not eat any sweets for a month

It got hard again towards the end, as I began thinking about allowing some sweets back into my diet. Having an absolute restriction like this is much easier for me than making 100 decisions a day about whether or not to eat this or that sweet.

I’d say the hard part of transforming my relationship with sugar has just begun. See my Truly enjoy every bite of the sweets I consume goal, which will soon be reactivated, for further progress in this area.

at Dad’s birthday last night. I had to purse my lips and back away.

Granted, she didn’t know about my pledge to avoid sugar. I suppose people can’t help me if I don’t tell them.

But Halloween has been harder than I thought it would be.

Still, I am perservering.

Perhaps I could reactivate my goal truly savor every bite of the sweets I consume and make an entry describing in detail how delicious each one is. The requirement to report on my enjoyment would certainly short-circuit any mindless gobbling.

(Deni, you probably shouldn’t be on that team while you’re still avoiding sweets!)

I haven’t made an entry about this in a while because I have barely even thought about it. It doesn’t take long to get in the habit of avoiding sweets altogether. So I would say that I have already succeeded in my aim with this goal (which was to get back in the habit of saying no to sweets now and then). Calm down, Deni, that doesn’t mean I’m going to start eating sweets again right away. I am committed to do this until the end of the month. Doing this for another 2 weeks won’t be hard.

It’s enjoying sweets in moderation, after the month is over, that will be hard for me. (I don’t want to go the way Faduci did on this goal and end with a huge sugar binge!) But I guess enjoying sweets in moderation will be alot easier now that I have completed this goal. Before I went a month without sweets, saying no even once was starting to seem really hard.

I asked my sweetie for his opinion, and he said that if I wasn’t sure, I shouldn’t eat it. That seems right on to me. I mean, what will a month of not eating sweets mean, in the end, if I might have cheated? I don’t want a hollow victory, I want the real deal, big tickertape parade at the end of a month. So I didn’t have any.

(For the record, other items that seemed close to the line but not over it, and are allowed for me are: nut butters, jam/jelly, and pancakes with syrup. But if anyone wants to challenge me on any of those things, I will certainly consider ruling it out for the rest of the month. Though I don’t see pancakes in my immediate future either way.)

I just got an email about a big event going on at my company all next week—complete with free “continental breakfast” and entertainment every morning. Continental breakfast has meant donuts and coffee at every crappy hotel I’ve ever stayed in… let’s hope and pray that in this case it means a wide selection of fresh organic fruit and oatmeal or granola.

According to Prof. Brian Wansink’s research, people make over 200 food decisions a day — and are outwitted at every turn.

Read more at www.nytimes.com.

I am so glad not to be even considering eating that. Yuk! Last month I would have decided it didn’t look good, but had some anyway. Then I would have realized it didn’t taste good either, but eaten the rest of the piece anyway. Then I would have wondered if a different piece might taste better, perhaps one with more fruit or more frosting. After the second piece, I would have felt really disgusted with myself.

I consoled myself with the idea that after this month is over, when I again allow myself to eat sweets on rare special occasions, this might be the kind of thing I’d indulge in. And that thought made me feel good, because everything else I said no to so far has been something I felt glad not to be eating.