Sugar Detox - Days 13-14

Yesterday we had McDonald's salad for lunch and leftover taco salad for dinner.  That taco salad is AMAZING.  The addition of corn really helps make up for not having a tortilla/tortilla chips, and the yogurt is great.  The homemade taco seasoning is fine - I don't notice much of a difference.  And I am still loving the ground turkey.

I had a great idea about making a sweet potato/egg/etc. hash for breakfast this morning to change things up, but we didn't have any sweet potatoes.  We ended up putting ham in the eggs instead of spinach, which was a nice change. 

Last night, we sat down to make a menu for next week, but it was just too hard.  On week 3, you add grains such as barley, quinoa, and oatmeal, more fruit such as grapes and clementines, and 1 oz of dark chocolate per day.  For some reason I had it in my mind that we would be able to add an additional serving of dairy per day, but that is not in there.  :(  Our biggest problem with menu planning, is that we don't normally eat barley, quinoa, or oatmeal.  In order to incorporate them into our diet, we would have to look up and try new recipes, which is so much work.  And so often the recipes include things we can't eat yet, like other fruits.  Also, I wanted to make sure the store that I order my groceries from had those things before putting in all the work to find and choose recipes.  I was able to find them, plus a semi-prepared quinoa and vegetable dish to try.  As I was ordering groceries, it was getting later and later and Cameron kept falling asleep, so we ended up not making a menu for next week yet.  We did, however choose what to eat for today.  Because I hadn't ordered groceries or even gotten our new staples from the store near us, our choices were pretty limited.  We were too tired to go grocery shopping and didn't want to go today either, because it is our Sabbath day.  So we had to scrounge around to figure out what to eat.  We didn't have lettuce, avocado, steak, or sweet potatoes.  We ended up deciding to order delivery Subway salads for lunch, and I took my breakfast hash idea for dinner.  I made ground turkey w/ sausage seasoning, egg, carrots, corn, and spinach.  It was actually pretty good.  We also had berries for dessert, which are growing on me, but the frozen one we bought are pretty tart.  I ordered some fresh berries, which will come tomorrow.

We decided to keep things simple by just eating the same thing tomorrow (Day 15) as we did today, even though it starts a new week.  Although, I did buy a dark chocolate bar, so I will definitely add that tomorrow.  I bought it today on my way from from my run in the park, and I wanted it so bad while I was waiting for our salads to come, but I just drank more water.  (I had cashews, coffee, and an apple before my run.)  My run today was the worst I've had.  It was just so stinkin' hot.  And my calves were aching the whole time.  I did week 8 day 1 today, but I'm planning to just skip to week 8 day 3 and do it early Thursday morning.  It's supposed to be over 100 F starting Thursday, and someone told us they measure the temperature north of the city in the forest.  So it's way way hotter here in the concrete jungle.  Thank goodness the park I run in has a lot of trees and shade.  I'm waiting until Thursday, because I want to give myself and extra day of rest for my calf muscles.  We're leaving on vacation next Monday, so that's why I'm skipping week 8 day 2 - I'm just really stressed with packing, etc.

So maybe we'll make a menu for the week, or maybe we'll just wing it.  I looked up some recipes this evening and saved them.  It's just really annoying, because I feel like I've done this already.  When we first moved here, I looked at recipes, tried them out, saved the good ones, altered them to my liking, etc. - I even made my own recipe book.  Then with minimalism, I narrowed my menu down to our 5 favorite meals and just a couple of places to eat out.  It was so great.  And now, I feel like I'm starting all over from the beginning.  It's a lot of work, and it's really annoying.  But maybe, if we put in the work now, we will eventually get to that great minimalist menu again with our new diet.

Sugar Detox - Days 10-12

Adding new meat has been a major help with boredom.  It is still a bit annoying that it takes longer to prepare our meals, but we're getting used to it.  I'm finding that my appetite is starting to shrink, as I think I'm eating for hunger instead of for sugar cravings.

