sprite has been my companion for most of the day. When I finished it I made more tea with sweetener. I reasoned that I hadn't had all of my latte or any candy or cookies so I should be fine. And then the pain came.

I've finished my tea and now the sugar taunts me. Yes, it tastes so good but now it hurts so bad. I realize I am not well and I could just have a lingering sinus headache. But the sharp, painful, hammering between my eyes suggests otherwise. But, who knows my head still feels like it's underwater. One thing I do know is detoxing does not do well for me. Especially when I am a snotty, congested, pathetic mess.

If anything this has taught me something. I can go without candy, cookies and sugar for the most part. But denying myself, just saying something is absolutely banned does not work. Well, it does for a little while and then it knocks you really hard between the eyes. Not giving in, turning myself into a martyr for the scale is just as ridiculous as turning myself into sinner for wanting a sweetener in my coffee. The goal is moderation. Now if only I can learn to live it.

On the good ship Lollipop

Day two and this no sugar thing is starting to annoy me. I'm still not feeling well so all I want to do is burn the itchiness out of my throat with tea. Problem: I like sugar in my tea. I like sugar in my coffee. I like to have toast with honey or cookies, or something sweet and gooey to go with my tea or coffee. Realizing I may have made an error in judgement is more annoying than not having sugar. I have tea with unsweetened almond milk and buttered toast. No honey. I reason that in the state I am in I can not tell the difference anyway.

A couple of hours later and all I want to do is go back to sleep and my eyes hurt. It could be my sinuses. It could be I am finally coming down from the sugar binge I had a few days ago. Either way I head back to bed. I wake up again to find my dog staring at me with a confused look on his face. I decide to move around and work on cleaning my neglected kitchen.

I try to rationalize that having an artificial sweetened or sugar free something isn't like I had sugar. But I know that's not true. I actually read the box of artificial sweetener I keep for coffee to double check my argument. The sweetener did have sugar listed in the nutritional information. Less than a gram. Who was it going to hurt? I remembered I didn't know what grams translated to in teaspoons, etc. Crud. I put it back and continued with my mopping.

After that's done I am worn out and hungry. What I want is a cup of Chai with cream and honey and gingersnaps. I settle for a banana and a cup of  chicken noodle. I realize the noodles are not wheat noodles but Campbell's doesn't make chicken and wheat noodle soup. Maybe I am not being as strict as I need to be but beggars can't be choosers when it comes to chicken noodle soup.

It's dinner time and I really want some ice cream. My fever is breaking and I want something cold. If it were something cold and sweet so much the better. Instead I make wheat penne pasta and add some diced tomatoes to lean beef and chopped onions. My husband has spaghetti with garlic bread. I still want ice cream. A dipped cone from DQ or McDonald's or maybe just a large Dr. Pepper.

Oh well, I guess I'll settle for a glass of water. It's better for me anyway. Tomorrow is when I get rid of fruit.  I'm not sure I am up for that. Having a banana got me through not having any sugar today. I will say not having any sugar made me appreciate the sweetness of the banana so much more.

It had a delicate sweetness that wasn't at all like the banana flavored snowcones I remember from Bud's Snowballs. Mmm, snowcones. My favorite was the Swiss Almond Cocoa also known as Hawaiian Snow. Gosh, now I am drooling. Ok, enough of this for tonight or else I will get a sugar rush.

Sugar, oh honey honey

First day of the sugar detox went fairly well. Except that I already have some kind of sinus cold and wouldn't have noticed a sugar detox headache anyway. My ears won't stop popping and my head feels like it's under water. Feeling ill agrees with my diet goals. I avoided all sugar except for the peach I had after a large cup of chicken noodle soup. Tomorrow it gets harder as I attempt to cut out white breads, potatoes, and white pasta. I'm ready. I have a loaf of 100 % whole wheat in the fridge and whole wheat pasta in the pantry. I was surprised that these items do have some sugar in them. But I guess you can't get away from it in processed food.

