I cut added sugar out of my diet yesterday, after stopping drinking coffee a week ago. It’s only been by cutting sugary food out completely that I’ve become aware of how much there is to eat at the office. There’s the inexhaustible supply of chocolate in the microkitchen. There’s the gorgeous little doughnuts served up at breakfast. There’s the birthday cakes. There’s the free ice cream (it’s a sign you’re jaded when you are annoyed that there’s only Haagen Daz in the freezer and nothing more exciting).
I’m in the early stage of adjustment, where I don’t miss sugar too much, because it’s only been a couple of days. Already, it seems to have borne some benefits: I’ve had a bad scalp for a year or so with spots all over it, and they seem to have cleared up. (Then again, that could be because my wife bit me so hard on Friday it scared the spots away. Correlation is not always causation.) Being absolute about not eating sugar makes it a bit easier to resist the siren call of chocolate every few hours – if I could have a little bit, I’d probably just eat a lot. And cutting out things with added sugar means I’ve also nipped my nascent addiction to salt and vinegar crisps in the bud. I’ve also had to stop eating plain crisps, because all of a sudden when I eat them it feels like all the moisture is sucked from my body and I’m just a walking salt lick. But that’s probably no bad thing.
I feel more clear headed at the moment. That might be for other reasons: my wife made me change the alarm clock on my phone to 7:30, and the extra half hour of sleep was good for all of us, and it didn’t make any difference to when I left with La Serpiente for school, or when I got to work. You have to rest at least as hard as you play. But I also haven’t suffered from that dreadful mid-afternoon dip where you just want to crawl under your desk and sleep, and the next best thing is to stuff yourself with confectionery and ride the rollercoaster of sugar up and down until teatime.
On the downside, it’s isolating not to be able to join in to communal celebrations, when they’re all centred around cake. Somenbody came round offering Krispy Kreme doughnuts today and I almost wept at the missed opportunity. Plus this is the stupidest month (aside from December) to abstain from sweet treats: no Easter eggs, no hot cross buns, no Easter eggs, no Easter eggs, …
I went for a run this evening, and felt very slow and devoid of energy. Not sluggish in that I’ve-run-too-much-recently way, just not having enough energy. I’m hoping that as I adjust to a healthier diet (or perhaps just a different diet) this will pass. First test of that will be at the track tomorrow.
In order to keep myself on the straight and narrow, I’m photographing everything I eat and putting it on Facebook in a (secret) album. Hopefully at the end of the month I can open it up to the world and everyone will see how healthy I’ve been, and how varied my diet has been because I’ve not been fixated on chocolate and coffee. Although today I had macaroni and cheese and French fries, in the same meal, so I can’t claim this is transforming my diet perfectly.