quitting sugar aaargh

 If I ever had any doubts* about whether I was addicted to sugar, they are well and truly gone now.

Last week I was feeling pretty good about cutting out sugary treats. I’d had a few headaches, but these were minor and didn’t last long. I didn’t find it too difficult to refuse sweet things and I didn’t really want them anyway.

This week is a whole other story. And we’re only two days into this week, so I’m a little scared as to how bad this is going to get.

Last night I felt like I was getting a cold. I had a sore throat and felt a bit congested. I wondered on Twitter whether this might be a sugar withdrawal symptom. Sarah Wilson (who wrote the 8 week I Quit Sugar Program that I’m largely following) suggested that yes, this could be part of the detox and suggested drinking more water and eating more veggies.

This morning, I felt lethargic, irritable, cranky (oh wait, that’s just my normal state) and headachy. I knew that if this had been a normal work at home day, I’d be having several of the shortbread biscuits (that Juniordwarf and I would have made on the weekend) throughout the day. 

Not today though.

I did, however, just want to eat and eat. And eat. And eat. David Gillespie (author of Sweet Poison) replied to my tweet that this could be the stage where things start to turn ugly and recommended non-sweet food treats to get me through it.

Vintage cheese and coffee. 

Not together, obviously and, sadly, not with my favourite crackers. It turns out that for all the ‘bad’ stuff they don’t have, they do have sugar, so for now they’re off limits.

Cue home-made water cracker recipe (do you feel a recipe blog post coming on?).

So I went through the day feeling hungry not that long after I’d eaten, headachy and with a horribly dry mouth and metallic taste. According to Sarah Wilson, it’s all part of the detox.

Along with the physical symptoms, I’ve found that if I’m not actively concentrating on something, I’ve started to obsess about sweet food, and I think about cakes and lollies and biscuits constantly. I even hallucinated that the eggshells I could see through the plastic compost container were mini-muffins waiting to be eaten. 

I’m not really sure if I actually want cakes or lollies or biscuits. I don’t think I do. If someone put a peppermint slice in front of me, I don’t think I’d eat it. But I just can’t stop thinking about them.

All of this is happening while I’m still eating berries in my morning smoothie. There will be a point where I cut them out too (at least for the detox period) and, based on the last two days, I’m a wee bit terrified of how complete withdrawal is going to make me feel.

I honestly didn’t think I was *that* addicted to sugar. But what’s happening now suggests otherwise.

I just have to keep telling myself that every minute I get through this is a minute closer to when it will stop. I have to believe that there will be a point where I won’t want sugar and I’ll feel great. There are a lot of people who have done this and said it's worth it, so I'm hanging in there.

* I did. I didn't think that the occasional more often than not cake/bag of lollies/chocolate bar some most afternoons was something I would have to withdraw from.

quitting sugar - week 1

 

I survived Week 1 of my quitting sugar experiment and I’m keen to continue.

My aim for last week was to avoid sweet treats like cakes and lollies. My main problem was snacking on lollies and cakes after lunch – either picking up something on the way back to the office, a sneaky trip to the vending machine or sometimes, for a special indulgence, a visit to the bakery for a peppermint slice with my afternoon coffee.

This was a habit that had crept up on me recently and last time I let it continue for any length of time, I ended up being the heaviest I’d ever been, this time 12 months ago. So, regardless of anything else, this was a habit that had to be brought under control.

Week 1 wasn’t too bad. Some of the things I noticed were:

• my morning berry and banana smoothie tasted incredibly sweet, which I’d not noticed before. I’ve cut out the banana and am experimenting with substitutes. This will be important if I get to the stage where all fruit is cut out.
• not having a sweet snack in the afternoon made no difference to my post-lunch afternoon energy slumps. I need to investigate this more and possibly tweak what I have for lunch.
• I got more frequent headaches, mostly in the afternoon and evening. Yesterday’s was the worst and the longest lasting.

Although there were times I felt miserable, I didn’t always feel like I needed to cheer myself up with something sweet and when I did, I didn't have anything. I also avoided eating cakes and lollies that people offered me, TWICE! without making a fuss about it, which I was particularly happy with.

