Kerry'd Away

Mood: Grumpy

Weight Change: Lost 5 pounds

New Mood: Not As Grumpy 🙂

Well… what a week! Things have been busy around here and at work. I was fairly optimistic that if I was busy at work then I wouldn’t have time to think about not being able to eat sugar. I was wrong. In fact, I was VERY wrong.

By the end of the first day I was grumpy because I can’t drink my coffee black, so I was trying to drink tea with honey instead (I’ve never really cared for honey). By the end of the second day I was completely sick of water and tea. By the end of day three I was in tears. My poor husband! He deserves a huge award for dealing with me and my craziness sometimes. He may be spoiled, but there are times that he really does earn the spoiling.

My personality is one that I like to begin projects, but I have a hard time finishing them. This diet is no exception. Like I said, by Tuesday I was done with it. It had been a rough day at work so when I got home and smelled Jay’s coffee, I broke down. All that I wanted was a tall cup of coffee with my usual amount of sugar in it. Actually, I would have settled for just a tablespoon of sugar in my 20 oz coffee cup. At work that day a lady who had been diagnosed last year with Celiac disease brought me in a gluten free brownie to try. I had helped her a lot with the diet and gave her copies of magazines that I no longer needed and so she wanted to pay me back. Those brownies are now in the freezer… waiting…

Jay loves me and doesn’t like to see me upset, so he was doing his best to be supportive. But it was a losing battle because how do you reason with a sugar-deprived, PMS’ing wife? He did a very good job in at least getting me to smile so that helped me a lot. The next morning I fired off an email to my friend and asked her for help. She came to my aide and got me back on the track of somewhat-happiness.

To be completely honest, the only reason why I didn’t cave in and have my sweetened coffee was because I had already posted on here about the diet and I didn’t want to have to tell you that I had cheated. So I persevered and kept going.

What I hate the most about this diet is that I can’t be as lazy as I would like to be when it comes to getting something to eat. On Sundays, between masses, I would often just grab a bowl of my Chex cereal and eat that before running out the door. Or some nights I might throw tater tots in the oven and just have those. I can’t do that as neither Chex nor tater tots are on my approved list right now. So my kitchen has been a disaster all week; dirty dishes piling up even more quickly, and the stove constantly covered with at least one pot and pan. And if I haven’t mentioned before, I HATE to cook! Actually, it’s not so much the cooking as it is the figuring out what to make. I told Jay that he doesn’t have to eat like I do, so if I make something ‘normal’ for him, I’m making something else for myself.

Friday night I made beef and gravy over noodles for Jay. For myself I made some mixed veggies (no corn, just lots of zucchini, cauliflower and green beans), then I simmered some diced tomatoes with tomato sauce and mixed it all together with a bit of the beef that I had put aside for me before adding the gravy for Jay’s meal. I wasn’t sure what it would taste like, but at this point I was just looking for ‘gut fill,’ as my dad would say. I was shocked! I really enjoyed it! So much that I had a second helping. Now, if you know me well enough you know how much I love my pasta and tomato sauce. Even though it’s gluten free pasta, it still is one of my go-to dinners. Well, I hate to admit this but I told Jay that the concoction I had made that night satisfied me as much as a bowl of spaghetti! The best part was that I didn’t feel any guilt at all for having a second helping. Usually I do because I know how many extra calories are in the gluten free pasta, and I know that it’s going to go right to my hips. Not this time!

When I got on the scale this morning I dreaded to see where the needle was going to stop. The way that my luck usually runs is that I would have gained 5 pounds instead of losing it. I really needed to see that needle move in the downward direction. In order to keep going on this diet it was the motivation that I was seeking. It was only five pounds, but I’ll take it!

One week down… three more to go…

I have a sweet tooth. A BIG sweet tooth! I used to joke that I wished the dentist had removed my sweet tooth instead of my wisdom teeth. Unlike most people, my sweet tooth doesn’t demand chocolate. Once in a while, but more often it demands sugar in the way of jelly beans, marshmallows, sugary cereal, cookies, sweet tea and my sweet vanilla latte every morning. Mmmm…

Since getting married I’ve put on a few pounds. I know that happens to everybody, but when you’re already on the heavier side it really doesn’t make you feel good about yourself knowing that there’s now even more of you to love. I’ve been wanting to cut down on my sugar intake in order to help me lose some weight, but there was one other reason that made me decide to get my health in control regarding my weight and my sweet tooth.

