not eat any sweets for a month

Last saturday was the last day of my sweets free month. And I prepared for that end. Started buying sweets some days before, set up a plate with as many sweets as it would hold in preparation of midnight and on the stroke of the clock had a lot of them. It took me about 23h to erase about 1kg/35oz of sweets from this planet.

So it is obvious that I have/had no intention to keep up my life without sweets. In facts I had considered this goal as not worthy for some time and the only reason why I did not stop with it was to avoid the question, if the not worth it was simply motivated by me wanting to have an excuse to start with sweets immediately.

Why do I believe that it was not worth it (at least for me)? Mainly because I felt a significant loss in my quality of life (checking the kitchen fifteen times only to be bored with everything you find is a bad sign) and the lack of positive feedback. Most of my other physical goals (run regularly, lose weight) had a positive result after some time, I actually felt better. Denying sweets did not have that effect, rather the opposite happened, it worsened my mood.

I consider controlling or limiting the amount of sweets a worthy goal, but will not go the cut-off trail again, the cost-benefit ratio is too bad.

Till a few days ago I compensated the lack of sweets with lots of diet pop. But I overdid it, so to save my stomach I had to quit (for the time being). This unfortunately removed my source of sweeteners, leaving me craving for more. And there is only so much fresh fruit I can eat, and it’s not that sweet.

What I found to compensate was dry food. An acceptable alternative, and even healthy. Especially dried dates, they taste like marzipan. Yummy!

Went shopping. When confronted with the sweets section, a very convincing and rhetorically trained demon started arguing in the back of my head:

All this can be yours, right here, right now. You just have to declare this goal failed, you already had all the delicious Penotti, wouldn’t you like some more? You can always start again, so why not have some of these?

Very convincing speech. But in the end the part of me that is afraid of caving in won, because once control is lost it is so hard to get it back. So I decided to ignore the Belgian slip, define bread spread as not sweets (just this time) and wait till the 8th October to finish the rest of the imported chocolate and enter into an orgy of christmas sweets. That last part will definitely happen.

I’m in the definition trap. I stayed away from any sweets from the 7th to the 19th of September, when I visited a friend, who lives in Liège/Belgium. Ignored the sweets departments, the vending machines even after leaving a conference completely starved after 10 hours of talks and discussions and workdays based completely a small breakfast.

But:
Belgium = chocolate = danger. Let me rephrase that:
Belgium = CHOCOLATE

You cannot leave Belgium without at least some of their chocolate and weird bread spreads, it would be immoral. In this case delicious Penotti praliné and some Galler chocolate.

Being on the one month drought, I stuffed the chocolate deep into my suitcase never to be seen again till October. Unfortunately my friend asked whether she might have some of the Penotti, which led to me trying some too and an empty bowl after a few minutes. Bad.

Then the discussion (with myself) started: Does sweet bread spread count as sweets? Especially if there is no bread involved at all? Intuitive approach would be: Honey no, jam no, Nutella yes, Penotti yes.

Two options:
1) ignore it, stay on course till October
2) claim failure, restart

If 2), then I’ll take a break first and eat all the chocolate brought from Belgium and some more. What I don’t want to do is go without for another month and have none now. 30 days is hard enough, 45 cruel. And no, I will not use the opportunity to stop eating sweets at all. While I consider eating no sweets for a month a worthwhile goal, I don’t think living without sweets is an acceptable lifestyle for me.

Went shopping, went through the sweets section, took nothing. But realized that christmas is only three month away and the supermarkets naturally already started selling all the great sweets of that season, especially everything based on marzipan and nougat. This is obviously a goal easier achieved in summer. But at least I didn’t start in early December, that would be pure torture.

I noticed this goal on 43things some weeks ago, but hesitated until now to adopt it. I’m really into sweets. In April 06 I stayed off sweets for at least some days due to my attempt to lose weight, but they reappeared shortly after. First in a very controlled way (one piece of chocolate a day), then less controlled and for some months now there is some controlled sweets shopping, but no control over not eating sweets as long as any are available.

So now no sweets till the 7th of October. First test will be in about 15min, because I will shop for something to eat before vanishing in the library for a couple of hours. And I have not eaten much today, but already ran 9km, so I wouldn’t mind some SUGAR!!!

And to avoid the redefinition trap: “Sweets” are anything I eat for fun. Chocolate, cookies, ice cream, cake, but also potato chips and other snacks. Eating is the keyword, so if it can be drunk, it does not count as sweets (tea with sugar, yoghurt etc.) I feed my caffein addiction with Diet Coke and Pepsi Max, they don’t count either for lack of sugar. A month without caffein would make a month without sweets look like a walk in the park, so not yet.