The anniversary dinner was wonderful. I did have the butternut squash and goat cheese lasagne which was served with a perfect salad with a few olives for a little salty in all that creamy. I just shouldn’t have had the dessert – not because I regret the calories, but because anything that rich now makes me feel quite sick. Must remember to SHARE or just have a decaf cappucino and be done with it.
Live and learn – again and again and again.
Yesterday someone asked how I managed to avoid sugar.
My thought was, “I don’t know”. I mean, I still look longingly at giant bars of Green&Black’s butterscotch chocolate and know that I could eat a whole one in the car on my way home from the grocery store. (It’s been done.) I ate a HUGE piece of Billy Miner Pie at my birthday dinner and could probably still eat ice cream for breakfast without too much encouragement. I definitely make and eat “medicine” (our name for chocolate/oat/peanut butter treats) when I’m hormonal.
That said, I guess I don’t really crave sugar very often but it wasn’t a cold turkey type of thing. Instead, I think we’ve made small changes over a long time. Here are all the things that may be making a difference:
- We haven’t eaten dessert for years and don’t miss it at all. It just doesn’t figure in our food planning.
- I talked myself out of all but fairly traded chocolate when the issue of child slaves came to light. That means I have to go and find it in the chocolate aisle so there’s none of that last second picking up chocolate at the till.
- I talked myself out of hydrogenated oils so out went almost any packaged baked goods. That means cookies have to be baked rather than pulled out of the package.
- I figured out I was reacting to artificial sweeteners so stopped all diet drinks. No more rashes and cystic spots on my chin.
- I realised that apparently healthy cereals like Bran Flakes and Special K are sweet enough that I need to treat tham like cookies. In fact, I just avoid them alltogether in favour of porridge in the morning.
- White breads and pastas, though not sweet, are rare things now too – not banned per se but considered treats.
- Finally, I stopped eating almost anything that was low fat.
That makes me wonder about the diet industry in general. I’m more and more convinced that it’s a myth that you can lose weight and keep it off if you eat a lot of low fat products and sugar substitutes. Better to learn to love strong and interesting flavours than to just eat “diet versions” of the same old foods.
I think that to get sugar out of your life, you actually have to lose your taste for it. For me, that means no more junk in the house – even “lite” versions of sugary treats.
It means rooting out hidden sugar and relegating “real” sugar back to treat status where it belongs.
And reclaiming the idea of a “treat” as something that happens only once in a while.
Now- I’m wondering if anyone will ever ask me how I mange to avoid wine. 
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