A few weeks ago Greg, a super stud with a super podcast, asked me if I would be interested in going sugar-free with him.
I felt like I'd just been asked to prom. Like, seriously. You know I love a good challenge. And I really love doing something healthy. It's always awesome to do these things with someone else- I didn't jump off the vegan cliff alone after all, I had Aurora jumping with me. And really, who needs sugar, right?
Our official start date was last Friday- we had burritos and beer for breakfast and set to making a list of things we were going to be changing in our eating habits. In addition to white sugar, we decided to rule out HFCS, super processed and nutritionally fucked up things like white flour, white rice, aspartame, plus all of those dirty-trickster things in health foods like "evaporated cane juice" and "organic sugar". I bought him a bottle of agave nectar as a kick off gift.
I've started this unknowingly while PMSsing, and I survived. I found a few (expensive) chocolate bar alternatives and have been rationing them out (meaning it lasted the WHOLE car ride home, thank you very much) and managed to make it through without any mint chip soy cream! Honestly that was my biggest worry when he brought up the whole sugar free thing.
White flour has been really tough- Greg and I have a short but rather compulsive history with burritos, eating them one meal after another- any meal not wrapped in a tortilla is a #burritofail, after all. So having to take the flour tortillas out of the equation has been a challenge. Buying bread has been a challenge. All of the whole wheat breads seems to have sugar except Daily Bread at Trader Joe's.
We're a week into it and it feels pretty good. It was really daunting at first, we wandered around Trader Joe's for ever trying to figure out what to make, got in line and realized we hadn't picked out anything for dinner that night. And then we got back to his place and realized we couldn't cook anyway because his gas stove wasn't working. So we ordered a vegan pizza, NOMNOMNOMmed the heck out of it and pushed the kick off to Saturday.
But that's okay. My favorite part of adapting to a new way of doing things is the learning curve. I almost cried when I saw that Tofutti Cream Cheese has sugar in it. I'm pretty sure Greg is still crying at this moment from learning that Sriracha is sugared up. I like going from messing up on accident here and there- or even not on accident, to suddenly knowing intrinsically what's okay to eat. I really love that moment when you realize that you're better off and not even craving whatever it is. I had that moment with Cheese in April after opening day of baseball and going off the wagon and cheese ODing. After all of those wonton poppers and cheese sticks and the tummy ache that ensued I haven't backslid since.
I'm excited about this, I'm pretty sure that sugar free is going to be a decision that's gonna stick. White flour still seems like a challenge instead of a change, but maybe in time that too will come.
I just really LAVA feeding my body the things it needs.
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