The hard part was as I perused the grocery store for bread and soup all the temptation called to me.The grocery store cleverly sticks the bread and fruit next to the baked goods. Oh, I love to have tea and cookies when I don't feel good. I stuck to my guns and avoided the sweets. Then I headed to the bananas remembering I  needed to have some fruit in the house for my husband's lunch and breakfast. Nilla wafers sit next to the bananas urging me to me make banana pudding. Thankfully I didn't head for the strawberries or I would've been assaulted by whipped cream and Angel food cake. Sugar, you are everywhere.

Speaking of which I decided to forgo my usual "sick" drink: Sprite.  I browsed the juice section and grabbed a bottle of unsweetened tea. I read the label and was confused. There were too many poly this or poly that's to belong in a glass of tea. I was under the impression that tea was boiled leaves and water. I decided to stick to soup and water. If I want tea I can boil some water and tea bags at home.

So all in all day one was not so bad. Let's see how tomorrow goes.

I'm addicted to you and I just can't get enough

Those words have never been truer for me these days. I worked for a bookstore formerly owned by Borders group until today. The last few days have been a nightmare as co-workers and I scrambled to close up a store and ship books to another store with little direction and no supplies. When we finally were able to box up merchandise we played the waiting game with Fedex. Between lugging and boxing books, magazines and office supplies I found myself sitting around talking and quite often eating sugar.

The to-go brownies from Friday's kept me sane when I thought I was going to lose my nerve. The chocolate and almond-covered-toffee bar  from the candy shop made me smile when all I wanted to do was  cry over my frustration and exhaustion. Brownies, cookies, donuts, sweetened coffee, tea, soft drinks, and candy all made it to my list of must have food items this week. And I've gained three pounds.

Pish posh! Not a lot you say? It's a lot when I was 147 lbs. at the end of last week and am now 150 lbs. To top it off (no pun intended) I'm only 4'10. Yikes! Back in the danger zone of weight gain. As I was driving home today from my last day at work I heard the lyrics to the Black-Eyed Peas song. And I thought that's it, we should never identify with a Black-Eyed Peas song. Seriously, all kidding aside I need to do something and stop fussing about it.

I had a moment to catch some of Rachael Ray the other day and she was speaking to Dr. Fred Pescatore of The Hamptons Diet about how much sugar the average American consumes in a day: 33 teaspoons which translates to 155 lbs of sugar per year. Ugh. No wonder I have so much trouble with my weight. I'm an emotional eater and I LOVE my sugar. Now, I am not one for fad diets but he got my attention. Later in the show Pescatore suggested a sugar detox for a viewer of the show. The chosen viewer revealed her video log of her detox and her problems with it. Headaches, moodiness, frustration with a restricted food list.  But even she had to admit sugar was running her life and weight. So for the next three days I am going to try this out. Just the Detox and I will report on each day. Hopefully my sugar addiction will be curbed a bit. Until then, where's my Sprite?

http://www.rachaelrayshow.com/show/segments/view/curing-your-sweet-tooth/

Mirror, Mirror

"I don't ever think of myself as a fat person until I look in the mirror."

 I thought this was an odd thing for a person to say. But when a coworker said it to me a few days ago I agreed. I realize now I have the same quirk. But sometimes my mirrors are other people and not just the glass that reflects my image. My husband is incredibly athletic with a thin build that betrays his ability to consume a large dinner and beer. When we are together I often compare myself to him and feel wrong somehow. As if I am in the wrong body. I'm the girl and yet I am not as small framed as he is. And I often wonder if we make a laughable couple. A real life Mr. and Mrs. Jack Spratt.  I walk past other women on a daily basis of all shapes and sizes and find my gaze lingering on the frail, or delicate girls with flat chests and narrow waists. I don't find the spray tanned athletic blondes with their Juicy emblazoned shorts all that appealing and yet I envy them as much as their petite counterparts. They make being pretty, thin and young seem easily attainable.

