The 'Towards a Sugar-Free Future' Challenge

hazeldreams

Congrats Honey_Bear, pleased to hear your plaster is off and you're almost mobile again.

I'm so grateful for everyone's honesty too. This week has been pretty awful on many levels so I've been reaching for my 2 trusted crutches; alcohol and chocolate. So to add to the pain of the week I've had a huge dollop of guilt and self loathing on the side. I know the feeling will pass, I know that I'm human, I know that I do place huge expectation on myself (and others sometimes) and I know I can get back on track. It's just right now, my head is so full and I can't find any peace!

I've booked myself onto a 'sound bath' tonight, which I'm really looking forward to. Hoping this will help me 'reset' my priorities and find some calm. Over the moon that my daughter has agreed to come with me too.

I'm not going to pledge a sugar free day today, I'm not sure heaping extra pressure on myself today with everything else I've got going on is going to help. I am going to pledge to put myself first, do one thing at a time mindfully and enjoy my sound bath with my daughter.

Have a great day everyone.

Hazel x

Honey_Bear

Hazel Dreams I have no idea what a sound bath is and I'd love to know!  Either way it sounds like a great thing to do if you're feeling stressed and after an awful week you thoroughly deserve a treat.  I hope you enjoy/enjoyed it and it does/did you the world of good.

Please don't beat yourself up for caving when things are overwhelming.  We all do it, it's a very human trait and it won't help matters; it will, in fact, make them worse.  Sometimes we need help, albeit not good for us help but immediate help, to just be able to keep going.  I used to drink, I didn't like myself when I did towards the end, but beating myself up about it didn't change anything for the better.  Sugar isn't going to give you the same overload of guilt but it also doesn't immediately unwind you so indulging in both, comfort eating and instant destresser, is perfectly understandable.  The way forward that might be more productive is to accept that sometimes we all over-indulge, we can acknowledge that, recognise whether or not we had any control over outside events that caused you to stress out, forgive yourself for being human and move on.  We all know these things aren't the best for us in the long term but honestly unless you pass out on the street because you're so drunk, or are so overweight you can no longer stand up, I don't think weakening when things are just too much to cope with is the worst thing that a human being can do. 

As for me, I've indulged againbut kept things to a new style of minimum for me so I'm a bit chuffed.  Admittedly two chocolate biscuits yesterday at tea time and then two salted caramels chocolates after dinner, but no more than that.  I should, of course, not have any any of that but while I'm getting this ankle back to being fully functional I have to admit to experiencing quite a bit of pain and sometimes I need a little something more than painkillers to keep me going.  Belovéd has been looking after me rather better than I look after myself - as soon I could I weighed myself and I've lost 700g!  Today I leapt hobbled on to my exercise bike and managed the equivalent of 3000 paces, worrked up a sweat, increased my heart rate, and my foot loved it - all pink and warm afterwards - which blew my mind.  The joy of it is that it didn't hurt at all, so while it won't increase my ankle's flexibility which is what hurts, it will make me feel a lot better overall and deal with the muscle wastage in my right leg.  So, I shouldn't have indulged yesterday but I did and today I exercised for the first time in eight weeks. 

Tonight I had a m@gnum with dinner and it was lovely.

hazeldreams

Thanks for the kind words Honey_Bear and great news re the 3000 paces! 

Honey_Bear

Thanks Hazel.  I've done another 3,000 today and my foot loved it again!  I celebrated with chocolate, it being Saturday. 

Honey_Bear

How's everyone doing?

My weekend wasn't bad.  I finished the final third of the plain chocolate bar, so that was about 66g, I had a packet of chewits (basically pure sugar but one of my many weaknesses, totally addictive junk which shouldn't be in the house but is nonetheless because I've got the resistance of watery custard) and a couple of m@gnums.  Or maybe three, one each day.  In fact that's probably far more likely but I can't remember. Overall, compared to past weekends it wasn't bad at all and compared to my consumption prior to this Challenge it's amazingly little!

I have, however, continued with that single chocolate biscuit at tea time and at some point I'm going to have to knock that on the head but, please, not just yet.  I'm still confined by my ankle although I'm progressing far faster than I thought possible.  I was told I could weight bear on the right foot but the first time I tried the exercise of transferring all my weight from my good left foot to my right foot I was astonished by how painful it was in areas that should have been absolutely fine, namely in random places on the sole of my right foot.  It was a completely new pain in a completely new places which came as a horrible shock.  I haven't been practising that exercise as much as the others but I have noticed that every day it got a little less painful and today I took my first steps without the walking boot and that felt really amazing.  I won't be doing it very often but there is at long last light at the end of the tunnel at last.  The exercise bike is proving a real boon; I'm pretty sure it's that that's doing my legs all the good they need after eight weeks of not walking at all.  I'm going out tomorrow night to an arts cinema we go to and for the first time I'm going to be using the walking frame and the boot in the outside world, like, in front of people.  No-one cares, but I'll be a bit self-conscious about it, particularly if I have to bum shuffle down three steps in the lobby.  There's a lift, but really, the faff of getting it started etc etc.  I'm not sure I can be bothered, but I'll clank on and off it if that's what they really want.

hazeldreams

Hi!