Diabetes runs on my dad’s side of the family. As long as I can remember my grandma had to give herself insulin injections and she ate a lot of really icky-tasting stuff. I’ve been told that her mother, my great-grandma, died in a diabetic coma. My dad is now taking pills to help his blood sugar and he has learned to watch his sugar intake. He has managed to lose a lot of weight and manages to keep it down around a healthier level. Knowing that this risk is quite high for me I have decided to take a proactive measure to hopefully help prevent the onset when I get older.

I am lucky because I have a friend who is helping me with this change in diet. She is currently working her way through the process of becoming a certified Nutritional Therapy Practitioner. She originally went to school for hospitality (running hotels, restaurants, inns, catering, etc) and she has really become quite the foodie. Her passion in life is to learn about food and nutrition, and then apply it in her life to keep both her and her husband as healthy as possible. She experienced a time in her life where she realized that the junk she was putting into her body made her feel like a lump of goo, so she decided to change it.

Since I have zero interest in reading about nutrition, I decided to volunteer as one of her guinea pigs for her course work. This is going to be hard for me so I needed somebody who could guide me and encourage me along the way. After doing an initial assessment it was decided that I should go on the Sugar Control Diet for 30 days. This diet is meant to recalibrate the body’s sugar control mechanism, which is what triggers us to eat or snack or want another gummy bear. For 30 days I have to avoid all grains, almost all dairy, a good portion of fruit, and of course most sweeteners.

Once I had seen the diet restrictions I wasn’t too worried about how I was going to manage to follow it. I hate to cook, but since I have to eat gluten free I tend to do a lot of it. The diet allows me to eat as much meat as I want, as many veggies as I want, and I can satisfy my sweet tooth with limited fruit. And black olives are allowed as I can consider them part of the good fats that I get to consume. The only pitfall that I could foresee was my daily coffee… I don’t drink it black so how would I survive? I was given the option of honey or stevia, but told that stevia hadn’t yet received good reviews from my friend when used in coffee.

I used this past week to try prepping for the change. Jamie, if you’re reading this… skip this paragraph…

I ate like an inmate on death row. The strictest part of this diet is the thirty days where you are eliminating a lot of things from your diet. I made macaroni & cheese for dinner, the next night we had rice, and for dessert I had ice cream. I snacked on little pieces of chocolate and ate my sugar-laden cereal for breakfast. The one thing that I tried to do was wean myself from the sweet coffee. I halved the amount of sugar I used for most of the week, and yesterday I used only a tablespoon or so in my 20 ounce cup. I stocked the refrigerator with fresh veggies and bought meat to stash in the freezer for meals. I can do this!

Today really wasn’t too bad. I didn’t expect it to be, though. I was fairly optimistic about things and keeping a good mood. Until I got home from the second morning mass (I play piano at two morning masses on Sunday, temporarily). That’s the time when normally I would make a cup of coffee and relax while telling Jay about how the second mass went, what pitfalls I fell into at the piano, and then talking about how I was going to be productive for the rest of the day. I tried making my vanilla latte this morning without the sugar and all that confirmed was that I am NOT a black coffee drinker. So I didn’t have my cup of coffee after mass. I thought about a cup of decaf tea with a little honey, but I really don’t care for honey. Also, tea doesn’t comfort me like the coffee does.

So today I drank water. Ugh. I like water, but I need something to break it up. It was so bad that I managed to eventually finish my cup of black coffee from the morning. And currently I am drinking a cup of tea with a little bit of honey. If I didn’t change it up my tongue was going to rebel. Seriously. Every time I took a sip of water it would say, “What?! Are you kidding me? We’ve already had a lot of this! I’m tired of it. Let’s have some coffee!” It would be a lot easier if the coffee/sugar made me sick like when I accidentally eat gluten. *sigh*

As I work my way through this sugar detox (as I’ve seen some people refer to it), I thought that I would blog about it. Hopefully you can at least enjoy a bit of my discomfort/misery!