The 'Towards a Sugar-Free Future' Challenge

Honey_Bear

Good call on finding melon works for you Making.  I find cutting a whole one in half, scooping out the seeds with a soup spoon and putting it face down on a plate in the fridge works for me - but not, obviously, with watermelon.  Which I love, but the seed-spitting thing is a bit antisocial.

Polly, the whole biscuits and chocolate thing not being satiating is a huge issue for me.  I can stand over the Twinks Hobnobs tin and eat at least 10, and they're full of sugar so most of the time I don't make them.  When I do I have to be really, really self-controlled, so I don't make them very often, no matter how many times Belovéd (who can always stop at one of everything) begs me to make another batch. 

The same with chocolate.  I'm not entirely sure I can fully trust anyone who can eat, say, half a bar unless it's the darkest of dark chocolate which isn't sweet at all.  Or just one square of milk chcoolate because my default is to finish it.  *kudos* to those that can stop, but I don't number amongst them.

However, I have found that by cutting down sugar overall, which is not a quick fix, it's a longterm thing, helps.  The more sugar I eat, the more I crave it, and even when I don't crave it I want it.  So, cutting down gradually may feel like we're not achieving anything, it turns out we are in the long run if we stick with it over the long term. 

I heard a fantastic analogy about this yesterday.  When we slip up with our diet, most people's defaut is, 'Oh well, I've spoiled my diet today, so I may just as well have another m@gnum / biscuit / helping of pudding' or whatever.  We make those choices knowing it's only going to make the situation worse not because we're going to put on more weight by indulging, but because we think we've failed.  We haven't.  We need to change that mindset and I came across this yesterday - When we're driving a car and one of the tyres is flat, we don't get out of the car and slash the other tyres.  We need to just do our best to make small adjustments to past habits and gradually things will improve.

Pollybear

You speak so much sense HB and my brain nods wisely but something in me still sabotages me sometimes.  Not every day, which is something, but enough to make me sad.  But I am still plodding on

Honey_Bear

PollyBear I know how much you struggle with this and honestly, I've lived through years and years and years of this which is why I started the Challenge in the first place.  I can gauge exactly when my sugar consumption got completely out of control - the summer of 2006 when I gave up smoking and ate all sorts of things to distract my mind from that habit and addiction.  I've been doing that ever since, and I've gained at least two stone.  My weight is now going up relatively fast, and that's neither acceptable nor okay.  My mother had a weight problem all her adult life and I'm not going to allow myself to go through the hell she did with diets and the like. 

I knew when I was buying those cream cakes I had more than twice, closer to three times, the number I should have bought because at heart I'm really greedy, and having coffee with a neighbour and a friend coming to stay was a great excuse to have stuff in the house that I love that I don't normally allow myself to indulge in and never, ever to have that much of it.  I've never done that before and it wasn't so much an act of self-sabotage, although I'm pretty really, really good at them, this was the need to self-indulge.  So is the buying of four bars of my favourite chocolate and pretending to myself that I'll ration them, knowing perfectly well I've never been able to do that before so what's different this time?  Einstein's definition of madness:  Doing the same thing you've always done and expecting different results.  That's me, in a nutshell.

The point of this Challenge is different.  I'm not doing what I've always done.  I'm not eshewing sugar, or even chocolate, although I'm giving that a go because it's Lent, and every Friday evening or weekend day I don't indulge is a victory; the 40 day thing is a way of limiting it so that I can look forward to a day when I can have as much of it as I want.  That seems to work for me much better than anything else.

If I slip up, I slip up and I've lost nothing.  I don't feel a failure.  I am thrilled I managed a single day without indulging, and sometimes when I've caved after dinner and had chocolate at 9.00pm I'm disappointed with myself but also amazed I got through my danger time of 3.30pm, and when I did indulge - only a handful of chocolate.  It's a great improvement on eating a 200g bar of milk chocolate with nuts or the salted caramel one I love. 

I'm not self-disciplined.  I've got a lot of bad habits.  What I've found over the years is gradual change works best for me, and not Quick Fixes and we're pre-programmed to want a quick fix so we ignore what we know about ourselves and try this brand new scheme some journalist has dreamt up and hope it'll give us miraculous results because we all, secretly, want to be better than we are.  Most of us won't admit that out loud in our real lives, but on here, with anonymity, we can. 

