Sweets and Treats

I (Katelyn) decided to try to go the whole month of May without eating any dessert-type food.  I've really never jumped full fledge onto any dieting bandwagon, but I realized that my relationship with sweet food was more of an addiction than it should've been.  If there was ice cream in the freezer, I would visit multiple times a day until it was gone.  I NEEDED a taste of sweet after every meal, and upon getting home from work every day I would pillage the house for any kind of treat.  I really thought that I could enjoy sweets in moderation, but I realized that there was no moderating going on, so I wanted to get it out of my system and free myself from it's grasp. 

I have seen some people cutting out ALL processed sugars... friends, I will not do that anytime in the near future.  What constituted as a "sweet" in my preverbal book mean anything dessert-related, sweet pastries, soda (especially dark), and lattes.  

The first week was tough, but I honestly don't really remember what that struggle felt like.  I had begun eating a lot more fruit and vanilla soy milk, and while those things didn't fulfill my addictive cravings, I could convince myself that they were just as sweet. :)  The second week it wasn't as hard to say no, but I was craving naturally fatty food like nothing else.  Eggs and avocados are all I wanted.  Guacamole became our Friday treat, and it was heaven.  I'm sure that there's some kind of correlation here of the artificial sweets we eat and our body actually wanting natural fats, but I am not an expert on that and will not explore that here. 

My dear husband (who continued to eat sweets but was kind enough to tell me they were gross while he was eating... seriously, I needed that for a time) brought home maple bacon ice cream last night to celebrate the move and the end of my sweets-free month.  Holy moly, it was better than I had remembered it being.  Because I hadn't eaten ice cream in a month, it tasted SO sweet and rich.  Every bite was an experience, and for the first time in a while I didn't eat the whole bowl in 5 seconds.

And then, about an hour later, a gnarly headache set in... and I still have the remnants of it this morning.  Hello sugar hangover. 

In looking back over this month, instances of saying yes to food when I should have said no immediately come to mind.  But then I realized how many things I did say no to, and it's all worth it. 

I don't know where mine and sugar's relationship will go from this point.  I know that I never want it to return to what it was.  Grapefruit has officially become my go-to sweet and it doesn't kick me in the head or the stomach - it makes me want to get outside and move!

-K