Sugar-Free

I've been reading health/diet books lately.  One is "The Full Plate Diet," which I reviewed here earlier this year. The other one I ordered last week after a noticeably shrinking professor mentioned it to me while she and I were walking back in the warm spring sunshine from Compensation Committee. The book is called "The Belly Fat Cure."

Titles like "The Belly Fat Cure" and "The Full Plate Diet" do not attract me in the least, although I do think the second title is better than the first. They sound gimmicky and faddish, like something a compulsive dieter might have a row of, on the bookshelf. I'm not compulsive, and I believe in lifestyle change over diets. But as I get older I am getting more interested in health. And if the book is recommended to me or given to me free, I'll give it at least a quick read. Lifestyle change is something I need to do successfully. And I choose that last word, "successfully," deliberately.

The message of "The Belly Fat Cure" is to cut out added sugar (and aspartame and saccharin) and significantly reduce carbohydrates. I'm not sure I'm that expert at spotting or counting carbs, but I can spot sugar at five hundred paces. It puts out its tractor beams and draws me inexorably to it. It holds me lovingly in its grasp. It speaks to me of enjoyment, relaxation and being well-treated, even pampered. It's an insidious thing in my sweet-toothed life.

And so I decided the other day that I just need to give it up. Sugar, I mean. For a year at minimum.  

Good thing I mostly demolished that huge chocolate bar that Leena brought me from Finland last Friday, before I arrived at this conclusion. What better way to celebrate my divorce from sugar than with a giant-sized Finnish chocolate bar? Seriously, though, that was the end. No sugar for the past two days, and I'm determined to persist. Determined. Determined. Determined. (I like the sound of that word.  It's almost onomatopoeic.)

I know I can do this. About ten years ago I gave up chocolate for a year. And I've done other lifestyle change things in diet and exercise successfully for significant periods of time. The exercise part is still going pretty well, I'm happy to report.

Husband was a huge help last night. He went by the grocery store on the way home from work, read a hundred labels, and brought me cereals and soymilk with extremely low sugar content. And he's going to eat that last row of the Finnish chocolate bar. That's love, folks!

Wish me luck.