Juniordwarf had got some lollies from a trip to the lolly shop with his grandmother (I have to start working on her now . . . ) and he offered to share them with me. I was delighted at his sharing attitude but had to decline, telling him that I didn’t eat lollies any more. He seemed to accept that as something people do. 

Week 2 is going to be more of the same. I’m also going to start paying more attention to food with added sugar and start to cut that out as much as possible.

One thing I noticed when reading food labels is that the food that contains a lot of sugar also includes other highly processed ingredients that I don’t really want to be eating, like hydrogenated oils. So this sugar-free thing is also going to be a big step towards my goal of making sure my diet consists, as far as possible, of unprocessed or minimally processed food.

At this stage I don’t know if complete elimination of sugar (or for the purpose of this experiment, fructose) is necessary. There are arguments and counter-arguments and more counter-arguments, and there is a lot of information out there and a lot of questions. Is it the elimination of sugar that has improved people’s health, or is it the general improvement in diet due to removing a lot of highly processed foods? Do those people who benefit most from a completely sugar-free diet have an intolerance to fructose that the people who don’t benefit don’t have? 

What I’m doing is trying to find out how my body reacts to elimination of sugar (fructose) and then re-introduce small amounts of sugar in its natural state (fruit, for example) and see what happens. (As I understand it complete elimination is virtually impossible, but that foods with a higher proportion of fructose to glucose that can cause problems.)

It’s early days and, as I said last week, I’m keeping an open mind and trying it to see if it has any effect on me. 

So far, the effects have been headaches and, if my bathroom scales can be relied on, one kilo lost.

quitting sugar

I've tried to write this post several times, but I can't get it right. So I'm just going to cut it right back and go for it.

I am taking steps to remove sugar from my diet.

I've done some reading and I'm getting a clearer understanding of the chemistry behind what happens when we eat sugar. Some people claim that the fructose part of what we call "sugar" is incredibly bad for us to the extent that they believe sugar is poisoning us. Others think that view is completely over the top and that there is no need to cut out sugar at all.

From what I've read, a lot of what the sugar-is-poison crowd says makes sense. But that doesn't make it right, so I'm keeping an open mind about it all.

What I know for sure is that sugar is in a lot of processed foods, and one of my 100 things to do this year is to further reduce my consumption of those products, so a reduction in sugar will naturally follow.

But I'm also interested to know if total sugar withdrawal will make any difference to my health, my weight and generally how I feel. Some people say it has significantly improved their health, whereas others have said it's had little effect.

So with that in mind, I'm setting myself a goal to cut out sugar (the sugar in question being fructose) as completely as is reasonably possible. I'm not sure how far I'll get. I'm just trying it to see what happens. I'm sort of following an 8 week program that was recommended to me called I Quit Sugar. It recommends the try-it-and-see approach to start with.

This week I'm tackling a really obvious source of sugar: the afternoon lolly and/or cake break. Regardless of your views on sugar, I don't think anyone would seriously argue that regular snacking on lollies (or peppermint slices) is good for me. And in my quest to cut back on processed foods, it's something I would have got round to doing anyway. I'm just going to start now. No time like the present.

I intend to do a blog post once a week on how it's all going and will probably spend a lot of time on Twitter complaining about how badly I want chocolate bullets. So if you want up to the minute news, follow me @realsleepydwarf.

And I can report that Day 1 was a total success. 

healthy heart challenge - week 6

This was the last day of the Heart Foundation's Healthy Heart Challenge, which I started six weeks ago.

You can see my results here.

I'm pleased with what I've done over the last six weeks. Apart from two days last weekend when I was feeling extremely miserable and stressed (which is probably the time I needed to exercise the most), and one day when I fell five minutes short of my target, I met the goals that I'd set. That's 39.83 out of 42 days. I think that's a pass.

I've also lost close to 7 kg since February.

I didn't set any huge life-changing exercise goals. The point for me was to try and establish some habits that I can carry forward. I think I've done that, and I intend to keep going on the path I'm on. I'm comfortable with it, it's something I know I can do within my current commitments, and it's working for me.

This makes me happy.

healthy heart - week 1

I've now completed Week 1 of the Healthy Heart Challenge.

At the start of the week, I set my goal for the week: to walk for 10 minutes each day. My aim was to start working out the best time or times of each day when it might be possible for me to incorporate exercise.

