Sugar Overload

In a development that may, or may not, have something to do with the homemade sno balls I made a week or so ago, I came to the hard decision on Sunday that I am, in fact, eating too much sugar again. I’m not sure what really gave it away. It might have been the sno balls, sure. Or it might have been the nightly ice cream (with chocolate syrup, because who wants just ice cream?). Or was it the binging on Easter candy? Or maybe it was the powdered sugar residue always around my mouth.

Whatever it was, I had to face the stark truth: for a guy who once made a whole big deal about giving up sugar, I was most definitely back off the wagon, traipsing through the seven levels of the candy cane forest, through the sea of swirly-twirly gum drops.

Honestly, this is something I’d known for quite some time, and now and then, I’d consider doing something about it. I even made a few resolutions. “I’m going to cut back on sugar. Right after these four orange rolls.” “This brownie is the last one I’m going to eat. This hour.” And the more I thought about maybe possibly considering the idea that it might be a good idea to just stop eating sugar altogether again, the more excuses I found to postpone that decision. A birthday was coming up. What was I going to do? Skip cake?!?

Well, I’d had a stomach ache for a fair bit of last week, and for some reason, more sugar wasn’t fixing it. So when I woke up Sunday morning feeling crummy still, I decided enough was enough. I was going to go cold turkey off sugar again. I had a really hard time committing to anything long term, though. In my head, I decided I’d go for one week. Surely I could manage a single week, right? (Though it’s a sign of just how hooked I am that even that decision seemed very, very difficult.)

It’s Thursday now, and I’ve gone four whole days without eating anything with added sugar. (What does that mean? It means no candy. No jam. No cookies. Nothing where the sole purpose of the food is sugar. I haven’t given up all foods made with sugar or things that just turn to sugar in my stomach, like pasta or white flour.) And I’ll be honest: those first two days were especially difficult. My stomach hurt even more (though I’m not sure if that had to do with the sugar or not). I was grumpy. I had to continually resist the urge to go find a little something something in the cupboard. (Surely just a handful of chocolate chips would be okay, right? Wrong.)

It was no fun.

However, I’m coming through that stage, and I’m beginning to think that I can last more than a week, after all. Maybe I’ll extend it for another week. Or two. Or more. A lot will depend on how I’m feeling. I definitely would like to be eating less sugar, though I wish I had the willpower to just do it without needing to cut it out completely. I wonder if I could do a weight-watchers-style approach, where I get a certain number of sugar tickets each week, and once I’m through those tickets, I can’t eat any more sugar.

Not sure yet. I’m playing it by ear. One candy bar at a time, you could say.