On Thursday (Day 10), I ate my first sweet potato since starting the detox.  It was INCREDIBLE.  It tasted like candy.  Before the detox, I would've put butter & salt on it, but it was great with just salt.  Also, I decided to "bake" it in the microwave instead of making fries in the over, because, not only was it faster and easier, it was also incredibly hot in our non-air-conditioned kitchen.  We ended up having green beans (with salt & garlic but no butter) as our other side, just for something different, and they tasted really good to me, too.  I actually only ate half of my chicken, because I just didn't want anymore chicken.  I used a homemade ranch seasoning on the chicken.  I expected to get hungry quickly, but I was ok.  It also felt really good to have an easier prep meal.

Thursday evening I got a salad from Subway with ham.  I took it "to go" as I went to visit a friend.  I ended up getting on the wrong metro train and then having a hard time finding the Uber that I requested (poorly placed pin).  It took me 1 1/2 hours total travel time to get to my friend's apartment.  Before the detox, I would've been panicked because I didn't have any snacks with me AND I didn't have any cash to buy a snack.  But I was surprisingly ok waiting until I got there to eat dinner.  The ham was SO GOOD.  I used to always double my meat, but I took a gamble and just got the regular serving.  Also, it helps that Subway has avocado.  I was expecting to need a snack of cashews to compliment the salad, but I found that the salad was enough food.  I did eat a few cashews & almonds when I got home from visiting a friend, but the salad filled me much longer than it used to.

Friday (Day 11) I met a friend for lunch at Subway.  In case you're wondering, I ate Subway about this frequently before the sugar detox, too.  But I also used to get a hamburger meal frequently at McDonald's, and the McDonald's salad doesn't have avocado.  Anyway, the worker forgot to ask me if I wanted cheese.  I decided not to make a big deal about it and just ask for parmesan.  It ended up not really being enough food.  I was still hungry after eating.  I had a bag of cashews in my purse with like 5 cashews left in it.  I was a bit panicked, because I had a doctor's appointment and not enough time to buy a snack.  I was hungry, but not weak/lightheaded like I used to feel if I didn't eat enough.  I was actually ok to wait all the way until I got home from the doctor without feeling like I was going to pass out.  This affirms my theory that it was a blood sugar spike and crash that was my problem.  If my blood sugar doesn't spike, it also doesn't crash.  This is really relieving to not be constantly worried if I have a snack with me at all times.  I can actually make it without one.

For dinner on Friday, we made the same sweet potato and green beans, but changed to a steak.  This time I was able to give Cameron a good medium-rare like he likes, so I didn't overcook it.  Unfortunately, the steak was still tough.  It had a really good flavor, but it was hard to chew.  I don't know if we are going to try to keep buying steak, since both times it has been tough.  I really don't feel like searching other grocery stores to try to find good steak.  I'm sure it's possible, but I don't know if it's worth it for us right now.  Also, the fruit tea was really good, even without sugar.

Today (Day 12), I ran at 12:30PM.  It was really really hot.  I ate some cashews and drank coffee and water before my run.  I felt like adding an apple would be too much, but I stuck it in my fanny pack just in case I felt like I needed it.  During and even after my run, I still didn't feel like I needed the apple.  Just water was enough.  When we got home, Cameron asked if I would like to have just an avocado & tomato salad for lunch.  I really didn't think that would be enough food, but it was really hot, and I figured I could always get a snack later if I got hungry.  About an hour later, I ate a small amount of cashews and one slice of ham, but that is still a smaller portion for lunch than I would've served myself before the detox.

By far the greatest part of having meat other than chicken is GROUND TURKEY.  We used to get it all the time, but the grocery store we use for delivery doesn't have it.  They also don't have shredded cheddar cheese, so Cameron went to the other big store to get several of both to keep in our freezer.  We had been just ordering the ground beef/pork mix, which is pretty fatty, then we would drain the grease as best as we could.  It was incredible cooking the ground turkey today to see that there was basically no grease.  Then it was incredible again the texture of eating ground meat instead of grilled.  I chose yogurt instead of cheese (I could only have one serving of dairy since I used my other serving to put milk in my coffee), and it was SO GOOD.  Also, last time we had taco salad, we didn't have any corn, so that also made it really good. 

So my main takeaways from the past few days are: loving new meats (deli ham and ground turkey), and realizing that I don't need as much food as I used to eat.