I was rather pleased with my efforts:

Monday: 2 x 15 minute walks
Tuesday: 2 x 10 minute walks
Wednesday: 1 x 15 minute walk and 1 x 25 minute walk
Thursday: 2 x 20 minute walks
Friday: 1 x 15 minute walk
Saturday: 1 x 25 minute walk and 1 x 20 minute walk
Sunday: 1 x 40 minute walk

That's well above that I set out to do.

This week I'm on holidays, so the opportunities for exercise will be different than on my normal working weeks. With this in mind, my target for this week is to walk for 20 minutes each day, either in two 10 minute blocks or one 20 minute walk - depending on the day, where I am and what I'm doing.

I don't think this will be a big stretch - I already achieved that almost every day this week - but as I explained, I'm trying to build the habit at this stage, not to rush into an exercise program that I can't maintain over the long term.

So far, so good.

Healthy Heart

A couple of weeks ago I signed up for the Heart Foundation's Healthy Heart Challenge, which is part of the "Go Red for Women" campaign to raise awareness about heart disease in women.

It's an online challenge that starts today and runs for six weeks. Participants select an area they would like to focus on (being active, healthy eating, cholesterol or blood pressure) and set goals each week to improve in the area of their choice.

I've chosen exercise as my goal.

After my miserable attempt at reintroducing running into my life late last year, I've been fairly inactive and that worries me. The fact that I needed to do something became very clear a few months ago when I stepped onto the scales for the first time in months and discovered to my horror that I was very close to weighing the heaviest I'd ever been.

At that point I decided things had to change.

I'd got rid of a lot of clothes that became too big for me after I lost about 15 kg seven years ago (before I got pregnant and stacked most of it back on again), and I really didn't want to see myself going out and buying more clothes in those sizes.

I actually weighed a lot less back when Juniordwarf was a baby but since then the weight has steadily crept back on, in that sneaky way that weight does when you aren't paying attention. I really don't think I can use the excuse of baby weight when the "baby" is in Prep.

After that horrifying realisation, I started to make a few changes to my diet. I've lost about three kilos over three months, but I know I need to do more, especially in terms of exercising. When I heard about this challenge I thought it would be the perfect way to gradually start to exercise again, doing a little bit more each week, with the intention of cementing some new habits into my life.

With that in mind, I've set myself a very low goal for the first week: to walk for 10 minutes a day. It doesn't matter when or where. Just getting out and doing it is all I want to do at this stage.

Because I have a different schedule almost every day, I find it hard to fit in a regular time for exercise. Then I tend to give up altogether because I miss a session or two that I'm supposed to be doing but where the time isn't convenient for that particular day.  So my aim over the next six weeks is to work out the best time or times each day to get moving, and then to actually do it at those times. And to stick with it.

Progress so far: 1/1.

Happiness is not a destination

When walking past a shop recently, I glanced into the window and saw a poster with this quote on it:

Happiness is not a destination.
It is a way of life.

It sums up the attitude I’ve been trying to instil in myself.

Last year I blogged several times (here, here and here, for example) about my realisation that ‘life is now’. That means that I can’t wait until I’ve ‘fixed’ the things I think I need to fix and until everything is perfectly in place before I start living my life (my life is now) or before I can acknowledge that I’m happy.

And as I walked, I contemplated the quote (for which I have tried to track down a source, but I've been unable to do so) and it occurred to me that this was not just a quote about happiness. It could actually be applied to any number of things that I’m trying to address in my life.

Try replacing the word ‘happiness’ with ‘health’. 

Health is not a destination; it is a way of life. 

Of course it is. For a long time I’ve focused on an attempt to ‘get healthy’, which implies that there is some point at which the unhealthy me will suddenly be the healthy me, after which everything will be easy, I will never crave chocolate again and I will only drink two glasses of alcohol two nights a week.

I know that's not going to happen. There's not going to be a flick of the switch moment, when I suddenly become healthy.

So if I see health as, instead of an end point that I have to reach, a way of life, then the challenge is no longer to get to 'the end' (to get healthy), but to live a healthy lifestyle (to be healthy).