I have my curvy crushes as well. I love Christina Hendricks for her talent and her ability to wear her curves with class and pride. And she's always well coiffed and dressed. I would kill to look like her. Then I remember I am curvy. I have a few extra pounds as well but I am curvy. And yet, I am not satisfied and I still compare.

Today I saw myself as everyone else does and I was surprised. As I walked across campus to meet about my never ending project/thesis I saw myself in the glass of the university library. Funny thing was I was happy with my appearance until that moment. As I dressed this morning I thought I felt good, comfortable, rested, healthy and happy.  But still the reflection contradicted my mood. I noticed that roundness of my body. The girth of my once small waist and athletic body.  I sighed and climbed the stairs to the library. I got little work done at the library and returned home in an effort to avoid the skinny girl at the computer across from me slurping her venti java chip frappucino with whipped cream. Ugh. I remembered my husband telling me that "people like that tend to live a life around the gym and generally aren't happy." That's his mantra for me when I feel fat or low.

I realize how evil my mirror truly is. Much like the favored one of Snow White's wicked queen that reflected her beautiful and  appropriately green eyes it is fickle, cruel, and brutally honest. I tried to shrug off the bad feeling on my drive home from campus. But it lingered, poisoning my efforts to write, or get genuine work done. I hear my husband coming home from work and  I force myself to return to my life,the life I think is great until I  look at the mirror. I guess the question of the day is do we forgo the mirror entirely? Images of shattered broken glass and being blissfully ignorant of my expanding waistline confuse and frighten me. Perhaps we should  ask the mirror to be honest but kinder. We want the mirror to reflect  a clearer representation of us,  a representation that shows how even with our flaws someone else out there loves us for us.

Jennifer Hudson

Diet commercials. We've all seen them. Celebrity spokespersons and users alike spouting the benefits of joining a weight loss program. To be fair Weight Watchers (WW),  and Jenny Craig claim they are lifestyle choices and not diets, but just the same they tout the success of their programs and forget the losses. Case in point, me. I joined WW years ago and lost several pounds. I was just 10 lbs. shy of my goal weight when my lack of funds made it impossible to continue the program. I still looked good for my wedding. Just not as good as I had hoped. I know it must be something about me that lets the weight creep back on. I have a love for sugar when I have mountains of papers to write, when there is no end to my frustration, and yes when I celebrate milestones. Geneen Roth would have a field day with me. We could be binge buddies. Sensing my frustration, (ok, I gripe about my weight on a daily basis), my husband bought me a membership for WW. I thought "great, now I could lose that last 10 lbs. plus the additional 15 I added on after I married. "The good news was that WW had changed the plan and now fruit didn't have to be deducted from my daily allowance of points. For anyone who doesn't know on WW you get a daily point intake based on your weight loss goals and each food item is designated an amount of  points per serving. In the past fruit lovers suffered as certain fruits had a zero point value while others could have substantially more. Well now the rules had changed and I could fill up on as much fruit as I wanted to curb my need for sugar. Hurrah! Well, I guess the new rules don't apply to me as I struggled to lose a single pound for four months. I didn't and still don't understand it. I ate according to the rules, worked out and abstained as much sugar as I could and still no change. Well, that's not true. I lost five lbs. after a sore throat made it impossible to eat anything but chicken soup. Unfortunately,I gained it back as soon as I could swallow solid foods. After paying for months and not seeing the scale budge I gave up and canceled my account. Now, I don't diet so much as try not to overdo it. I try to avoid the scale and instead try to walk faster or push harder. Still, it irks me to watch TV and see Jennifer Hudson, and all those other WW  "losers" gaining confidence after losing weight and saying "losing weight clicked for me."  In all honesty the concept is easy. Eat right, exercise more and lose weight. And yet, losing weight is hard. The weight loss industry is a billion dollar industry, perhaps more than that. Why doesn't weight loss click for all of us? Or does it just not click with our body even as much as we try to enforce it? Does our body just give up after years of torturing it, denying it, overworking it just to like what we see in the mirror?