I recently went through a book with my sister in law that I felt might help me to become more spiritually and mentally disciplined. The book issued a 30 day challenge of various tasks, one of which was to give up sugar for the month. Knowing I’ve developed a bit of a sweet tooth since becoming a mom, I was excited about the challenge, but also felt it would be pretty easy since we don’t eat that much sugar anyway. Eric (Mr. Sweet tooth himself) even said he’d take the challenge with me!
It’s a little long, so I’m spacing it out over a few posts, but here’s my journal of what went down over the 30 days:
Day 7
The daytime wasn’t so bad. I’ve gotten used to cereal with bananas or dried cranberries instead of honey peanut butter toast. I’ve been a little bummed to not be making desserts with all this awesome local fruit in our CSA, but finding that (of course) they make pretty great dessert just as they are.
Eric and I went to Costco while his mom stayed with Corban (so much easier to navigate that obstacle course baby free!), and we dined on costco hot dogs for dinner with no qualms about not drinking the sodas that automatically come with the dogs.
Then night time came, and I began to miss one of my bath rituals. A couple times a week, I soak in a hot tub while eating a banana smothered in peanut butter and chocolate sauce. A pretty healthy dessert, but off limits this month.
I thought about just doing the banana and peanut butter, but after last night’s moment of weakness, decided that was dancing too close to temptation.
So now I’m leaning out of the tub, typing this up on my phone and thinking maybe Joanne Fluke’s bakery mystery series was a poor choice of reading material during my sugar abstinence.
Maybe I have more of a problem than I realized.
Day 9:
Today was my Grandmother’s memorial. Eric’s mom did the food for the memorial, and there was a dessert table piled with goodies. Then we took all the leftover food back to my parents’ house to have for dinner with all the out of town relatives. So basically, it was a potential smorgasbord of sugar all day long.
Surprisingly, even though it was a very difficult day emotionally, the sweets weren’t all that tempting. It seems like this sugar fast is actually working!
Day 14:
Today was one of those, “what exactly are our boundaries?” days. We have dinner every Sunday evening with our small group, a group of friends from church. We thought it would be easy to avoid sugar by just skipping dessert. Surprise! It turns out that the fruit salad side dish was also sprinkled with sugar, so that was out.
We piled our fajitas high with meat, veggies, avocado and salsa, only to be told the salsa had sugar in it.
Turns out, not wasting food mattered more to us than not eating sugar. Sometimes it’s more about the intent of the challenge or fast than the exact rules. We weren’t eating some sugar because we wanted it or were craving it. We were eating it because we didn’t know it was there until it was too late to go back without wasting perfectly good healthy food. Man that salsa was sweet, and we actually found ourselves wishing it wasn’t!
As a side note, why put sugar in perfectly good salsa? I never liked sweet salsa, even before this challenge. I’d much rather have some spicy pico de gallo, smooth salsa verde, or tangy fresh mango salsa. (Can you tell I like salsa?)
Day 17:
I ate sugar today. On purpose. If this was a classroom project, I would be the kid that no one wants in their group because I’m sure to spill the glue, or eat it.
We had a meeting tonight for Mops leadership. Mops stands for Mothers Of Preschoolers but its really for any mom with kids negative 9 months (I joined when I was pregnant) through 5 years. Really, it should stand for Minor Opportunities of Precious Sanity, because it’s a safe place of support and encouragement from peers and mentor moms.
After a year as an attendee, I decided the leadership ladies were my tribe, and eagerly signed up.
Today was our first meeting and I somehow misinterpreted the email reminder and thought it was a dinner meeting. Turns out it was a dessert meeting, and I had already gone 5 hours without food.
Someone brought fruit and someone brought chips and salsa, so I thought I’d be fine. But the salsa was so full of brown sugar that one bite had me gagging and trying to cover it up with a fake coughing fit. Turns out it was the same kind of salsa we’d had on our fajitas the other night. 🙁 So I was down to fruit and chips.
After self consciously getting up for the third time during the meeting to refill my tiny dessert plate with shaking hands, I realized this wasn’t going to work. It was Eric’s first bedtime alone with Corban, and I knew that as soon as I got home I would literally be sucked into a mega nursing session. Having already experienced what it feels like to nurse with a lack of protein in my body (thank you gastroenteritis for that miserable lesson), I knew I needed something quickly. In fact I wasn’t sure I’d even make it home.
I grabbed three cookies stuffed with peanut butter cups and scarfed them down. I think I ended up feeling worse. But I also stopped shaking.
Sugar is crazy stuff man. It could seriously have its own black market.
Day 18:
Today I spent the afternoon making peacock feather hair clips with my sister and her other bridesmaids. We worked on it at my mother in law’s house and my darling sister brought fresh cherries and tortilla chips with sweetener free salsa. Yes she actually had me in mind as she got those to go along with the cookies and seven layer dip she knew I wouldn’t be able to eat. That’s love right there people!
Well my mother in law is a phenomenal baker. So good in fact that it’s practically impossible to resist anything she makes. Sure enough, she had a platter of homemade chocolate covered macadamia nuts on the table for us.
Hello! Hawaii girl here. What kind of cruel temptation was this?
Funnily enough, when I got closer to the chocolate, the smell of sugar made me sick. I ate a pound of cherries instead.