Instead of complaining that I’m overweight, unfit and unhealthy and telling myself I have to lose weight, get fit and get healthy, I choose to be healthy today. And every time I have a choice, if I choose the healthier option (herbal tea instead of beer; going for a walk instead of watching TV; fruit instead of cake) then I’m reinforcing being healthy. (OK, not every time. I think that’s unrealistic. But most of the time.)

Sure I might have some specific goals*, like I want to be able to run 5 km or I want to fit into my pre-pregnancy jeans**, but those goals are not the end point. They are milestones. Am I unhealthy because I can only run 4 km***? Do I suddenly become healthy once I can run 5km? Of course not. There is no end point. You don’t just achieve your health goals and then stop and go back to your old ways once you’ve done it. Health is not a destination; it is a way of life.

I feel much better for starting to live this way of life.

Something else that has been a big focus of my life and that I’ve blogged about several times could also slot right into this quote, and I’m sure there are many others too. But that’s a story for another night.

* Not my actual goals.

**That would be the immediately pre-pregnancy size 8-10s, not the 12 months pre-pregnancy size 14-16s, because fitting into those would require a certain level of relaxation of my lifestyle; and besides, I got rid of them and have no intention of ever buying a pair of jeans that size again.

*** I can’t.

P365 - Day 346 - stairs

One of the things ‘they’ say you can do to increase your fitness is to take the stairs at work instead of the lift.

I have several flights of stairs to get to my workplace. I’ve climbed up all of them a few times. It wasn’t a pleasant experience.

Last week decided to start doing it again. Just three flights to start with. The only trouble is that I’m so used to taking the lift, I kept forgetting to take the stairs.

Today I remembered.

P365 - Day 342 - running (Flashback Friday)

I thought I might try out the Flashback Friday concept and see how it works. I first saw the idea on Nicole’s blog a while ago and I think it fits in quite well with the ‘Past-Present-Future’ theme of my blog.

Ok, so today is actually Thursday, not Friday, but this is my blog and I make the rules around here, and if I say I can do Flashback Friday on Thursday, then I can.

Anyway, to kick off what might become a occasional series, today I’m going back to early December 2005 and reproducing an extract from my journal.

For a bit of background, several years ago I weighed 73.4 kg. For someone who is only 151 cm tall, this was somewhat* overweight. It was caused by a lifetime of unhealthy eating habits and many years of very little exercise. After Slabs and I moved to Tasmania in 2005, I made a decision that it was time to do something about my unhealthy lifestyle.

I improved my eating habits, ate a lot less, drank a lot less, and started to exercise. I started off by walking in my lunch breaks at work. This increased to walking in the mornings and, before I knew it, I’d started running.

This was a surprise to me because I'd always hated running and at school had struggled to run the couple of kilometres around the sports fields that had been required of us for phys ed and sports training. But I started off very slowly – one minute running, two minutes walking – and over about four months I built this up to being able to run for 45 minutes. And what was even more surprising was, I sort of liked it.

I felt great, looked pretty good and, for the first time in my life, felt like I was actually getting fit and healthy.

And this is what I wrote at around this time six years ago:

I’ve let myself go a bit this week, but still exercising, so it should be OK. I think ideally I’d like to lose five more kilos and get down to 51. That would be perfect, but I know that this month it’s going to be difficult with work lunches coming up. 

So I will set a goal of 51 kg by 13 February. 

This morning I did a 30 minute run (including ten sprints the length of the oval – what absolute torture, but at least not as boring as jogging around the streets the whole time.) I had plans to do the long walk tomorrow morning and run the first 30 minutes and see how long it took overall. But it is pissing down with rain (our roof is leaking, that’s how heavy it is) and the forecast is for rain all weekend. I can’t see myself getting up at any time to go out in that. No way.

And why, you might ask, have I chosen this particular flashback?

Well, I recently read about one of my friend’s achievements in completing a 10 km fun run recently. I felt really inspired by how well she had done, and thought to myself that six years ago my goal had been to complete a similar fun run.

(I stopped running when I got pregnant because the things the pregnancy hormones did to my body made it too uncomfortable to continue, so while I kept walking I also ate a lot, and I stacked on a lot of weight that I still haven’t managed to lose.)

