Tuesday, April 5

1 week in.

After such an excited start to my sugar detox I must admit that these last seven days have been all over the place and has been significantly harder to avoid sugar than I would have hoped. Future advice: starting any kind of change in a food diet should involve taking stock of your pantry before starting. Having been on spring break in Alabama and down in Argentina - in other words - not at my apartment in Chicago for most of the month of March, I was in dire need of a trip to the grocery store. While I began this detox with such excitement and resolve to be sugar free, I failed to anticipate that I had no food in the house, let alone detox friendly food, which was an incredibly discouraging way to start. Tuesday night ended with me eating several Gobstoppers I had sitting on my desk, great right?

Wednesday morning, I woke up determined to not let my Gobstopper guilt carry over into the new day. I managed to find some eggs in the fridge that I quickly made up for breakfast, took my coffee and water bottle and was out of the door. By the time lunch rolled around, I was unnecessarily hungry, which is not good. Our bodies need food regularly, this is supposed to be a detox, not a fast. Wednesday was the day I discovered hard boiled eggs and raw almonds. This was a feast. Dinner was heavy on the veggies, which was again - better than nothing.

Thursday and Friday were similar as far as having minimal variety in my diet and struggling to stay away from sugar. Sugar is in EVERYTHING!

The weekend was my biggest failure of this past week as far as sugar avoidance goes. I was an adult leader for a youth event with kids from my fieldwork church. The event was great and it filled my heart with such joy to see how my kids were processing their faith throughout the weekend and growing together as a group. From a sugar standpoint though - the weekend was a train wreck. In case you haven't  spent time staying up until midnight with any junior high kids recently - they LOVE sugar.
Breakfast options: Fruity Pebbles, Lucky Charms, Poptarts
Lunch Options: PB & J, cookies
Dinner: Pizza, more cookies 
Snacks: Peeps, cookies, cookies, donuts, candy (specifically M & Ms), and did I mention cookies?

I think that every student (we had 18) each came with at least a dozen chocolate chip cookies. Thank you supermoms!

Thankfully there was some fruit and believe it or not usually that was the one item that was not heavily consumed by the group. Had I thought ahead better (and had food in my apartment) I should have packed my own food items to eat. Since I did not, I had pizza and PB & J with the best of them. Also, if it is possible, I may have received secondhand sugar from merely being around all my junior high kids who might as well just bring bags of straight sugar and eat it with spoons next time. At least it would save their moms the time they spent cooking the sugar into the cookies.

Finally Sunday arrived, which meant grocery store day! I haven't been that excited to go to the store in a long time! List in hand, Adam and I spent the better part of Sunday afternoon at the store. I feel like I spent a lot of the trip in shock at how much sugar is in almost anything on the shelves. As I was reading through countless nutrition labels, I was so shocked at how if a product wasn't high in sugar - it was probably loaded with sodium, or calories, or fat, yikes. We wonder why our country is so unhealthy - how many people have read a nutrition label lately? If I was not already convinced that lowering sugar intake was important, this grocery store trip highly encouraged me. The negative aside, I was able to find some great food options to purchase. This included hummus and black olive pita chips for snacks and chicken and egg whites to make cooking meals healthier and sugar detox friendly. Also, I enjoyed picking out a bunch of fresh fruits and veggies, yes to recap - this was exciting to me!

Two hours later, a whole bunch of groceries, and a patient boyfriend still being patient - the grocery store adventure was completed!

I was so encouraged to think about the week ahead knowing that I had lots of healthy and low sugar/sugar free food to eat! I must be getting old to be this excited about healthy eating right? Yesterday for breakfast I started my day with half of a grapefruit and scrambled egg whites. It tasted great and felt even better knowing that what I had just eaten was for the benefit of my body.

Here is to a better, healthier week.

Overall mood update: I have felt more peaceful day-to-day and thought less along the lines of "the day is doomed to pull me under"

P.S. Lacey, thank you for the Eat to Live book recommendation - I ordered it and am waiting anxiously for its arrival. :)

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