Sweet Nothings

I think I seriously miss sugar. Like ALOT.

Yesterday was the first day that I was really craving some oh so not good for you food...I'm only a little over a week into this thing and the Big Bad Sugar Beast is already a-knockin' at my door begging me to let him in. He apparently misses me too.

It's not that I have cut sugar completely out of my diet but I have done away with rewarding my clean plate club behavior with a man size-portion of some fattening dessert every night and when I go to the grocery store I make absolutely sure there are no donuts "accidentally" finding their way into my cart for the ride home. I've been trying to satiate my sweet cravings these days by way of natural sugars - like from the fructose in all of the apples, pears, mangoes and grapes I've been chomping on lately. Yes, they're really tasty, but you know what? No matter how you dice it - it sure as hell isn't the same as a nice huge chunk of chocolate cake smothered in thick butter cream icing or a decadent bowl of Edy's caramel cone and chocolate chunk ice cream or a generous slice of double crust homemade strawberry rhubarb pie (and yes, I am practically drooling all over my keyboard with thoughts of those very things as I sit here and type this, thank you very much). 

I've always known I have a really wicked sugar addiction. Much like a rock star who has a nasty drug habit and keeps finding himself in one car crash, jail cell or rehab center after the next , I too, no matter what weight related embarrassing situation I find myself in,  just can't let the white stuff go. It's just that my white stuff of choice is sugar....and it's delicious. Thank God the likelihood of crashing my vehicle is minimal and there's no jail time just for "doing sugar"....I would have become part of the system long ago! But the addiction, while of course not as severe as that of hard drugs, still controls me and my appetite in a most manipulative way. Until just recently I was still very much captive under it's spell and was literally being weighed down by it's effects. It held all of the power and was so omnipresent that I was incapable of saying no. Pie? Yes! Cake? Oh yes, please! Candy? Yes! Yes! Yes! Ice Cream? Uh, is the Pope Catholic?HELL YES!!!!!!!!!

Even as a kid I considered my Cap'n Crunch (with Crunch Berries no less) to be the Breakfast of Champions. As I got older and parted ways with the Cap'n (which was a very sad day indeed), instead of moving on to more "mature" and adult geared cereals such as Wheateena or Fiber One, I hunted down the cereals that would still provide me with a morning sugar rush like Cocoa Pebbles, Frosted Mini Wheats or even the Kellogg's Raisin Bran that had the sugar coated raisins, as opposed to the Post Raisin Bran which did not.  To my defense, I come from a family where baked goods like pie, cake and sticky buns were considered perfectly normal and acceptable breakfast fare so breaking that sort of thinking pattern as I got older was tough. What's more is I didn't want to break it. I wanted to believe more than anything that having a huge slice of chocolate cake in the morning was going to provide me with same kind of good nutrition and energy as a piece of wheat toast and veggie and egg white omelet. What I found was the only things it actually did provide me with were a fat ass and uncomfortable stabbing hunger pangs about an hour after I ate it.

So yesterday's craving onslaught proved to be a huge challenge because my past behavior pattern was to simply give in to that incessant sugar craving and fall off the wagon in a big FAT way. Thankfully I've got J here to keep me in line and he kindly suggested I either have a LARGE glass of water or munch on a piece of fruit. Ha! If only those things tasted like soft serve ice cream (which was my craving of the moment) but I'm pretty sure they don't. So after cursing under my breath for a minute or two, I instead chose to break out one of what I dub the "emergency packs" which is one of those teeny tiny 100 calorie packs of portion controlled snacks. We bought a few varieties of these over the weekend  since J figured they were better than me going completely ape shit and driving myself to the nearest Dunkin Donuts and diving head first into their donut display, so I opted for the Oreo pack and was more than a tad dismayed to find they have NO icing center in them!!! It's just a poor man's version of the chocolate wafer part with about 3 sugar crystals on top of each flat sad little microscopic wafer. Trust me - it's the farthest thing from an actual Oreo I have ever seen. Not what I was expecting...or let's face it, desiring at the moment.

However, as much as I hate to admit it - it did the trick. Sugar. Craving. Gone. AND what's more is I didn't blow the diet, excuse me, uh, life style change....a-hem.

Portion control has never been in my vocabulary so I will say these little baby sized packs of goodies, while a complete rip off price wise, are a saviour to those (ok, me) who don't know when to say when. At least I know they saved me last night. Big time.

Realistically I know there will be times in the upcoming days when I will allow myself to have a treat of the "real thing", but for now while this healthy life style habit is still in it's infancy, I am staying far, far away from the things I know did this to me in the first place and won't even entertain the idea of indulging myself. I figure once I can walk through the Wegman's baked good area and not want to cry over the smell of pure heaven entering my nostrils, I might be ready to eat those types of things again - only this time it will be in severe moderation. But at the moment? One bite would hurl me into a sugar binge so far beyond my control it isn't even funny and I certainly can't let that happen. Think Tasmanian Devil spinning wildly through a bakery, leaving only a path of crumbs in his wake....that would be me.

I'm betting on this getting easier as the days, weeks and months progress. Of course there will be challenges ahead (like my family picnic in June which in all fairness should really be dubbed Fat-n-Sugar Fest) but I'll tackle each obstacle as it presents itself and do the best I can to overcome any temptations. At least I know I have support to keep me focused and I'm already seeing results on the scale which is the biggest motivator of all. 

By this time next year I could be walking down the aisle (more on that subject tomorrow - there will be updates!) so the goal date to get myself in shape is really looking like more of a reality rather than some unknown day somewhere in the vast future. And instead of being petrified like I was in my first entry, I'm actually very very excited because I am finally taking the bull by the horns and doing something about it!