I started thinking that if my friend can run 10 km, and I got close to it six years ago, why can’t I do it again? I seemed to have no incentive to get healthy again and was only too willing to remain in my lazygirl rut.

Earlier this week I had a bit of a moan about it on Twitter. How am I supposed to find time to do any serious exercise when I have a child, and I work and I try to keep the house clean, and I have so much gardening to do, and my lunch times are filled with doing errands so I don’t have time to even go for a walk, and, and, and  . . .

As usual, my tweeples were sympathetic and helpful, and I began to think that I might actually be able to do this and that just maybe now was the time to start.

The suggestions were simple (there’s only so much you can say in 140 characters), and were things I already knew. For some reason I just needed someone to say them to me, and this time I was ready to hear them. Simple things like making changes to my daily routine to bring in some exercise – something I've read and heard a millions times, but have thought it’s all too hard and I have no time and I’ve never made the effort to think about how I actually could do it.

This week it suddenly became a lot clearer, and now I think I can really do it.

The main reasons I want and need to do this are (1) to increase my energy levels so I’m able to keep up with with Juniordwarf, (2) to try and improve my moods and overcome my anxiety issues, because my bad days are starting to become really bad and I’m not coping well, and (3) to fit into the clothes that I bought six years ago and wore for about a month.

Also, much as I try to convince Juniordwarf that I’m 29, I’m not, and I’m getting to the age where my chance of developing ‘lifestyle’ diseases is going to increase if I don’t make changes to my lifestyle now.

I hope that these reasons will outweigh the excuses I have: (1) I can’t find a sports bra that fits (this is a serious problem if you are endowed like Dolly Parton), (2) I don’t actually like running (I didn’t six years ago either, but I grew to like it), and (3) it is going to hurt (it will, but the good feeling is going to outweigh the hurt, and last a lot longer).

Seriously, I know absolutely that making healthy choices makes me feel so much better, but for some reason, it’s easier to stay in my rut and keep doing what I’ve always done.

It doesn’t make any sense when I know how much better I can feel.

Anyway, it’s time.

I did question whether the ‘silly season’ was the right time to start, because there would be lots of excuses not to continue, but I figured that the best time to start is when I’m motivated.  If I put it off, I might just slide back down into that place I go to on the bad days and it might take several more months before I feel able to get started.

So the time is now.

Also, I have deliberately not weighed myself and I’m not going to. My aim is to get healthy, improve my moods and start feeling good about myself. If I can achieve that over time, then I don’t care what the scales say.

For someone who likes tracking progress to the nth degree (like I did in 2005), this is a big change. But I’m trying to cultivate a new attitude that the numbers on the scales are (like age), just numbers, and my measure of success will be things like more energy, better moods and feeling better about myself.

I have no doubts this will be hard – everything I’m doing has been hard, and there have been major setbacks – but it’s important, so I’m doing it.

(And just so you know I wasn’t joking, after I wrote this post I went out for the first time. I’ve started with the same routine that I had back in 2005. Even that nearly killed me, but I know I have to stick with it. I will get used to it and it will start to feel OK. I’ve done it before, so I know it will.)

 * An understatement. 

P365 - Day 335 - headache

P365 - Day 314 - still not well

It was my turn to spend the day at home with the sick little boy today. Only I feel like I’ve been struck down with the same thing he’s got, so even if I didn’t have to be at home with Juniordwarf, I would have been home trying to recover anyway.

He seems to be fine at first. He goes through energetic phases, and then suddenly crashes without a moment’s notice.

I tried to get him to rest up on the couch with me this morning, but he obviously missed his school routine because he set his chair up, put his teddies on the mat and went through the morning routine from school – calling the roll and then writing up on the board what they’d be doing today.

Um, no Juniordwarf, we are not doing all that stuff. We are going to rest.

He had other ideas, until just after lunch, when I was feeling absolutely terrible, and insisted we try and go to sleep for a while.

He wanted to build a train track. I was desperate to sleep. He really wanted the train track.

Okay, okay, AFTER we’ve had a sleep. Then we can build a train track.