Sugar Detox - Days 8-9

I am so sick of eating chicken salads.  I feel like we just eat the same thing over and over again.  Maybe it's because for two days in a row we've eaten it for lunch and dinner.  The different spices were not enough.  It's annoying to have to grill the chicken and cut all the vegetables day in and day out.  And yesterday when I went to the small store near us, they had only two avocados, so we have to have half each in our salad, which was annoying. 

I was reading the article again, and I can't find where she made a big deal about it being lean meat.  Maybe I'm just tired and I'm overlooking it, but I think we are going to branch out into other meats, regardless.  We have some unopened deli ham in the fridge that says it has no sugar.  We used to buy ground turkey at a different store, so Cameron may go get some in the next few days.

This is the chicken taco salad I ate for lunch yesterday.  The homemade taco seasoning was pretty good, but it would've been so much better (different from our usual salad) with ground meat.  Also, I really missed sour cream.  I normally would have cheese and sour cream on my taco, but I only had one dairy for this meal, so I chose the cheddar cheese.  I bought some plain yogurt last night, so I will try it instead of the cheese whenever we eat the leftover taco chicken. 

This is a picture from my dinner out last night.  I ordered grilled chicken breast and a salad with lettuce, tomato, and cucumber.  It was functional with the diet, but so so boring.  The only redeeming value is that the tomatoes were really good.  I put oil, vinegar, and salt on the salad, and I even tried putting oil and salt on the chicken to add flavor.  It was very unsatisfying.  However, for "dessert" I had cranberry and mint tea, which was surprisingly good with no added sugar or honey.  After I got home, I ate some mixed nuts I picked up at the store, because dinner had no healthy fats.

Today for lunch we had the same Italian chicken salad.  However, it was really hot today, and we both ran in the park.  Cameron was mentioning that it was annoying that he couldn't drink Gatorade, so I had the idea to put apple slices in the salad, which was good and I think helped us recuperate from the heat.

The original plan was to have the taco salad for dinner, but it didn't happen.  I was running late for Bible study, so I got a salad from Subway.  It is really good to feel like I can order what I need to eat from Subway.  I got grilled chicken and they have avocado, so that was good.  Instead of sauce, I asked for oil, salt, and oregano.  It was pretty much exactly what we've been eating at home.  Maybe in the future, we can order Subway salads for delivery when we are in a hurry/tired/just don't feel like cooking.  We've been feeling really frustrated at not having any easy options, so it's nice to feel like we finally have one.  Cameron had asked me to pick him up a Subway salad on my way home, but it started raining really hard all the sudden, so I took a taxi and he ate an egg & cheese omelette.

So at this point, we're just feeling bored.  We may revisit our menu for the week to add some different meats.  But I am super excited about eating sweet potatoes tomorrow!

Sugar Detox - Day 7

One week down, three to go.

I was thinking that some people might find it boring that we eat the same thing for breakfast every day, but we've always eaten the same thing for breakfast every day.  Now it's just a slightly different thing.  We used to eat scrambled eggs with bacon bits and bread with cream cheese (me)/peanut butter (Cameron).  Now we eat scrambled eggs with spinach and tomato slices.  Although we did sometimes eat pancakes on Mondays, so maybe we can try to figure out how to mix it up a little once a week with our new diet.  It's very comforting to know our routine, though.  Usually around 6AM, Sara starts moving around in bed and says, "Hey" with a big smile on her face.  We get up and I feed her while Cameron showers.  Then we all head into the kitchen and Sara and I "help" Cameron fix breakfast, i.e. we sit in a chair while he does everything.  Sara has gone from loving to touch the crinkly bread bag to loving to touch the crinkly frozen spinach bag, so not much has changed in her world.

Today Cameron told me it looked like I was running faster than usual.  I ate my apple right before my run, and I think I'm going to make that a habit.  It was good to get a little boost before my run.  I might skip it on the days I don't run, though.  We'll see.

For lunch we had leftover soup from yesterday, but I forgot to take a picture of it again, so no picture.

For dinner we had STEAK!!!  Unfortunately, it wasn't as good as it could've been, because I overcooked it with our new George Foreman grill.  It's been a long time since I've used one, and I forgot how fast they are.  But it was still really nice to have something other than chicken.  Maybe one of these days I'll get up the courage/make the time to ask a butcher to make me some lean ground beef, but who knows when that will happen.

