The Natural Diet

It's okay to celebrate with food, but I don't think it's as healthy to reward or comfort with food.

That's my deep thought of the day. I watched "FedUp" last week and, being the take-action type of person I am, I decided to stop eating sugar. Completely. Well, with the exception of going out to eat because I'm not going to ask what is in every single dish and I eat out about once a week anyhow. When I go out to eat, I still try to make conscientious choices, for example having a savoury breakfast rather than waffles or pancakes.

I'm very curious to see whether it will make a significant difference in my overall weight, abdominal weight, and mental clarity. It's just been 11 days and in all honesty, I haven't noticed anything different. I'm committed to try it for a month, though. Learning about how sugar is in everything (and believe me, once you start reading labels, it is!) and how sugar affects insulin resistance, made me very interested in taking back the control that sugar seems to have taken over my life.

Well, let me rephrase something I said earlier, though. I think I am experiencing fewer cravings and my sense of sweet is heightened. For example, I had applesauce on my bread this evening and it tasted rather sweet to me even though it was unsweetened. The natural sweetness was enough to satisfy my need for a different taste than savoury.

My biggest challenge in all of this is finding substitutes. First, because I'm not eating sugar or anything with sugar, the natural replacement is fat. Ie. if I don't have jam on my bread, I'll eat peanut butter and margarine, probably not the best idea. Then I'm a bit frustrated because I'm a big bread eater and I'm tired of eating sandwiches with tahini and vegenaise. I want variety! I'm a sanguine! I think I'll have to just get creative and make bean dips and fruit sauces. If I experiment a little til I find what I like, it should get easier. I think what's so funny is that I'm getting frustrated because a handful of foods are being taken away, when in reality I have a huge variety of fruits, nuts, grains, and vegetables to choose from!

My go-to right meals that are keeping me from going crazy right now are breakfast bars with dried apricots, dates, applesauce, trail mix, and unsweetened soymilk all mixed up and baked in the oven, and quinoa salad. Quinoa is probably high in calories and I'm still trying to get my emotional satiety buttons to recognize that when I have a bowl of quinoa salad, that is a meal and not a starter! But I mix up a huge bowl of that and it lasts me throughout the week. Another fun way to eat quinoa is with chickpeas, sweet corn, and green salsa.

The reason for this post, other than that I realized it's been far too long yet again between posts, is that I stepped on the scales this morning and it was not a good day. I resolved that I need to do something conscientiously and intentional to make a difference in that number, so I'm going to do so. I have a lot of excuses, I'm busy with work and studies, could be due to metabolism, etc. ad nauseum. But I think a lot of times we create our own destiny by the words we speak and we can speak truth or we can speak falsehood. I want to learn how to speak more truth so my actions will follow.