I am a sugar addict

Welcome to my madness....

After much reflection I have come to the conclusion that I am indeed a sugar addict. It's my crutch against all that ails me. It props me up and drags me down every single day of my life and I am as helpless against my cravings as any heroin addict. I have to get my fix every single day or I come undone. This is not a flattering picture that is emerging from my self examinations. My tolerance for my obesity is coming to a crisis point as I am now 50 years old and to wait any longer to finally confront my disease is sheer folly.

Sugar (and starch/carbohydrates) is deeply mood altering for me. A nice big dose of sugar lulls me into a delicious stupor and gives me a soothing high, a welcome relief from the stress of my everyday life. Cravings for sugar and carbs run my life. Guilty food pleasures are squirreled away, tucked into corners of the kitchen, slipped next to the bedside and stashed by my computer and TV. The cabinet over the stove I refer to the contraband cabinet as it holds my supply of chips and crackers.

My disease started when I was eight years old during a case of scarlet fever. I went into bed a thin hyper-active child and came out four weeks later, bloated and consumed with food. None of my clothes fit anymore and I could no longer sit on my knees at my desk at school because my legs were too fat. I remember being very confused about it at the time, but in typical child fashion I just got used to it. Pretty soon I had a gigantic stomach and looked like an egg on stilts. Puberty thinned me out for awhile, but by the time I graduated from college, I was having some real trouble controlling my weight. Now it's been 30 years of yo-yo dieting and I'm at an absolute impasse. Nothing has worked. Sugar controls me and I hate it...

So, life is a wacky trip....

An old friend of mine came to visit 2 days ago and ALL my bad habits reared up their ugly heads in her honor! I drank, I ate bad, BAD food like baked artichoke dip with crackers, I drank, I had a burrito with rice, I drank, (did I mention that I DRANK), I had dessert and then I drank again. I went home and collapsed into my bed and had a rotten night's sleep (which I deserved) and got up and had more artichoke dip (but didn't drink) and then my unsuspecting friend went home.

She knows about the diet, but I have a LONG history of eating and drinking with her and I didn't stray from the well beaten path there. Next time, and I'm sure there will be a next time, I'll get the food right anyway. No more artichoke dip with crackers and burritos.

I didn't even think about getting on the scale. I'm gonna be good for a few days more before I take a peek at the damage...

Old habits die HARD.... if they die at all, little buggers....

The new plan...

So, I've been wondering to myself what the heck I'm going to do about this whole coffee dilemma, and decided that I need to wean myself off the gigantic venti peppermint mocha latte I've been getting every morning at Starbucks. I love them, but I checked on the nutritional info and discovered that it contains a whopping 500 calories, 10 grams of fat, 81 grams of carbohydrate, and 17 grams of protein! Yikes, no wonder it tastes so good!

That 81 grams of carbohydrate alone is twice the amount of carb I'm supposed to be consuming every day. It's a wonder I lost any weight at all. Plus it's just a huge drain on my pocketbook. OK, so now I'm going back to making my own coffee at home with stevia and a little sugar and cream until I can cut it all back to nothing. Wish me luck, 'cause I'm gonna need it.

A setback....

So I picked up my sister, nephew and her husband at the airport in Orlando and to treat me they took me to Moon Fish, a local sushi place that has a ROCKIN' happy hour! I had a couple drinks and that set me off on a week long binge on sugar. Sigh... and of course, I'm still on coffee. So the weight hasn't budged from the 16 pounds I have lost total, so it wasn't a complete failure, but I'm disappointed in myself just the same.

I'm going to HAVE to break myself from my Starbucks habit and I'm going to have to do it soon. I tried last week and I was OK until about 6:30 pm when I found myself in the kitchen making a vodka cranberry. I have SUCH a sugar problem, it really astounds me! I don't even want to think how much sugar is in a Venti Peppermint Mocha Latte! It can't be good....

My sister recommends a lot of enemas, but I tell you, I just don't want to....

More later....

A Small Chrismas Miracle

Sometimes things just work out in my favor without a huge effort on my part. I've been cruising along on the Swartzbein diet without too much thought and stalled out at a 9 pound weight loss. I spent too many days getting up on the scale only to be bitterly disappointed, so I quit looking for awhile.

I finally decided to get back on the scale the other day (I usually avoid the scale like the plague as it has only ever meant bad news) and, lo and behold, I have lost 15 pounds now. To say that I was surprised is a total understatement. So the Swartzbein Principle has been working steadily away. Of course, I finally gave up alcohol as she suggested (that happened about 2 weeks ago). That was a big step for me as I love me a glass of vino with my dinner. But, hey, losing 15 pounds is a nice substitute.

I'm still going on and off of coffee though. Gad, but that one is kicking me to the curb. I know it's got to go.....

Bad Habits

It is most unwelcome to realize that at some point bad habits simply must be sacrificed upon the altar of good health. I am decidedly and unhappily at that point. I'm sure you're thinking that my bad habits must be really awful, but they are of the most garden variety and I cling to them as a drowning man does a lifeboat. What little badness I have is far worse for me than for most and yet I hate to give up my few pleasures, since they are so few indeed. To what do I refer, you impatiently ask? Coffee and alcohol.

Coffee has gone away already, as I ground that habit to a screeching halt when I learned that caffeine spikes the insulin and therefore ruins an entire day of eating. Forget it. My struggles with it in the past buried under my indignation of how ruinous it is to me.

Ah, but alcohol is another story altogether. It spikes the insulin as well, but I have made little headway into eradicating that nasty bit from my daily fare. I get a far bigger jolt of fun from it than coffee and just don't want to give it up yet. I KNOW I must. I resist....... sigh.......

Yet more scale madness...

In the last few months, I've really just been drifting along, wondering what I'm going to do about this whole weight issue and then I found a couple books written by a doctor that I bought almost a decade ago and never really read carefully. So, determined to not give completely up, and deciding that I had nothing to lose except my excess weight, I gave them a try.

The books in question are The Schwartzbein Principle and The Schwartzbein Principle cookbook written by Daina Schwarzbein, M.D. and Nancy Deville. What I like about these books is the Ms. Schwarzbein gives you a thorough explanation of the biochemistry of how your metabolism works and explains why you need to eat the diet she is proposing. It all made a great deal of sense to me and so a few weeks ago I started on the diet.

The first week was lovely as weight just dropped off me, a total of 7 pounds. The last 2 weeks have not proved to give me any more weight loss, although I do feel a bit better than I did before and I'm sleeping rather well, which is always a problem for me. I enjoy the food on the diet as well, as it's not a restrictive or fussy as so many other diets I have tried. In her defense, Ms. Schwarzbein does say that the body needs to heal and won't lose weight until it is ready to do so, and so I'm trying to hold my faith in that while the scale mocks me with the same number day after day. At least it's not going up.....

Her web site has a test you can take to tell you what sort of testing you might want to get to see the state of your health. I just took it and ended up needing the most expensive/extensive one at $495.00, which I cannot afford to purchase. I'm quite certain that I could use some good professional advice here, but poverty has it's limits. I'll have to mull this over while I continue with her program the best I can.

She also has a few helpful items for download on her site including a food, mood and exercise diary, a one year Menstrual Cycle Calender, and a blood sugar diary. I'm printing out the food diary right now! Since my memory can be a little dicey this should prove a welcome addition to help solve my problems.

I just ordered her latest book as well, The Program, which may help me design a more comprehensive diet regime. We shall see...