I know, I know… Long time no blog. Whatever. This year I’m doing a series of one-month long resolutions. A year is too long. It’s so much easier restricting yourself for a few weeks at a time, no? Well, we’ll see. Here’s my wrap-up of month #1.
Resolution for January: No sugar, no alcohol.
I wasn’t terribly concerned about my health or diet, but this seemed like a fairly good way to start the year: no sugar for a month. I’m actually a healthy eater in general, so I didn’t expect this to be too difficult. Plus I don’t drink very much at all, so cutting out alcohol would also be easy, and help round out whatever vague detox effect I was hoping for. Yeah.. what was I hoping for, actually? Really there wasn’t all that much thought behind this resolution except that it was something I could stand doing for a month, and could only have healthy benefits, no?
So what did I mean by “no sugar?” Well, I adhered to one basic hard-fast rule: if I read the packaging and found sugar in the list of ingredients, then no dice. This included everything like high fructose corn syrup (of course), or that annoying euphemism “evaporated cane juice.” I still ate fruits and plenty of other carbs like bread.
The first half of the month was no problem. I admit there were a couple of very minor mistakes. I had a yogurt preassembled with fruit and later discovered it contained the aforementioned cane juice derivative. I ate a couple bites of naan bread before realizing it contained candied cherries. And at one party thought I poured myself a cup of plain bubbly water – at least that’s what the bottle said – but once in my mouth noticed it was more than that – I read the label, noticed the evil HFCS and serruptitiously spat it out in the kitchen sink.
Otherwise, it was smooth sailing, though I was annoyed by how difficult it was to find food at any store (even at the hippy-organic megamarts) that didn’t contain added sugar. Like peanut butter. Almost all of them have sugar as an ingredient. What the fuck is that bullshit? Other than that it was shockingly trivial to carry on this way. There were zero cravings, despite what everybody thought as evidenced by their gushing sympathy in support of my dietary endeavor.
Then while discussing the current state of my health with Jenya I pointed out how lately I was really thirsty, and subsequently have to pee frequently. She warned that was symptomatic of diabetes. Hunh. That got me doing some paranoid research on-line.
The next day at work I was eating a Larabar, which only contains raw dried fruit and nuts. I had one earlier in the month, no problem. However this time upon ingesting it I immediately felt my pancreas going into fits. Uh oh.
What the hell was going on? Well, first off, it was clear that dried fruits were sort of a “cheat” and that simply looking at the list of ingredients for obvious culprits wasn’t enough – I had to look at the number of grams of “sugars” per serving. For example that Larabar had 18g, which is actually quite high to many processed foods where sugar was actively added. Sheesh. This would immediately cut my already limited menu way down.
So… even with the more restrictive diet I was having unpredictable metabolism issues. After nearly 40 years of regulating my own blood sugar levels with a constant intake of sweets, was it that my body was now unable to do it on its own? Diabetes does run in my family, but I never had any problems before, and hardly expected to trigger such symptoms so hard, so quickly.
Well, to be more scientific I had to rule out one more variable: caffeine. Yep, I have been drinking shitloads of coffee this whole time. So quite unceremoniously I stirred one more resolution into the mix: quitting caffeine cold turkey.
Ouch! The pain! I get really bad flu-like caffeine withdrawal symptoms, which is why I am loathe to start drinking coffee regularly, and then once I do I’m loathe to quit. I actually had to leave work after 3 hours one day as I was a useless conglomeration of flesh and headaches.
After days of torment I was back to normal again, and the diabetic symptoms abated. Phew. I rode out the rest of the month avoiding the consumption of anything close to suspect.
Now some final observations: I was definitely less hungry in general. Maybe this was due to being sick of the limited variety of snacks, but I also didn’t ever feel ravenous, even after not eating very much all day. So I lost a couple pounds. One odd thing is that I still felt the same “normal” amount of anxiety and stress, coupled with random bouts of insomnia, even after dropping caffeine as well. So on that front sugar and coffee don’t seem to be the problem.
Anyway… it’s not like I’m going to each a bunch of Snickers bars tomorrow. Yeah, the month is over, but I’m somewhat wary about introducing pre-2010 levels of sugar back into my diet. Efforts will continue to ensure my body is happy, but apparently I uncovered a sensitivity that I need to pay more attention to, and that’s fine.
So what’s up next? So I have had this nagging pain in my neck for several years, aggravated by constantly contorting myself until it noisily cracks (which brings temporary relief, but I know is causing more damage than not), and simply being too lazy to seek medical attention on the matter. Both will change: I’m quitting neck-cracking cold turkey (which may sound trivial, but I’ve tried this before and failed), and seeking as much help I can afford. Enough already with the pain. It’s driving me nuts!
