One of my news years resolutions was to give up sugar which has gone pretty well. I’ve had no sweets, chocolates, cakes, sugary deserts or drinks since 31st December. Yes it has snuck in the odd item of processed food here and there (sugar in smoked salmon and also in slices of Ox tongue would you believe!), but I’ve tried ahrd to keep that to a minimum.
However I have to tell you that this has not been easy. In fact, as I’ve given up smoking twice in my life, I have the experience to tell you that giving up sugar is as hard as giving up the cigs! So rightly or wronging, I had a thought. I wondered if perhaps giving up entirely was the wrong thing to do, and maybe I should allow myself a day off, once a month say?
However what I don’t want to do is make chocolate / sugar etc to be a “treat”. Or this to be something that I start and stop on a whim. The trick to dietary change is just that, to change your diet, and to do that on a permenant basis. Especially as really sugar is bad for you. Despite the protestations to the contrary you’ll find on the internet, the world is slowly coming round to the idea that sugar is the root cause of diabetes. And this week I’ve read that they are linking sugar to pancreatic cancer now.
However last night I decided to have that day off. Or night as it really was. I’d been shopping for my weeks food and loaded up on sugary carbs in the form of a large pile of chocolate. I was going for the aversion therapy approach (you know, catch a kid with a cigarette and make him smoke the packed till he’s sick) and I can tell you, it damn near worked too!
By the end of the evening I could barely bring myself to finish the last of it. Not only was I feeling sick, I felt terribly lethergic too. Had no energy and pretty much didn’t want to do anything. I was in a major insulin induced low.
This morning was worse; I could barely get out of bed. I had what my family has coined: a proper Carb-over. I feel bloated too and the scales show that I’m 2lbs heavier than yesterday. Maybe the aversion therapy has worked, as certainly I can’t contemplate the idea of doing this again!
Hopefull I’ll feel better by this afternoon when I’m off down the gym. Breakfast this morning is roast lamb, strawberries and milk. Yum!
