3:00 snapshot #663

[urbpan]

This is as good a time as any to announce my New Years Resolution to give up sweets. As you can see, my office is a hotbed of ice cream (CANDY CANE! YuM) and donuts. Also chocolates, candy, cookies, ice cream cake, pastries, and so on. I could stand to eat fewer empty calories, and since I'm not giving up booze (did that for a month--man parties without booze are boring) it may as well be sweets. Moderation is the better way to do it, but I seem incapable of moderation. I went from being a vegetarian for 15 years to eating pork sausage at least 3 times a week. (Also, I recently realized that what they call "binge drinking" is the activity that I call "drinking." That's a different issue, I guess.)

If there are donuts in the office or cookies at home I WILL EAT THEM, not because I derive any special pleasure from them, but because they are there. Depriving myself of them categorically is my only route to avoiding this behavior. Which brings up an interesting point: what counts? Well, I've pretty much listed what counts: candy, pastries, and ice cream. What doesn't count? Sweet drinks, soft or hard--except those that include ice cream. Jelly, even though it's mostly corn syrup, doesn't count, in fact I'm going to give myself a pass on anything that it primarily fruit. I love fruit. I could give up chocolate for life tomorrow and not care, but if I had to go a week without fruit I'd be sad. Maple syrup doesn't count, as long as I'm putting it on a breakfast thing like waffles. My rules. Also I can eat blueberry pie.

For my birthday this year I will specially request something which is made of mostly fruit, instead of a birthday cake. My coworkers (who today provided candy cane and red velvet cake ice cream, dunkin donuts munchkins, and caramel filled chocolate bells, in addition to the pound of fudge I got for xmas) have been notified; they think I am insane.

Comments

[kimcob.livejournal.com]

I so here you on this. I have similar struggles.

[xiloxoch.livejournal.com]

I applaud you, and I think you're right that sometimes moderation is worse than useless. I tried doing something similar a few years ago, with the stipulation being that I could eat any sweet I wanted as long as I made it myself from wholesome ingredients. The result was that I got really, really good at baking.

You don't know me from a hole in the wall...

[mamishka.livejournal.com]

...but I came upon your journal from a friend of mine and thought I would make a small suggestion. Instead of regular jelly, I recommend one of the all-fruit preserves. I think they taste even better than regular jelly, they contain no high-fructose corn syrup, and they have whole yummy chunks of fruit in 'em! :D

For what it's worth, you might want to try and avoid high-fructose corn syrup as well, which is a major part of why we as Americans are so fat. It's in a lot of things you wouldn't expect, like bread! But more and more companies are taking it out of their products, so it's getting easier and easier to avoid it. :)

Re: You don't know me from a hole in the wall...

[bedfull-o-books.livejournal.com]

I have tried to avoid stuff with corn syrup in it and have lost about 10 lbs in a couple months.

Seriously, the body processes corn syrup differently from cane sugar.

I agree with you on the all fruit jam.

Re: You don't know me from a hole in the wall...

[lunarcamel.livejournal.com]

YES! Corn syrup is THE DEVIL, I lost ten pounds when I started avoiding it as well! (I make my own bread and salad dressing, which helped).

Re: You don't know me from a hole in the wall...

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

I'd like to cut back on jelly altogether, since I have it for breakfast (PB+J) and I find it unsatisfying and depressing. New house has a microwave, which should increase my breakfast options. I prefer the good jellies, with less sugar, but we eat so much of the stuff that it doesn't make sense to buy a tiny jar for 3 dollars when we can get the big jar of store brand for less.

[urb-banal.livejournal.com]

I noticed after I gave up sugar I started to taste more flavours and subtlties in foods of all kinds. I love fruit too but even veg tasted sweeter when I cut out the junk.

[lunarcamel.livejournal.com]

Oy. Good luck to you. I am a kindred all-of-my-teeth-are-the-sweet-tooth spirit, and I heartily wish you the best.

I sort of ebb and flow with my ability to moderate - usuallly, the less I eat, the less I want to eat (as long as I really *think* about eating, and don't just fasttrack the donuts into the mouth without stopping at the "am I hungry or even actually interested in this donut?" section of my brain.

In other news, something I found helpful was the book "Potatoes Not Prozac," if you haven't encountered that already.

[wirrrn.livejournal.com]

Candy and sweets are my primary weakness too, and I'm also chucking them for New Year's. Good luck!

[deathling.livejournal.com]

Good luck with that. I've done it in the past and ot is SO FREAKIN hard. Sweets are an addiction. I've heard of studies finding chocoholic's brains similar to cocaine addict's brains.

Anyway you'll feel a lot better when its all said and done with.

It takes a little over a month for your body to get used to it, and that will be a HARD month. Out of site out of mind is the key. Work is going to be tough. However once you get past the first month, a lot of the cravings will go away.
A word of caution-if you should slip up and eat one little tiny sweet you'll pretty much have to start all over again because one sweet leads to another and another. Just like an addiction.

[vodkanoodles.livejournal.com]

good luck with this
and be gentle on yourself if you have a slip, your body will crave a lot of the other chemicals you'll be accidentally cutting out with all that sugar..
it is viable to make your own jams instead of the store stuff? simple jam only keeps for a few weeks unless you freeze it but is as the name suggests, easy to make?

[(Anonymous)]

I too will eat sweets just because they are there. Here's the rub: I don't buy them for home, BUT my office mates constantly bring stuff in. Most of them are quite overweight and taking medication for diet-related illness. So they are the source of the problem, and also an object lesson in what NOT to do! Good luck with laying off sweets; it's hard when they are so ubiquitous.

Flaneuse inDC