I'm starting gently with this sugarfree Challenge and every time I slip up I'm sad, and disappointed in myself, just as you are when you slip up.  BUT it's not what happens to us in life, it's how we deal with it that makes us who we are.  I'm never, ever going to find this easy but I'm finding it a lot easier to be sugarfree on some days now that's as good as I can hope it can be. 

Part of the reason it's working for me is that I've tailored this Challenge to my needs while being realistic about what I can achieve.  Anyone who joins in is motivating me, and that's something I am truly, deeply grateful for.

Can you tailor this Challenge to suit you, rather than trying to do it my way?  When is your danger time of day?  Is it, as it is for me, at exactly 3.30pm?  Or is it 11.00am? 

My 3.30pm thing started in 1993 when I worked in an office in the NHS and I'd trot downstairs and buy myself a bar of chocolate as a treat to get me through the rest of the day.  That went on for months and months until I got a promotion to a more interesting job in the same hospital, but the habit was there.  I didn't indulge it in the next three posts I had with the NHS but it reared its ugly head right when I didn't need it - 2006, years later, when I stopped smoking, and I've had a battle with it ever since.

So, if your habit is that you need a boost mid-morning, can you delay the indulgence until, say, 12.00 and count that as a win?  Anything you can do to change a habit that makes you feel miserable is what we're looking for here, and we don't expect too much of ourselves because if it were easy, it wouldn't be a problem.

If you can delay it until 12.00 for one day a week or month, and then increase it to two days a week, and then three, so very, very gradually bringing about the change you want, would that work better for you?  And if it didn, could you then push it back to 1.00pm for one day a week? 

There's a lot of misery to be had by trying and feeling we've failed.  There's also a lot of joy to be had by making tiny changes that sometimes work, that we can build on.  That's all this Challenge is.

I'm so sorry you're struggling Polly.  I know what that feels like - I had countless shots at giving up smoking, and the booze thing was a nightmare for me for well over 10 years.  With both of those addictions I never gave up giving up and in the end something worked.  That something took a lot of finding, so what I'm suggesting here is that you tailor what you think you can manage to yourself, rather than trying to fit yourself into my solution.  

The way I get through on tough days is simply to promise myself that I can have that thing later or tomorrow, just not yet.  That's what it's tough but cravings only last 20 minutes and knowing that is what got me through when they were at their strongest.

You can do this.  All we need to do is find a way that suits you.

Pollybear

Thank you for your very thoughtful comments HB.  I am going to reread them and think about it and hope to see a way.  I just wanted to reply now so you know I have read this and I'm not ignoring you.  Thank you.

Honey_Bear

How's everyone doing?  I had a fairly absetemious weekend, with about four shortbread biscuits on Saturday and two on Sunday, but that was it.  It crossed my mind that there are some people who say that Sundays don't count for Lent, but I'm not one of them so although I was mildly tempted by the idea of chocolate, I resisted.

Tuesday last week was an stupidly indulgent day so I'm amazed that six full days on I'm on track and not even seriously considering whether this is do-able or no.  It's a strange thing about giving up anything - smoking, which I absolutely loved, drinking, which I really enjoyed until I didn't enjoy the after-effects and couldn't actually live with them any more, and now it seems after 18 months of trying - sugar, but more particularly chocolate are losing their grip over me it seems.

It will re-assert it self at some point in the not too distant future but for the meantime, I'm making the most of this break in my sugar and chocolate habits.  It's such a relief. 

Honey_Bear

How's everyone getting on this week?

For me, so far so good.  It's Wednesday and nothing other than fruit or those date bars has been scoffed, so I'm doing okay.  I must say I really am surprised I got through the weekend without chocolate.  I don't think I've managed that for ... ooooh, it must be about 20 years.  Rather chuffed.  Let's see how I get on with the rest of Lent.

cookie02

Honey_Bear said:

I'm now the size of a double-decker bus.  

