Posts Tagged ‘sugar withdrawal’
Craving Again
It has been about two months since I watched the movie, “Fed Up,” and decided to do something about the amount of sugar I was ingesting every day. I decided to work on reducing the sugar I was consuming by focusing on nutrition labels and paying attention to serving size and the amount of sugar in each serving. By simply doing that for a little over a week, I noticed a physical reaction and experienced some surprisingly intense withdrawal symptoms.
I think the dramatic physical response helped to bolster my motivation to stay vigilant about seeing this through to a point of achieving a lasting break in the pattern of consuming an unhealthy amount of sugar.
It isn’t easy.
Just when I was beginning to feel as though I was satisfied with the new routine I have established, I discovered a significant resurgence of cravings.
It’s not the first time I’ve been through this. Several times in the past, I have made attempts at not eating sweets. One thing that always happened was a robust urge to eat breads. Even though I recognized that I was exchanging sugar for more complex carbohydrates, I didn’t tend to restrict that urge. I figured the struggle to avoid sugar was hard enough. I didn’t want to take on two things at once.
Well, it wasn’t two things, really. It’s all part of the same issue I’m facing. My blood tests repeatedly revealed my glucose levels to be pre-diabetic. This time, I am working on a more thorough, and a more informed, change in diet. After only a few weeks, I began to notice a reduction in body fat.
I suppose it didn’t hurt that I went on a bicycling trip for a week, and then sweated through the process of putting up over 250 bales of hay.
I also noticed an increasing level of satisfaction from my reduced portion sizes. By regularly making healthy, low-sugar choices, I was discovering a new appreciation for not-so-sweet alternatives. It was refreshing and felt very rewarding. It gave me hope for the possibility of my satisfaction being met by a healthy, balanced menu.
But it wasn’t a cut and dried sure thing. There is a bit of a gray area. There are high and low tides. My diet isn’t rock solid, by any means, and the sweetness I am getting swings above and below the optimum. More than once I have caught myself feeling precariously hypoglycemic.
Then there are the days when the cravings rise up. They can be insidious and particularly tenacious. If I ignore them, they don’t generally go away. I need to work the program. I allow myself some modest treats. There is a slippery slope there, though, and I am cognizant of past experiences where I have succumbed and chose to give up altogether.
I feel like the difference for me this time is that I am better informed. Between my new understanding and the experience I’ve gained in the past, I believe I have the tools and inspiration to endure my cravings and thrive on a healthy diet for much longer than ever before. I hope it’s for the rest of my life.
I need to keep thinking big picture. What I ultimately crave, after all, is optimal health!
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Tangled Web
We survived yesterday’s day-long precipitation without receiving any torrential downpours! The ground is soaking wet, but we avoided any further washouts, I’m very happy to report.
I spent yesterday trying to finalize my preparations for the Tour of Minnesota bike trip. I will leave this afternoon for the drive to the initial camping spot before tomorrow morning’s departure on the first day of cycling. I’m hoping for much better weather than we endured last year.
I found the exercise of packing to be almost beyond my mental capacity. It seems a bit extreme to me, but I seriously believe I am continuing to suffer rather significant symptoms of withdrawal due to my quest to stop over-eating foods laden with sugar. I did some reading on the subject, and opinions seem universal about the individuality of responses to reducing or eliminating sugar from a person’s diet.
I hate to imagine that my very noticeable symptoms are a reflection of how much excess sugar was in my diet prior to this effort to pay attention. I have had headaches and dizziness, but my primary complaint, which was making me particularly uncomfortable yesterday, is flu-like symptoms of aches and pain, lethargy, and weakness. I just want to lay down and sleep. I feel crappy. If I thought I had the flu, I would just stay in bed.
Meanwhile, I am preparing to embark on a week of bicycling. What am I thinking!?
My thinking was pretty foggy all day, and packing became a random series of wandering around collecting things and then setting them any variety of places. Nothing actually got packed. In the early afternoon, I succumbed to the overwhelming urge to lay down and napped for over an hour.
Today, if the grass dries enough, I would like to do some last-minute mowing before departing. I hope to use the early morning hours to finally put things in my bag and be ready to jump into afternoon traffic after one last shower in the privacy of my own home.
