Sugar-free update; so far, not too bad.

Counting today, I have nine days left to go in Sugar-Free February.

So far, it hasn't been as bad as I feared, although there have been some setbacks.

First, I tried so, so, so, so, so, so hard to resist the cupcakes I made for Clair's birthday. But in the end, I decided to take one bite to see if the cake part was moist (it was!) and that one bite sent me down the evil sugar spiral. I devoured the entire cupcake.

And then, the next day was President's Day, so Lester and I had the day off. After spending a few hours getting some work done in my office, I went on an afternoon date with my husband! We went to a movie ("American Hustle" -- very good acting!) and then grabbed a late lunch of tacos and margaritas.

Four or five long, satisfying sips into my margarita, I realized: OH SNAP! Margaritas have SUGAR! And lots of it! I might or might not have cursed a good bit and then I promptly gave the rest to Lester, but dang! The damage was done. I got home and had a massive sugar crash. I had to lie down for 20 minutes until it passed.

The sneaky sugar-laden culprit!

The fact that it only took a few sips of a syrupy-sweet margarita to send me crashing is actually somewhat good news. It usually takes way more sugar and carbs than that, because of my high tolerance for sweet things, earned over many, many years of indulging my sweet tooth.
So I think it means that that amount of sugar was a real shock to my system, giving me room to assume that I've done a pretty good job ridding my body of the toxin in the first place!

I wish I could say I could physically feel the difference from all this careful attention to my added-sugar consumption, but I still have children waking me up at night (Clair's been sick; Cary had a bad dream) so I'm still tired in the morning. I don't think I've lost a pound (my friend Jeanne says she GAINED 2 lbs. since starting this challenge. What the hail?) and I still have to actively fight the urge for something sweet afer I eat meals.

But fight I do, and aside from those two transgressions, I have not given in! Not a Valentine's Day chocolate was consumed, or even a post-lunch Hershey's Kiss. So I might not physically feel different, yet, but I do feel emotionally better about myself. I feel like I'm starting, ever-so-slowly, to take control of my sugar habit, my body and my health. And that makes me feel like a winner!

Sugar pressure!

I just started the effort to rid my diet of added sugars (for at least the month of February) and I was careful not to begin until I'd surrounded myself with a support system -- friends and co-workers who are doing this right along with me and are there to offer encouragement, advice, good reading material or a swift kick in the butt.

So imagine how blindsided I was to feel sugar pressure coming from an unexpected group of tiny little plan-thwarters: My kids!

Yesterday at dinner, I asked the boys what was their favorite part of their school snack (I do this sometimes to assess what items to skip or what to buy more of). After sorta answering my question, Dean grins and says, "Juice!"

"Silly!" I said, "You know you don't get juice." (We send a thermos of water for them for snack.)

To which Cary says, "Mommy, all the kids at school have juice. Except us. We only have water."

"All the kids?" I asked.

And Dean says, "Yes. All of them. Except us."

You hear the daggers entering my heart, right? "Except us..."

Here's how I heard that: "Except us poor, left-out, weirdo kids whose parents clearly hate them and only send them to school with water -- FROM THE TAP!"

I would be less than truthful if I said I didn't feel a little twinge. I always thought I would feel good about our healthful food choices, especially since we have resolved not to be sooo completely crazy about every little thing they put in their bodies. We're not crazy health nuts; we're moderates! Heck, we even introduced them to Five Guys a couple weekends ago! (Mmmmm. Five Guys...)

My poor boys want juice and we make them drink the liquid of life instead! We're horrible!

And for a super-quick second, I honestly thought, "I don't want them to be outcasts. Maybe I can give them juice boxes twice a week or on Fridays or something."

But then I thought about Sugar Free February, and how much incredible effort it takes for me to get through every day without eating something sweet or not great for me. And I thought about the lifetime of unhealthful choices I've made that have contributed to this addiction I have -- because that's what it is, an addiction. I have a sweet tooth, no doubt, and that's genetic. But I have fed and stroked and catered to that sweet tooth so much, I've become a slave to it.

My sweet tooth is my master and it is literally killing me. My yearly hemoglobin A1C reports tell me so in big bold numbers. Each report calls me pre-diabetic and says, "Do something differently or you will. die." (In so many words...)

I want to break the yoke that sugar has around my neck. Why would I ever start the process of putting that same yoke around my children's?

That's why I won't succumb to the sugar pressure -- for myself or for them. An occasional treat is OK, like I said, we're not fanatical about it. But daily juice just gets their taste buds in the habit for something sweet with all meals. If I indulge that sweet tooth, juice becomes soda becomes Big Gulps becomes must.have.chocolate.cake. (Mmmm. Chocolate cake.)

As long as I'm in charge of what goes in their snack bags, they will drink water.  And so will I.

The 70s had it right when it comes to peanut butter. But maybe not coffee.

Do you guys remember that coffee commercial from the 70s when a woman is miffed that her husband has a second cup of someone else's coffee, but not hers? "That's funny," she thinks. "Jim (or Bill or Bob or something 70s like that) never has a second cup at home."

Maybe it was Folger's? Let's just say it was.

Well, I had my own Folger's coffee moment yesterday.

Michelle, giving me a recap of her day with the kids: "Oh, I shared some of my peanut butter with them today. They loved it."

Me: "Really? All of them? They always say they don't like peanut butter. Especially Dean."

Michelle: "No, they all loved it."

Me: "Dean, you always tell me you don't like peanut butter."

Dean: "No. I just don't like the peanut butter YOU buy."

This is the moment, folks, where I decided once and for all that children will not die if there's a little bit of yummy stuff added to some of the things they eat. And I'm not a terrible parent if their lips touch sugar sometimes.

And so goodbye ultra-bitter, gritty, oily, made-in-the-woods by free-ranging squirrels peanut butter we usually buy. Hello what Michelle gave them that they actually liked: good old-fashioned Jif.

We'll buy the "natural" Jif, just to make Lester and me feel better, though. Otherwise we'll be judged right out of our Trader Joe's and Whole Foods, organic-everything loving circles.

(I joke. But only a little.)