A Day Without Sugar

Hello, my name is Wendy and I'm a sugar-holic (chorus: "Hello Wendy"). Today was my first day without sugar.

I think the hardest part was starting the day committing to myself that I would not have sugar. Since my morning begins with a bowl of oatmeal with a heaping teaspoon of brown sugar, I really had to commit--early--like 6 a.m. early--which I did. I used a single packet of the yellow sweetener (not sugar) and added raisins and cut up strawberries. I avoided sugar (not carbs though, and yes, I know carbs turn to sugar in your system, so shut-up) for the rest of the morning, and it wasn't that hard to get to lunch (salad with baked tofu). It's the after lunch part that was hard.

I downed an artificially sweetened iced tea and then ate a banana to take the edge off, but I was itching for chocolate. I paced back and forth by my desk scratching my arm, just looking for a fix. One of my colleagues had the gall to sit next to me in a meeting and gently unwrap a peppermint patty. She handled it delicately and took tiny bites (like I used to), and the smell of the dark chocolate and mint was intoxicating. I had to hold myself back - I nearly threw myself at her to rip that morsel from her hands. But I held out and just repeated the mantra, "one day at a time", and "fake it until you make it".

To make sure I stayed the course, I had dinner chock-full-o garlic, which should pretty much kill my taste buds for the rest of the evening. When I crave sugar later tonight (which I will), I intend to drink a diet soda (yes, I know that crap is bad for me !)

All in all I think I'm doing okay - maybe a little crabby, but I'm hanging in there. The problem is that I really do love, and I mean l-o-v-e sweets and even though I think I can probably stay off the stuff one more day (only), I just miss it too much. I am going to try one more day to see if I actually can do it but I'm not particularly happy about it.