August 25

Life has been getting in the way of blogging. Too much summer fun!! Or at least that's a convenient excuse....

School has started this past week, though, and after surviving a week of exhaustion and excitement and frustrations with schedules, I can feel myself settling into the "less is more" mentality about free time that only exists when I am extremely busy. 

Hence-- a post!

How's it going, you wonder?

In the face of all that summer fun and return-to-work stress, I must say I think my 30 days challenge is going remarkably well.  In fact, its almost been nice to have my rules to cling to through it all.  A bit of consistency and focus in an overwhelming month...

I've lost 7 pounds since the beginning of the month.  For a week or so I was dismayed to find that all this self-discipline was bringing no change at all, and then only enough to get me back to where I was at the beginning of summer (July?  Not so self-disciplined, it turns out).  But now, with a week still to go, I am happy to note that I have passed the 150 mark on my slow plod towards a goal weight at or below what I weighed in college. (Side note- on my 35th birthday I made the decision that there's really no reason I can't be in the best shape of my life at 40.  OK, there's lots of reasons, but that's now a goal in the back of my mind...)

It's not been all wine and roses this month.  Forgoing sweets at birthday parties makes one feel like a real scrooge, for example.  Its been ridiculously hard to find bread, breakfast cereals and crackers that are sugar free.   This has surprised me as I've never thought of them as particulary "sweet." And, I've had to break my rules a few times for salad dressings, of all things! And for pizza.  Because I have neither the foresight to bring my own food to pizza-serving events nor the strength of will to go hungry til I get home.

I've been rather hungry all month.  I think that's due to the unavailability of carbs in my life.  We don't tend to cook rice or potatoes or even pasta all that often.  Often it's a piece of toast or crackers that round out a meal. So my meal stays a little flat.  I've been snacking on nuts and fruit and homemade smoothie popsicles and while these satisfy in the short term they don't really fill one up.

But with more than half the month behind me, I find I'm getting used to it, and that feeling is, in fact, OK.  Maybe even better than the feeling I had after dinner at the Greek Festival last night  (we're just going to assume that those Loukomathes were sugar-free, OK?  The Greeks just use honey, right??).

And with more than half the month behind me I am really proud to say that I've not had candy ONCE.  And that I've gone a few days at a time without any "you know what I want right now..." thoughts. 

Thank you, rules.

Nat has been asking me what I am going to do next month (no clue yet) and that's gotten me thinking about what the end of the challenge will bring for my diet. 

I've been compiling a mental list of the things I really, truly miss:  jam, good bread and crackers, choices of breakfast cereals that don't taste like low quality cardboard, cookies, ice cream...

And then I've been thinking to myself-- how many of those things do I miss so much that I NEED to reintroduce them on September 1st?  Am I planning on having some sort of sugar orgy at midnight that day?  Going back to eating what I want, when I want... and feeling kind of bloated and grumpy a lot of the time?

And this morning, with the sun shining in the backyard and the memory of the "149" fresh in my brain, I am thinking-- none of them, really.

I may just have to keep this going.

Not as an official challenge-- that would be dull-- but as a way of life.

Revised rules may be in order.  For instance, leniency with salad dressings. And, foods with sugar listed in the "less than 2%" category.  And maybe, one dessert a week. But the rest of it?  I think I may be able to live with it.  Ideally, for a long, healthy time...

August 8

Today was a craving day.  An open-the-fridge-hoping-to-find-something-that-wasn't-there-before kind of day.  A hungry day with a long stretch from early breakfast at 5:30am to catch-all lunch at noon.  But a good day.  A day of eschewing pizza in favor of sweet potato tortilla chips, guacamole, and snap peas.  I find myself looking for new and interesting flavors to take the place of sugar and processed foods (I find that processed foods, for the most part, need to be left out).

A couple of "treats" I've enjoyed the past few days:

 A flour tortilla spread with a Tablespoon of peanut-cashew-almond butter, drizzled with honey, and rolled up to a tube of goodness.  Hard to eat just one...

A nightly snack of a popsicle-- homemade ones from fruit juice or cantaloupe and honey or berries and yogurt.