Hello everyone, 

I'm just catching up after two weeks of craziness.  I hope those of you that were ill are feeling better now.  Honey_Bear, your comment reflects exactly how I feel right now.  For the last two weeks, we have had chaos at work.  Lots of re-orgs - some positive, some not, but all quite stressful and compounded by not necessarily being desired by many of the people being moved around.  I was fortunate not to be one of them but did 'inherit' extra work and that completely threw me off track, not just sugar-wise but even with my food spreadsheet which now has a huge gap for the first time in a couple of years.  

I don't remember exactly what I ate but, as an example, I had three cans of fizzy drink yesterday, all in the space of about four hours.  This was on top of chocolate muffins.  I have definitely reverted to old behaviours.  I don't remember the last time I had a fizzy drink with that 'craving' mindset (I have had them occasionally but just as the non-alcoholic choice, if I've been out and the place didn't have eg non-alcoholic beer).  

I'm not beating myself up about it but I am frustrated that I have lost a couple of weeks of my food tracking as it has been enormously helpful for me to see everything I eat in one place.  I've always known that work stress was one of my biggest triggers so I'm trying to take a positive view and just be grateful that it has been so long since I've been in an environment where this was an issue (and it used to be a daily one for years!).  I'm also grateful as I know things will calm down, plus - workload aside- I know I'm one of the lucky ones. 

Sugar-wise, I'm just going to eat what I eat from now until Sunday night and just aim for low-sugar today as I don't think no-sugar is likely.  From Monday onwards, I'm going to aim to be back to no-sugar days.  I never understood when people said sugar consumption could make them feel sluggish but that is the perfect word for how I feel (although I'm also very tired from late nights and early mornings, so I'm sure that's part of it).  This isn't intended as a moan - I feel very lucky, I just really missed this thread and coming on and catching-up with the posts this morning has been a big help to get me re-motivated again.  Thank you, everyone, and thank you, Honey_Bear, for checking in on us and for this thread.  I hope your week is going better food-wise.  Pollybear, stick with it - small steps (and blips) are normal but if you think about it, all of us are doing better than before and that's what counts.  

Have a great day  .

Honey_Bear

Oh Cookie you poor thing!  I realised you'd been awol for a bit and when that's happened before it's always been around work issues, but that sounds like a fortnight from hell.  I'm so sorry it's been a tough couple of weeks and that you're surrounded by people who are unhappy with the new arrangements and you've inherited more work.  I can remember how unsettling that was when I was in the world of work and I can tell you, from a retirement perspective - I don't miss it one bit.  I really feel for you.  I'm glad the situation has bottomed out now but I imagine the ripples will still be around for a while.  I hope you can see a lot of calm water ahead.

As for cans of pop and eating muffins - you used all of that as a coping mechanism and it worked.  It's bad enough experiencing that much disruption and uncertainty, but trying to cope without our comfort mechanisms and strategies that work is not necessarily a good thing.  Honestly, if you got through it unscathed because you reverted to old behaviours, I'd say you did really well.  You knew what you were doing and you weren't eating and drinking mindlessly, and now the raging storm has passed you can sit back and relax a bit.  It's a bummer about the lost data but you know you ate a load of carp and sometimes that's as much data as you need.  Over the long term it won't actually make a lot of difference and you have so much more knowledge than you did before.  You used to think it was work stress that drove those habits you want to break, now you know it's work stress.  There's a significant difference between those states of being and paying for it with a few extra ounces on one's middle is the price we have to pay for things sometimes. 

Onwards and upwards.

It'll be interesting to see if you can slowly morph back into being closer to sugarfree, knowing that the excessive consumption was caused by a stressful situation that has theoretically passed, or whether it's like a post-Christmas thing that needed gentle repriming.  I'm rather relieved you're easing yourself back in, and don't have an All Or Nothing approach which is often doomed to failure becaus eit's actually a very extreme change in behaviour, and they're never a good idea if we're aiming for small successes and victories, which is what we're trying out here.

Good luck with it.

For my own part it's been surprisingly straightforward to do the chocolate-free Lent thing, although I've found myself trying to work out if I can legitimately convince myself that tiramasu is chocolate-free - it isn't.  It's not a huge amount but it is one of the essential ingredients in every recipe.  Hey ho.  In L!dl yesterday I treated myself to some biscuits that aren't chocolatey, and they'll be my weekend treat, although if I'm really honest with myself, I'd be a lot better off if I just accepted a sugar-free Lent would be the wisest course of action.  Maybe next year.  I need to be realistic about things or I'll be setting myself up for failure.

