How my War on Sugar went This Week

Okay, so I declared a war on sugar for a week.  During the week, I would not have any sweets, sweetened cereal, desserts, sugary breads, etc.  I had not realized how much I had let creep back into my diet until I had to say “no” for an entire week.  Now, just what battles during this war did I have to fight?

(If you have an aversion to reading about really good sugary foods, please skip the list and jump to the bottom.)

• Wednesday:  a co-worker brought in Krispy Kreme.  Not the plain ol’ glazed ones, but the good ones like blueberry cake donuts, creme filled donuts, chocolate iced glazed donuts and chocolate iced creme filled donuts.  I was still in pissed-off mode towards sugar this morning.  I won.
• Thursday:  one of our VPs was having a birthday and his secretary went around the office with a platter of cheesecake bites:  plain, turtle and raspberry.  I respectfully declined.  I won.
• Friday:  after lunch, one of my team-mates went to the grocery store and brought back Klondike Heath ice-cream bars.  Not long after, one of the members of HR dropped off the leftover chocolate cake from a birthday celebration for one of their team.  It was getting harder to say no.  I still won.
• Saturday:  we go to church on Saturdays so I had to avoid the Louisiana crunch cake and sodas.  That was a breeze.  However, we were also meeting my wife’s family for dinner at El Fenix; so I avoided having soda (again) and margaritas (I was the only adult at the table that did not have a margarita and there was 9 adults) and didn’t order any dessert.  Then we closed the night at a comedy club where we had a 2 order minimum per person… I got two glasses of orange juice (it was the same price as bottled water, so I thought I’d splurge a little on the calories as I was the only one who had not).  I won again!
• Sunday: I thought my work week was the toughest time… that was nothing compared to today.  We had a brunch at my wife’s sister’s house at 11:30am.  I had to avoid syrups, jams and jellies (some homemade) and chose to use strawberry and peach purees instead on my buckwheat pancakes.  I also had to skip having chocolate milk.
  Then during the afternoon, we played board games while one of my wife’s other sisters passed around bowls of every kind of M&M currently made in large packages and several different cookies (including my dreaded Oreos) and a lots of sodas.
  Finally, this evening at a burgers and hot dogs get-together at my wife’s brother’s house, the previously mentioned candy-toting sister was serving up margaritas and wine as well as the aforementioned sodas, then topped off the evening with a large sheet cake (for it was the brother’s birthday as well), two gallons of ice cream, and the rest of the leftover cookies.
  I did fail to show some restraint (I got second helpings at brunch and dinner), but all of these challenges (the M&Ms was the worst as I’m sorely addicted to peanut butter ones) resulted in two words I proudly write:  I won.
• Monday: we had breakfast at home and one of the things we had received yesterday was a few jars of homemade jams (blueberry, raspberry and strawberry) sent by one of my wife’s nieces. Amy had some blueberry jam on her english muffin, so I took one tiny bite to get the flavor. Wow… it tasted like having blueberry pie. I had no more of it as it was just a sample and I wanted to stick to my promise.
  We met some of the family around noon for bowling and pizza. There were unlimited refills on the soda pitchers. I had water with two slices of pizza (one veggie and one cheese). We spent the rest of the day at home (I did a test run of a 5K to see how I would do) and enjoyed a light dinner.
  In spite of the taste I had this morning, I still declare: I won.
• Tuesday: actually, today was easy as there were no temptations and I had no cash for the snack machine. I won.

So, here I sit at the end of the War on Sugar eating a cup of Raspberry Sherbet as a celebration of this week. Not only a celebration of actually being able to do it, but for the results as well. What results? Why, the next post of course.