At this point he completely crashed, started crying, wanted more medicine, insisted we were going to build the train track, and finally I had to carry him to bed. Then he wanted me to read a story. I didn’t have a book on hand (but I was starting to think I needed to have a copy of Go The F*ck to Sleep on hand for times like these) so I started to make a story up. I thought that might put him to sleep, but it only put me to sleep instead.

After we’d finally managed to get some rest, he was up and about again, while all I wanted was more sleep. The next thing I knew he’d got the wool out of his craft box and was cutting lengths of it to lay down in lines along the floor.

They were lines showing the way from the kitchen to his seat at the dining table; his bedroom to the bathroom; the stove to the bench; to show me the way from the hallway to my bedroom; and so on, all over the house.

Just in case we forget the way, I guess.

And we never did build a train track.

P365 - Day 313 - not well

Going home tonight with a sick little boy.

The doctor told him to stay away from school for two days, so the plan for tomorrow is rest, rest and more rest.

P365 - Day 312 - yoga

Tonight I went to my first yoga class since 2006.

I’ve done yoga on and off ever since I was at uni. Most recently I did pregnancy yoga classes, but that was more than five years ago.

I’d been thinking about starting again for a while. What originally got me thinking was Judith Lucy’s Spiritual Journey, which was on tv earlier in the year. In the show, Judith talked about how practising yoga had changed her life, and it reminded me of how I too had got a lot from it when I’d done it – yet somehow still managed to keep dropping out.

Recently I was speaking to someone about the need for me to take some time to do something just for me, and also for me to find ways to relax so that I can deal with particular things that have been happening in my life.

It occurred to me that yoga might fulfil both of these needs. But I didn’t know how I was going to do it, since most of the classes around seemed to be too far away and at inconvenient times.

Then Slabs mentioned he’d seen a poster advertising local yoga classes, so I contacted the teacher and, lo and behold, the next term’s classes were about to start - in the evening - so I signed up.

It seemed like everything had fallen into place. I love it when that happens!

I’ve started getting up a bit earlier (on some days) to practise a few poses on my own, and tonight was my first time at the official class.

I think it will be really good for me.

P365 - Day 266 - waiting

Today I went back to my counsellor. I booked this appointment a few weeks ago, because I thought I could use some help working through some of the stuff in the Self-Esteem book. I hoped that she might be able to help me step outside myself and develop a more objective and accurate picture of myself than I currently have.

But other things have intervened since I made the appointment, and there were more immediate things that I needed to talk about today.

I’m glad I went. 

I really needed to talk. 

I needed someone to help me to put things into perspective and to suggest some things I can do right now to make me feel better.

That’s what I got, and I do feel better.

P365 - Day 243 - tea (31/08/2011)

One of the things I’m trying to do in a quest to live a slightly more healthy life is to cut back my alcohol intake.

My substitute beverages are various herbal teas. Proper loose leaf herbs, not tea bag versions. Not the most exciting tastes on the planet, but nice and soothing, especially at night.

P365 - Day 219 - afternoon nap

I wasn’t feeling well today and spent a lot of the day in bed, leaving Slabs and Juniordwarf to their own devices.

They were obviously tired too, because when I managed to drag myself out of bed this afternoon, the house was quiet. I looked into Juniordwarf’s bedroom and this is what I saw.

P365 - Day 215 - massage

Just what my sore back and neck have been needing for the last few weeks.

What a shame I had to go back to work afterwards, to do . . . um, what is it I do again?

P365 - Day 206 - tea time

I went to the naturopathica today to stock up on some herbal teas. I am hoping the ‘cold and flu’ tea provides some relief from my head cold. 

P365 - Day 203 - a (brief) walk in the park

I was home again today. The doctor told me to take the rest of the week off. My work colleagues were very keen that I not come to work and share my illness with them. I haven’t been able to sleep, and am still feeling well below ordinary. Another day on the couch was called for.

But I also had to get out, because I was feeling hemmed in and felt like the house was becoming a germ trap.

So at lunch time I decided to go to the park for a few minutes to get some fresh air. It was cold, so I rugged up as much as I could. I didn’t stay long, just long enough to have lunch, take a few photos and get a bit more practice with Hipstamatic.

Then it was home, back to the couch.

P365 - Day 202 - view from the couch

This is the view out the window from the couch that I spent most of the afternoon resting on, trying to recover from my head cold.