In other news, our lovely dog is with us no more.  It was clear on Tuesday that she was just so tired that it was fairer to do the right thing.  Because I adopt older dogs, although this one was five when we took her on so it's all been very disappointing nursing her through her cancer within four years, and I've become quite practiced at end of life care for dogs which I'd much rather not have had to learn.  Her departure was the smoothiest, easiest and happiest possible for her and I'm so, so thankful to the wonderful vet practice for that.  We did a lot of crying, but not with her because she didn't need that.  I said I wouldn't get another one straight away which is unusual for me, but I also said we would if we found the perfect dog, and within a couple of hours, very surprisingly, we had.  (I can't help myself - I have to know if there are any dogs out there that would be a perfect match, because they're rare.)  I applied, was accepted immediately, homechecked that afternoon (remotely) and were due to pick her up tomorrow.  Unfortunately when they came to spay her they discovered she was still lactating, so that's delayed the whole process.  I'm to ring them next Tuesday.  I've ordered an inflatable collar of shame and some calming pheromones and am getting used to little Layla not being with us, but despite that I haven't indulged in my usual chocolate coping mechanism. 

I find it quite strange that sometimes I can resist chocolate completely and other times I can't.  There is a kind of pattern to it - the more I eat, and / or the more frequently I eat it - the harder it is to resist.  That much I know is true of me, but it appears stress is not a trigger for me, although I quite like it as an excuse and I think I may have over-used it quite a lot in the past.  I've kept up eating protein three times a day and I think it's that that's made the difference.  Fortunately I enjoy cottage cheese for breakfast, and that starts the day well, and when I get the sugar munchies dried fruit seems to be doing the trick now.  L!dl do a kind of fruit leather thing that I discovered this week and boy are they sweet!

I'm still the size of a London bus.  *meh*

~FlowerPot~

morning.... skulks in .....

been awol from this little corner of the forum, life has been crazy sressful and still not 100% from dredgul lurgy.

eating has been so bad, i'm embarassed. To the point my mouth ulcers and tongue are really very sore. So i have to do something.

yesterday i had to drive DS to sheffield uni a nice 400 mile round trip!!! and today is a recovery, quiet day. But because we were busy i had a v good day re sugar.

pain au rasin for breakfast (i know this contains a sged load of sugar)

cheese salad sanwich

burge king chicken bun thing with chips and a bout a third of the fanta

grapes

and that was that, didnt open the rich teas or the twix or the mini eggs that were in the car next to me

it actually much easier when my mouth is really sore!!!!

now today i need to remove those items so im not tempted.

im also going to try and increase my activity levels as i know im not doing enough. because im so tired, but actually doing a bit more might make me less tired!!!!

anyway thank guys for the checks in, it is appreciated

flowers

x

p.s. the uni visit was good, but DS2 has decided on manchester !!

bath uni next saturday for DS1 who is pretty certain they want to go there!

Honey_Bear

No-one's been posting much over the last few weeks Flower, and it sounds as though you've had your mind on other things.  I'm sorry you've got mouth ulcers and are still coping with the virus's after effects.  Feeling permanently under the weather is wearing, so I hope you feel a lot better soon.  If the mouth ulcers stop you eating carp then at least they're serving a purpose.

I'm struggling to remember to exercise too; this week I've been really bad about it.  I've had to stop doing the running on the spot and bunny jumps because the running was a bit too much for my ankle at this stage but at some point I appear to have also forgotten to do all the rest of them, which mainly involve stretching in various different ways.  It's not a hard programme; I just need to get round to doing it and jumping back on the exercise bike.  With any luck our new-to-us dog will arrive this week so we'll be starting her walks off gently, which will help.

So far so good this weekend on the sugar front.  I had jam on a croissant yesterday for breakfast, a couple of biscuits at tea time and that was it yesterday.  Jam this morning on toast, and not much planned for later, but I think there may be a biscuit or two.  It's just easier not being allowed chocolate at all for me - I was tempted last night and passed on the idea because 1) it's Lent, and 2) I'd have to confess on here.  Without both I would probably have allowed myself just one ... or two ... or three ....

Once again, thank you to everyone who contributes because it makes all the difference to me.