AF going well again but the choc cravings are in overdrive. Trying not to worry about it too much. I need to get down to just one mini bar of choc a day before missing a day I think. I never know whether its best to just rip the plaster off and stop altogether or try and reduce slowly. Ripping the plaster off hasn't worked recently so I think I'll try the reduction plan.
Tomorrow and Thursday, I'll limit it to 2 mini bars and then see if i can do 2 days of one mini bar before a day off.

So glad to hear you're doing so well rebuilding the strength in your leg! Hope the arts cinema is good!

Hazel x

Pollybear

Hope everyone's OK.   So so here.  I haven't had actual chocolate but I did have a biscuit related incident a couple of days ago.  Just about over it now.....onwards and upwards.

hazeldreams

Hi! Well done on resisting the chocolate @Pollybear

I'm still struggling, but now I'm feeling physically unwell from it. I think I may have hit rock bottom, which is not such a bad thing for me. Sometimes, its the kick up the bum that I need. 

Today is a new day. I'm sat here with my herbal tea (the tea is appropriately named "fresh start") to cleanse my poor body and I'm waiting for the first bit of light to take the dog on a walk. A very long walk.

Today my plan is to take one hour at a time. And then when that hour is done. Plan the next.

Have a lovely weekend all.

Hazel x

Honey_Bear

Hi Hazel Dreams, I hope you're feeling a lot better today, and that the dog walk was the appropriate medicine.  I'm missing walking ours not only from an exercise point of view but because I always feel better during and afterwards, but despite that I often found myself putting off actually getting out there.  Well done on the AF front, which of the two bad habits, booze and sugar, is definitely the one that made the most improvement to the quality of my life, but that one gets easier the longer you can go without.  I'm not finding that with sugar - every day the battle has to be fought, whereas I'm not even tempted to go back to drinking.  However, cutting down on sugar works, whereas for me it didn't with booze.  I think each person has to find what works best for them and trying all of the approaches out one by one is always worthwhile.

Polly Bear, I've been chortling over your 'biscuit incident' ever since I read that!  I've had a fair few of those in my time, particularly when I bake a batch of ginger Twinks, or when I've acquired a box of Cad***s chocolate fingers - I no longer buy them because, well, Cad***s, but I absolutely loved them.  I totally get how a biscuit incident can happen to the best of us, and I hope you thoroughly enjoyed it while it lasted.   Just look at the number of days you went without chocolate - how amazing is that!

Are you okay @cookie02 ?  I know you get weeks where you're really busy with work and I haven't been posting which means you may not have been getting links to the Thread but your contributions are missed. 

As for me, I've been remiss in not posting, so I'm sorry about that, but I've been as good as I can manage.  Belovéd has been delivering my afternoon cup of tea with a chocolate biscuit and I've been scoffing them and wanting more but just about resisting asking for a top up, so to speak.  I was given a large box of m@1tezers by a good friend last weekend and I didn't even think of opening it.  I'm saving it for Christmas, and I'm amazed I've been able to stick to that.

Discovering I hadn't put on any weight while not getting any exercise was amazing but over the past week, while I've been hobbling about and I've noticed I get hungry much more easily.  I hope that's a good sign.  The physio told me to eat plenty of fat and protein to help build my bone strength back up in the bone as it mends which goes on for months apparently, so my cheese consumption has gone through the roof.  No regrets ... yet.  I haven't weighed myself for the past week!

We had a good friend in for supper last night at very short notice so Belovéd stretched what we had planned to eat - the strawberries were lovely, we finished the clotted cream that had been hanging around for a couple of weeks and I didn't have any sugar on mine, and even forgot to offer her some!  I forwent my Friday m@gnum too!

Honey_Bear

Slightly concerned not to have heard anything from the lovely @cookie02 - I hope all is well.

The weekend wasn't at all overe-indulgent for once, which I didn't even realise until Sunday evening!  That's a first and I'm absolutely delighted by it.  Normally I look forward to the weekend because I know I can release my inner chocolate ferret, but this weekend - I forgot about it completely.  There could be a miriad of reasons but the fact that I started walking again, properly, to good effect, is probably the one that carries the most weight.  I was so happy about it that I think I forgot about everything else!  I took the walking thing a bit easier on Saturday because my ankle hurt which didn't surprise me at all, but having committed to doing something on Saturday evening I went ahead with it and definitely overdid it, which has resulted in a lot of pain, swelling and no more walking since.  My only fear is that I might have done some damage but I doubt it, I think it was probably just doing too much too soon.  The swelling has finally gone down and the lesson has been learned.  Fortunately the exercise bike isn't part of the problem so I can carry on with that but I need to be a bit more cautious about the amount of walking I do.  It's hard to know what I can and can't do, and it seems the only way I can find out is to push myself until it hurts in an unpleasant way at each stage.  There's acceptable pain from the exercises and worrying pain from doing too much it seems. 

On the chocolate front, I am still scoffing a chocolate biscuit with tea at 4.00pm, and two on the weekends, but I haven't raided the chocolate tin for days and the only time I even think about it is around 4.00pm nowm so something really positive has happened since I started this Challenge.  Yay!

How's everyone else doing?