Trying to break the sugar addiction... again

How is it that a person can be in amazing shape, be eating so darned healthy, have just done a half-Ironman, take a week off afterwards (I deserve it, right?) to just slack off of training and maybe even have a piece of cake at my daughter's birthday party and BLAMMO! Within days I'm back to being addicted to sugar.

You know those freaky meth ads?

This would be me on sugar if I let it go on for a couple more weeks. My kids would find me passed out on the floor after crawling desperately toward the laundry cupboard where I've been hiding the Lindt white chocolate coconut bars... This stuff is Addictive with a capital A. No wonder we have health problems as a nation. It's everywhere, and never more so than this time of year. Just try to walk into a store without being overwhelmed by the Halloween Candy aisle. At least I don't work in an office anymore where people bring in their leftover 83 tons of the stuff and leave it in the lunchroom for other people to feed their addictions. But one of the moms of our kids' robotics team brought in caramel corn for a snack last week, and let's just say I'm glad that six teenage boys were clustered around the bowl because I seriously might've eaten the whole thing.

I'm posting this for accountability. It's been a month since the race and I need to get myself back with the right eating habits. I feel just yucky and I know if it continues it will be a downward spiral. I'd like to say I'm throwing away the rest of the Lindt white chocolate bars, but the truth is I ate them. So I guess now's as good a time as any to not buy any more, right? Right?

The Sugar Hangover

Wow, stop eating almost anything sweet other than fruit and all of a sudden you can taste the sweetness in ordinary things. Who knew that almonds were so sweet, and that a carrot could taste like an apple?? Then if you actually eat what would be an ordinary amount of sugar for most folks (a small slice of cake), you can FEEL what it's doing to your body. Last night at my writer's group I ate some fantastic gluten-free chocolate cake made with coconut flour and coconut oil in the frosting. The hostess also went out of her way to make it low glycemic since we have diabetic members, so it probably wasn't even nearly as sugary as a regular cake. To me though, after over a month of eating paleo, it tasted immensely sweet. Of course, that didn't stop me from eating a slice. You see, I have basically no willpower. As long as I keep stuff like that out of the house, I'm fine. But confront me with a piece of chocolate cake with chocolate ganache filling and maple-pecan icing? Fugeddaboudit.

Today however, I paid the price with a walloping sugar hangover. Seriously, it feels like I went on a complete bender last night. It's weird how your body can become so accustomed to ingesting this much sugar that you don't feel it at all, but now that I've gone cold turkey it's like I can feel the toxic effects crawling through my veins. I'd like to think that this sensation will help me avoid eating the next piece of chocolate ganache that stares me in the face. I can't imagine wanting to feel this way again anytime soon.

In the meantime, my latest body fat measurement was 17.8%, the lowest I've been since training for the Ironman, so the paleo eating plan must be doing something right!

If you are interested in an excellent, concise, and very understandable summation of sugar, insulin, fat storage, etc. check out Mark's article The Definitive Guide to Insulin, Blood Sugar & Type 2 Diabetes (and you’ll understand it)

Three Days

I've given up chocolate (not to mention all processed sugar) for three days now. Once I went forty days for Lent without chocolate, so I have a vague memory that it's possible. Right now, in the desperate hour of the day though...it's just ugly. The kids built marshmallow snowmen today and melted chocolate in the microwave for hair and to glue them together. I thought I was going to go insane from the smell alone. Now the snowmen are mocking me with their sugary goodness and chocolatey arms. Seriously, is this thing evil-looking or what? It would serve it right if I ate it...