We made our menu for week 2!  On week 2 we can add berries, another serving of dairy (making 2 servings per day), and starchy vegetables, such as sweet potatoes, squash, and corn.  The first few days we will have to make due with what we have, since I didn't order groceries yet, but we tried to make it work.  We probably could've been a little more creative, but we are also working with some meals where we will be out of the house.

Here's the menu:
Tues. June 20
Breakfast: (same)
Lunch: Taco salad w/ chicken, lettuce, tomato, avocado, corn, black beans, homemade taco seasoning
Dinner: Cam: our normal lunch salad w/ buffalo sauce instead of Italian, Jess: out

Wed. June 21
Breakfast: (same)
Lunch: Cam: Buffalo salad, Jess: Italian salad
Dinner: Leftover taco salad, berries for dessert, fruit tea to drink

Thurs. June 22
Breakfast: (same)
Lunch: Grilled chicken, sweet potato fries (baked), avocado & tomato salad
Dinner: Cam: Buffalo salad, Jess: McDonald's salad + avocado at a friend's

Fri. June 23
Breakfast: (same)
Snack: carrot sticks and hummus
Lunch: Cam: Buffalo salad, Jess: Italian salad
Dinner: (same as lunch from Thurs.), berries for dessert, fruit tea to drink

Sat. June 24
Breakfast: (same)
Snack: carrot sticks and hummus
Lunch: salad w/ Chinese spices - ginger, sesame oil, soy sauce
Dinner: Steak, baked sweet potato, avocado & tomato salad, berries for dessert, fruit tea to drink

Sun. June 25
Breakfast: (same)
Lunch: McDonald's salad + avocado
Dinner: (same as Sat.)

Mon. June 26 (same as Sat.)

Sugar Detox - Day 6

Psychologically, today was the hardest for me.  I really wanted sweets.  I even had a dream that I had one drink of my sweet tea, and it was so wonderful, then my alarm went off.  Obviously, I woke up disappointed.

There is this sweet lady at church who brings cake every week, and I always have a piece of it (along with everyone else).  But I resisted.  I didn't stay in the entryway (where all the snacks are) talking before church.  I walked on into the sanctuary.  I had my cashews and water bottle in my purse.  I was ready.  I even was able to eat some cashews towards the beginning of the service.  Then during the sermon I had to go out in the entryway with baby Sara...usually I grab a piece of cake or a pretzel or a cookie or something while I'm out there, but today I couldn't.  And I had to watch other kids getting cookies and snacks.  But I resisted.

On the way home from church, we decided to get salads from McDonald's drive-thru for lunch.  I picked out the croutons (and peppers) from both salads and picked out the cheese from mine.  I added a whole avocado to both salads.  As I suspected, the vinaigrette dressing that I love has sugar in it.  So, I put our usual oil and Italian seasoning on the salad.  It was pretty good.  And it was less work than making the whole thing from scratch.  I think if we were ever in a pinch, I wouldn't feel too bad about eating a salad from McDonald.'s, even with the vinaigrette dressing.  I just felt incredibly unsatisfied and wanted sweets more and more.  But I resisted.  I just ate a bunch of cashews a little while later as a snack.

I also was feeling really stressed this afternoon while I was working on our finances.  It really bothers me how behind I am, and I realized a few things that I had missed and was really beating myself up about it.  Naturally, I really wanted some chocolate.  I had started working on the finances after lunch, thinking that it would distract me from wanting sweets, but instead I saw receipt after receipt from McDonald's, Subway, milkshakes, spaghetti carbonara, etc., and that made me feel worse.  But I resisted. 

I also had an apple as a late afternoon snack, and I have the same problem I've always had with apples - I get hungry again really quickly.  Maybe it is better as a dessert.  I don't know.  So I ate more cashews again as we were putting Sara to bed.

I'm really starting to think that I maybe I am one of the 10% of Americans that the article says are addicted to sugar.  I eat sugar and I feel good, then I crash and feel like my blood sugar is low, so I eat more sugar, and the cycle continues.  My dad is diabetic, so it could run in the family.  I've always felt I was a bit hypoglycemic because of how I get extremely weak if I don't eat.   So far I've felt pretty good without sugar (except for the first day).  Maybe this change will really help me.

