Hangover.

A sugar hangover, that is.

Yesterday was rough. I completely honestly admit, I gave in to the emotional desires for sugar and stuffed my face.

To be fair, it was a pretty traumatic day.  I accidentally ran over the baby bunny living in our yard. With the lawn mower.  Worse - my daughter had named it Princess Tiana when we discovered it living in our garden a few weeks ago. I have never felt so guilty and awful about anything in my LIFE.  And I found myself eating a cookie that I had gotten for the kiddos & Jen when she watched them on Saturday (but they didn't eat!). Then I was picking at the jelly beans in the bowl. And I thought "Well, heck, if I'm eating sugar, I might as well eat something delicious" so I ate a Reese's peanut butter egg. And a few more jelly beans, just to drive the point home.

*facepalm*

I knew I would hurt today. I just had NO IDEA how bad it would be! I woke up this morning and you would have thought I had 6 margaritas last night! Queasy and headachy, grumpy and still tired. It's CRAZY how awful that sugar made me feel. Because - for REAL - that is how I used to eat. Every single day!

So I learned a lesson and won't be making that awful mistake again (the sugar AND the lawn mowing!!)

** and for the sake of clarity, my daughter was outside with me, but she did not AND DOES NOT know what happened. And never will - until she's maybe 30**

Cake Day!

(Subtitled: Congratulations, Adam & Hillary!!) ;-)

So my cake weekend (aka Hillary's wedding weekend) didn't turn out at ALL what I had expected.  Friday, I survived the airports, as I posted. However, by 2:30am, I was so sick, I could barely stand myself. I have an awesome friend in Canton who stopped at Target and got me meds, crackers and coconut water (with pineapple flavoring) and delivered them to my hotel. I almost blacked out going to meet her in the lobby. It was quite bad.

So I managed to drag myself out of bed for my friend's wedding.  I made it to the reception and was feeling pretty good (relatively speaking!)   I was able to eat some dinner and it tasted great.

Then came cake. She had a LOVELY display of cupcakes, all different flavors, but I went for the most beautiful of them all - red velvet.

I sat down and stared at it.  I was waging war - I SAID I was going to eat cake. I DECIDED I would allow cake (it wasn't an impulse, this was a conscious decision!) and now? My stomach rumbled just thinking about it!

I nibbled the corner. It was... okay. I mean, don't get me wrong, it was tasty cake! But it wasn't GRIPPING and SOUL CRUSHINGLY AMAZING like I remember cake to be. It was just .... cake. I ate about 1/4 of it, and happily put it aside.



I did have a bit of sugar on Saturday, just to try to get myself rehydrated. I still avoided hfcs but I did have the coconut water with pineapple juice (12g in the bottle) and a LifeWater that had Stevia in it.

Proud of myself that I didn't fall. I don't know how the story would be different (would I have fallen off in week 8 had I not been sick?) but I guess, in a round about way, my body was protecting me from it!

So I'm midway through week 8. I'm not being quite as militant about it - I'm allowing some incidental sugars in things that are harder to control (dining out primarily) but still avoiding all "obvious" sugars. 

Did anyone take me up on the one week sugar free? I'm curious to know how it went for you. I KNOW people think they can't do it, but it is doable. And it DOES change things!

I will definitely do an update post, but as of Monday, I am THREE POUNDS below my first goal weight!!!  Now to set my next goal :-) Onward to the Disney Half Marathon, which is in approximately 70 days!!

Sweet Education

So now you know - if you've been following along - that sugar is hidden everywhere. But do you know how to find it?  Do you know all the different names it goes by?  

Let's play a game - how many times can you find sugar listed on this label? Go on, I'll give you a minute. 

 

 So, how many could you find? 

High fructose corn syrup; Corn syrup; Brown sugar; Sugar; Honey; Molasses

So what gooey goodness is this, you ask?  Brownies? Cookies? 

Nope. Plain bread crumbs. The sugar content on the label was 4g. If you were just to look at the sugar content, you wouldn't have noticed all the different (overkill) ingredients. 

So here's a list of what to look for, with the rule of thumb being anything ending in "-ose" is sugar. The exception here is lactose, which doesn't affect your blood sugars the way the others do and is okay to consume during a sugar detox.

list found at About.com

• Agave Nectar
• Barley Malt Syrup
• Corn sweetener
• Corn syrup, or corn syrup solids
• Dehydrated Cane Juice
• Dextrin
• Dextrose
• Fructose
• Fruit juice concentrate
• Glucose
• High-fructose corn syrup
• Honey
• Invert sugar
• Lactose
• Maltodextrin
• Malt syrup
• Maltose
• Maple syrup
• Molasses
• Raw sugar
• Rice Syrup
• Saccharose
• Sorghum or sorghum syrup
• Sucrose
• Syrup
• Treacle
• Turbinado Sugar
• Xylose

Also - evaporated cane juice, which Wikipedia describes like this: "Nutritional benefits are minimal; evaporated cane juice contains trace minerals and vitamins but has the same amount of calories as table sugar."

