Talking It Off

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.