I think I have participated in this week of biking and camping so many times that my frame of reference during preparations has shifted significantly from the excitement and anticipation of what lies ahead, to lamenting the last night of sleeping in my bed, using our private bathroom and showering alone for the next week.
Granted, those issues are some of what contribute to the charm and camaraderie of this event, which is what draws us all back, year after year, but the inconveniences seem to become amplified after so many years of doing it.
I plan to drown any sorrows in sugar during the week, as I anticipate “cheating” on my diet a fair amount, to calm my symptoms and provide necessary fuel for the confused furnace of my body. I just hope it doesn’t mean my withdrawal symptoms have to happen all over again when I get back and resume my measured daily intake.
It’s a tangled web I am weaving.
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Flowing Along
If the weather predictions for today come true, we may literally be flowing along by the end of the day. Reminiscent of a year ago, when the Tour of Minnesota bike trip faced epic amounts of rain and flooding, today Wintervale Ranch is included in a flash flood watch. Remnants of what was Pacific Hurricane Blanca will be bringing us torrential rainfall with potential flooding this afternoon and overnight.
Cyndie and I ventured out last evening to contemplate our preparedness, and it became apparent there is little we can do but let mother nature have her way and react to whatever aftermath we face. I don’t have any idea yet about how we might mitigate the erosion that is happening on the hill around the barn. Heavy rain today will likely expand on the current ruts created by the last two significant rain events.
After walking the back pasture last night and surveying the drainage swale again, I felt inclined to just leave it be as is and see if flowing water will carve a path through the sediment that has accumulated in order to reach the ditch at our property border. It won’t look like the precise, wide slope of a swale that I had in mind, but I can adapt my vision.
Delilah received some quality attention in the form of a thorough brushing, which has become a daily occurrence lately in attempt to rid her of the underlying fur left over from winter. Wednesday was an exceptionally hot and humid day for this time of year and she appeared to struggle with keeping herself comfortable.
My exercise in throttling back my daily sugar consumption continues to leave me feeling tired and lacking in stamina. It has me wondering about the intense weight loss regimens that drive participants to do heavy workouts while also making strict diet corrections. I don’t think I could do both at the same time. I know the physical abilities of my former self, and right now I can’t achieve a fraction of what I use to do when I was eating unconscious amounts of sugar.
So, lacking any other strong motivation, I am settling in with a frame of mind to just go with the flow. What will be, will be.
Let it rain.
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Sugar Withdrawal
Despite how I felt yesterday morning, when my body seemed to be reacting as if I were withdrawing from an addiction or something, today I feel somewhat renewed. I’m doing really well.
In a classic sense of relativity, breaking a sugar addiction is both really hard and rather simple. It comes down to how you choose to frame it. Seriously, yesterday I had a spell where I felt like things were out of control and my legs were ridiculously weak as I trudged up to the house from turning compost, because I was exhausted and felt like I should get some water. I have a history of tremors, but what I next experienced was more like the shakes of withdrawal.
It startled me. I had decided not to try a cold turkey detox from sugar. I simply reduced my intake to something closer to the recommended daily amount. I am primarily reducing portion sizes to serving suggestions, which is a dramatic way to discover how much excess I have been consuming on a regular basis.
My body’s reaction was as if I was completely withholding the key to its survival. I have noticed a couple of periods of ravenous cravings. They don’t come to me as a need for something sweet. It is trickier than that. I simply get a compelling urge to eat something. It’s as if my body knows that it doesn’t need to force me to eat candy or other treats to get sugar, which I would recognize right away as not the healthiest choice. Maybe I would just grab a convenient (processed) granola bar or make a couple slices of toast.
Results: Sugar!
My body would get what it was after. It is a complicated relationship between my brain and the cells of my body. Logically, I understand that I shouldn’t consume too much sugar, but physiologically, the brain responds to the ever-increasing input and becomes programmed in the insidious relationship with the cells to keep up the supply and demand.
So, what? Now I have to outsmart my own brain? It doesn’t seem right. Who is in charge here, anyway?
I guess that I (unwittingly) taught myself how to be addicted, so now I have to teach the brain and cells how to get back to where we once belonged. You know the tune.
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Relative Something 