The other thing to watch out for are "sugar alcohols." These are the things they add to "sugar free" products.  (Read more about them here). While there technically isn't sugar proper in these foods, the "fake" sugars are still fooling your body into thinking that sugar craving is being satisfied.  During a detox from the addiction to sugar, it's best to avoid this as well. 

I'm 20 days into this journey, only 1 1/2 hours from being a solid three weeks in. I must say, it's not as wholly-consuming as it was in the beginning. I've armed myself with "safe" snacks. I'm learning there are certain things I will need to make from scratch instead of purchase in order to avoid unnecessary sugars. I do still have cravings, mostly in the afternoon when lunch is over and I'm hurting for something sweet to "finish" my meal. But I'm staying strong, staying true to this journey. 

And that's what it is. A journey. People keep asking "are you ever going to eat sugar EVER AGAIN?" Why of course I will! But when I do, I'm praying I'm able to stop at one piece of candy, a reasonable amount of ice cream, a few bites of cake. I will evolve and get to that place. Right now? I don't think I could stop yet, as I still crave it. Every day I'm feeling stronger and more in control of my situation! 

Dirty Words

There are four dirty words that Nic mentioned in one of her first blog posts that are really having quite an impact on me lately... high fructose corn syrup. I've seen the ads that say "high fructose corn syrup is made from corn and as healthy as natural sugar" and then there's the other side of the battle about how awful the stuff is for you. I'm not jumping in that debate, because honestly, I don't really care. I've learned how harmful the effects of the ridiculous amount of sugar that's been put into just about everything we eat is, so it doesn't really matter to me if HFCS is the same as sugar. Sugar is not really my body's friend - whether that's granulated sugar, HFCS, corn syrup, Splenda, etc.

My roommate had fruit snacks that were made with real fruit juice... with 14 grams of sugar in a tiny .5 oz package! A coworker had a single-serving cup of fruit with over 20 grams of sugar in it! The "healthy" ice cream bar a friend was eating had a whopping 30 grams of sugar. How is that healthy?! And now I've learned to look not only at the grams of sugar listed on the nutrition facts, but to also scope out the ingredient list for these sneaky little devils, it just gets me more frustrated than ever. Why do we put this stuff in everything??

Here are some things I've found recently that have HFCS in them that I would never have given a second thought to before this journey: Nyquil/Robitussin/Delsym (only the liquid kind, but of course that's the only cold medicine that actually knocks me out), Land O Lakes fat-free half & half, Pepperidge Farms' line of 100% whole grain bread, Ritz crackers, sweet pickle relish and most jarred pickles, all varieties of Miracle Whip, Campbell's vegetable soup (the microwave cup kind), etc.

Obviously, HFCS is found in a lot more foods than these. But I didn't expect it to be in most of these! I have never before read the label to my cold medicine. I had to run to the store this morning to find a truly sugar-free half & half I could put in my coffee at work. These things sneak up on me and I'm realizing like never before how much sugar and sugar-substitutes I have really been consuming. It almost makes me sick to think about. No wonder I was getting sick all the time. No wonder I craved sugar on a daily - if not hourly - basis. Have you found these hidden sugars in any other surprising foods?

When I first downloaded the e-book and told Nicole I was going to try not eating sugar for awhile, I thought it would be easy. I had no idea how many varieties of sugar are out there or the extreme amount that is in most of my normal "healthy foods." I'm learning a lot of foods aren't nearly as healthy as I once thought they were. And I'm not surprised that although I was losing weight on WW, I wasn't really getting much healthier. In fact, after a year on WW, I was getting physically sick and spending a lot more money on doctor (and even Emergency Room) visits with stomach issues.

I'm anxious to see after several weeks of diligently sticking to this plan if and how that changes. I know I was feeling like a new person after my first sugar-free week. And yes, I've made mistakes and I've eaten sugar along the way - some intentional and some not. But I'm back on track and I'm committing to see this through. I will be posting my stats - weight, measurements, photo, etc. - sometime this weekend in hopes that will be another thing to keep me accountable to this. But for now, it's back to work now that my really sugar-free coffee is kicking in! Happy Friday, friends!