Giving up Sugar- The first 14 days

(I wrote this back in January and saved it as a draft but never published it. Now that I've decided to give up sugar again, I thought it would help me to finish this post and remind myself of my past willpower and awesomeness). :)

So 8 days ago, I made the "lightningbolt" decision to be free from sweets. So here are some of my musings describing my sugar free journey thus far.

Day 1: Sunday, December 27th
I decided to start the day after Christmas to make a clean start after the sugary holiday season. My first step was to ask my husband to throw away a plate of sugar cookies on the counter. Usually, I would have taken the cookies to work for my coworkers to ravage within a few mere hours.  But after reading Gretchen Rubin's book about habits and learning about the concept of "loopholes", I realize that when I take cookies to work, I usually eat at least one myself, which completely defeats the purpose (which is, of course, to get rid of them!). I did take two other sweet snacks to work but I knew the cookies had to go so I started this on a Saturday, and then I went back to work on a Monday. I was worried there be a lot of sweets at work that first Monday after Christmas, but it was actually okay.  Maybe it was easier to resist the sweets because I've developed a new statement that I say in my head to help me. I just say "Hi my name is such and such, & I don't eat sweets".

In her book, Gretchen Rubin explains that a habit is a decision that you already made without making it. For example, I know I'm going to put my seatbelt on when I get in the car: I don't think about it, I just do it. I've decided this is how has to be with me and sweets. And in the past, I spent a lot of time thinking about my consumption of sugar and trying to decide when to eat it and what quantity was acceptable for me to eat.  But then I decided, if I just adopt a hard rule that I don't eat sweets, then I don't have to think about it every time I am faced with an opportunity to eat sugar, because I've already made my decision.  Of course, I already have and will continue to face challenges along the way. For example, I went to breakfast with my family a few days ago, and everyone else ordered the delicious pumpkin pancakes- YUM! Normally, I would  be the first person to get the pumpkin pancakes and cover them in syrup and devour them. Today, I went with the biscuits and gravy instead.

Another thing I've done, which was different from what I did the last time I gave up sugar for a month, is that I'm not advertising to everyone that I'm giving up sugar. It seems to help a lot because when I did tell everyone what I was doing, they would question me about it and almost try to talk me into eating sugar. I remember my father-in-law waved a delicious-looking piece of cake in my face and smiled and laughed while he ate it all in front of me.  So cruel!  So, this time I just kept it on the down low and it's working much better. My husband knows, which is imperative because he's my champion on my quest to give up sugar. If I need him to throw something away or encourage me to not eat something, he will. But, I haven't told my family or anyone at work or any of my friends except for the few that have also read Rubin's book, Better Than Before.

So, the day after the breakfast incident, I faced another huge temptation at a party. There was a huge plate of a delicious-looking cookies on a table, paired next to a plate of of apples, fondue sticks, and a little dipping bowl full of caramel sauce. Surprisingly, it was easy for me to avoid this obvious temptation. The more difficult temptation was a bowl of chocolate-covered popcorn. I realized the difficulty in avoiding the popcorn was not that it was chocolate or that looks delicious, it was the location of the popcorn itself. The cookies and the apples and caramel sauce were against the wall by themselves in a different room from where I ended up sitting. The chocolate-covered popcorn however, was on a table at the living room, directly in front of the couch that I chose to sit on for about an hour. Also, my daughter was literally eating from this bowl of popcorn and putting her adorable, but most likely dirty, little hands all over in the bowl. I told myself I should take that little pile of popcorn from her and eat it to get it away from her. If you've read Rubin's book you know this is a loophole or an excuse that we used to give in. Truthfully, I did eat one piece of chocolate covered popcorn. But when I did, I didn't feel proud of it or happy about it. And to my relief, it did not make me want to dive head first into that bowl and devour every last scrumptious morsel of chocolate from the popcorn.