For dinner we made the soup we had originally planned for lunch.  I have my groceries delivered, and they only brought one steak instead of two like I had ordered (they were big and I was planning to eat half of a steak per day), so we will just split the one steak tomorrow for dinner.  The soup was actually much better than I thought it would be.  I had no idea how to season it without using some kind of a base, so I just kind of threw some spices in (salt, garlic, oregano, and parsley).  For the crackers, I didn't know what would be a "high fiber cracker", but we had some saltine-like crackers that had fiber and no sugar, so we just ate those.  I googled what would be a serving, and it is only 5 crackers!  I almost put them all in my soup, then I remembered that we would probably have a second bowl of soup and saved three of them for the second bowl.  It was really good.  I think the addition of the crackers helped as well, even if it wasn't as many as I would've normally used.

Here it is now, the end of the day, and I'm feeling pretty good.  I'm proud of myself for not giving into the temptation to eat sweets out of habit or as a coping mechanism for stress.

Sugar Detox - Day 5

Today I ran for 22 minutes straight.  While I was running, I was thinking about how I could possibly be embarking on a huge, transformational, possibly even inspirational, life change.  At first I was thinking I could be at a crossroads, but that implies just one big decision.  This is more like an interstate highway.  I'm moving.  I can't stop and stay on the highway - if you stop, you have to get off an exit.  I keep passing exits, like Dairy Queen, McDonalds, "I'm too tired", "This is too hard".  I have to continually choose whether I want to stay on the highway to better health or get off an exit.  Sometimes I feel like it is inevitable that I will be even more overweight as I get older, especially if I end up having more kids, but I'm realizing that I can choose my own destiny.  I can be at a healthy weight, have more energy, be active - if I want to.  I can also give up at any point.  It's my choice.  For today, I choose to keep moving.

Sugar Detox - Days 3-4

Highlight of my day: MILK in my coffee!!!  It was AMAZING!  My original plan was to keep drinking black coffee and have cheese in my salad, but since I was going to a coffee shop with a friend this morning, I decided to splurge on a latte.  It was incredible.  Before the sugar detox, I would've put a packet of sugar in a latte, but it was SO GOOD to me with just the coffee and milk.  Since I can have one cup of milk per day, I've decided to spread it out to my usual three cups of coffee throughout the day for the rest of the week.  I really do not like black coffee, but I think I might be able to live with just milk in my coffee and no sugar.  The guy at the coffee shop said the latte had a shot of espresso and 200 ml of milk, so I put 50 ml of milk in my coffee this afternoon.  It wasn't as good as the latte (which was almost all milk), but it was a definite improvement.  I'm hoping that 1/3 cup of milk in my coffee will be perfect for me.

So, we had the same breakfast (which is tasting better and better and getting more filling each day) and almost the same lunch.  The only change to our lunch salad is that we added grated carrots and Cameron also added shredded cheese.  It was interesting how I didn't necessarily taste the carrots, but the salad overall tasted much better to me with them.  It really did taste sweeter. 

For dinner we made a stir-fry, which was pretty good.  It had chicken, broccoli, carrots, peas, sesame oil, soy sauce, and ginger.  It was surprising how good it tasted without added sugar.  Normally when we would make Chinese, we would include noodles/rice, teriyaki sauce (lots of sugar), and honey.  I could still taste that it wasn't super sweet, but it was really good.  It was funny that I had been looking forward to my first fruit, but after I ate dinner I was feeling full.  I decided to eat the apple anyway, but it wasn't as good as I had anticipated.  I think maybe tomorrow we will try having the apple as an afternoon snack instead.  It does get a little old eating only cashews for our snack.  I'm also thinking about getting some hummus, since we can eat it with carrot sticks now.  I've also considered making my own peanut butter to eat with carrot sticks, but we'll see.

Overall on day 4, I'm feeling pretty good.  I am looking forward to adding more dairy and fruit options.


Day 3

I was too tired last night to update the blog, but it wasn't too different from days 1 & 2.  The main difference is that I ran with my C25K plan for the first time since starting the sugar detox.  I was worried that I may feel lightheaded, so I even kept a granola bar in my fanny pack, but I was fine.  It was about as difficult as it usually is for me to run, so I thought that was pretty good.  I did eat a few more cashews at my next snack after the run, because I was feeling more hungry, but it wasn't overpowering.