Smoothies!  With spinach!  A bit of yogurt, some frozen berries, some of whatever fruit I have around, a handful of greens, and voila!  Healthy and refreshing goodness.

I've been dismayed to find that I haven't really lost any weight from my week on my not-a-diet.. but I shouldn't be surprised as its not really a diet.  I continue to relish my half and half in my coffee and butter on whatever I please.  Fat carries flavor and I think helps me miss the flavors of sugar a little bit less.  But it does not lead to the lowest calorie of diets...

One step at a time. 

August 6

I am doing far better at my sugar-free diet than I am at updating this blog on a daily basis.

Sorry about that.

Today I was satisfied to find that Sunday breakfast can be just fine without syrup.  French toast made with fresh-baked bread and a touch of cinnamon, bacon, and some frozen berries simmered down into a compote.  The fact that the kids slept in later than Nat and I, and we had a quiet, coffee-sipping, newspaper-reading 20 minutes to eat before they joined us-- that was the (sugarless) icing on the cake. :)

Food court chicken Flautas for lunch, some leftover grilled sausage and salad for dinner...  not exactly a low-cal diet, but a satisfying one overall. With the notable exception of the chocolate-oatmeal cookies that everyone ate (and raved about) in front of me last night, I haven't felt like I've been missing out on much at all...

Twenty-four busy days to go...

August 2

Day two of a sugar-free month and the verdict is:  not too bad.

I had some fun shopping at Trader Joe's today, reading labels and finding a nice selection of packaged, convenient food that also appears to be wholesome-- and a lot of fresh produce, meat and cheese, too.  Because the surest way to eat well is just to eat real food, after all.

Thanks to feedback from friends and observations made in my two days of label reading, I am clarifying my personal rules.


Not at all:  Foods with any added sugar (by any name) in the first 5 ingredients.

Avoid when possible: Sugar or one of its friends as the last or second-to-last ingredient...alright if absolutely necessary.  Also, foods with artificial sweeteners because those aren't so great for us either.

Good to go:  Foods that come by their sugars naturally-- fruit, juice, honey, etc--  and packaged foods with no added sugar, by any name in the ingredient list.

Today's menu:

Light Whole grain English muffin with peanut-cashew butter and frozen raspberries on top

Iced coffee with cream (no sugar!)

Sushi from Trader Joes-- veggie tempura with brown rice.

Thai flank steak, grilled zuchini, corn on the cob, strawberries, salad. Passed on the cake for dessert.

Fruit juice popsicle, almonds and apricots for a snack.

Add to this a run this morning and gardening this afternoon and its been a good day.  Only a couple of cravings for a bit of licorice. :)   We can do this!

August 1

A new year of Thirty Days begins! 

I have good intentions on waxing philosophical about my experiences this past year, I really do.  But not tonight.  There are Olympics to watch and laundry to fold.  And I think maybe I need to just think about it all a bit more...


In the meantime, a new month and a new goal. I have put a bit of thought into the year ahead and I will be alternating between three overarching themes:  Physical Well-Being, Mental Well-Being, and Well-Being of Others.  I will be trying to take small, discrete steps towards those larger goals.

 For August I am going to be focusing on the theme of "physical well-being" by eliminating refined sugar (to the greatest degree possible) for thirty days.

Wish me luck on this one, people. 

I am pretty sure I have a sugar addiction.  Some people reach for a glass of wine when they are stressed, others smoke a cigarette.  I down a bag of licorice.  

This month will, I hope force me to be more mindful of my eating choices as I read labels and adjust my diet to follow this new rule.  (It's just amazing how many foods have sugar as one of the first 5 ingredients!  Spicy Pepper Spaghetti Sauce?  Really?  It's not even sweet!

Today has been a challenge already, mostly because it seems that most commercially produced breads, crackers, and cereal are right out, leaving me virtually carb-free for most of the day. I've managed to procure some sugar-free peanut butter and some diet English Muffins that have something called Sucralose way down on the list (is that even sugar) and I also had a few pieces of Mama Santa's pizza at Wade Oval Wednesday, so the day has improved.  Not too man cravings today, though it was interesting how many times I thought to just grab a quick snack, but then stopped to think about the sugar content, and moved on.

This could be good for me.