Day 1.
First day, as expected, I feel hyper motivated and am not missing anything. Even though my team was not really cooperative in this sense and bought an extra package of mini Snickers, I feel determined.
Instead I bought bananas, grapes and apples. These fruits are actually also very sweet, but, first, it is good sugar and if I eat one banana and a bunch of grapes during the day, I am sure to have my sugar intake lower than 25 g.
Result: 1 banana, 100g grapes. I feel good, the first day after a long time, I had no sweets. Easy!
Day 2.
Second day, It’s getting harder. I feel like fruit sugar is not quite the same as sugar in sweets, well, I am sure you know what I mean. On my way to work I catch myself starring at the bakery shops. I am passing by. I must admit, today the look of Snickers on table does not leave me as unemotional as yesterday. But I manage to keep my fingers away from them. Sugar is everywhere. And is if it was not already difficult enough to abandon all the desserts, it is so much more than that. We had an indian curry, very sweet. But my sugar hunger is on the rise and I eat banana immediately afterwards.
I have my first very simple and important learning:
Out of sight – out of mind. It works better than I ever thought.
While we are having a team meeting a bowl of sweets is in the middle of the table. And I am continuously keep starring at it. It is more than simple to grab something. But since my dear team is not really supportive, believing I can not really abandon sweets, I find my inner strength to prove they’re wrong. Haha 🙂 I take those Snickers and put them behind the vase so that I cannot see them. And it works immediately, as if my brain forgets about their existence. Nice one!
Result: 1 banana, sweet curry and lot’s of thoughts spent with snickers and Co.
Day 3.
Third day. Already in the morning I feel tensed. The moment comes when I strongly feel like rewarding myself for 2 previous days. Remember, I signed for a low sugar challenge, not for a „no sugar“ one.
Rewards.
We do a break and around 4pm go to a coffee shop. I already know that my reward is there! I can hardly wait for it – the one and only Chai Latte. I can almost feel like sugar is injected into my blood and I feel so much more relaxed. I feel like reward model does really work for me. And I think that “no rewards” for too long is the reason for the yo-yo effect with the most of diets. It is all in our head when dieting you abandon so many things your brain is craving for and than you start rewarding yourself massively for all the sufferings. It is not a surprise diets do not work in a long-time perspective. So giving myself small rewards would hopefully would hopefully give positive results. 🙂
It would have been all totally fine, but we spontaneously decide to have a team night out at the legendary burger place “White Trash” in Berlin.
First issues: ordering sweet potato fries instead of usual ones was probably the right decision in terms of taste, but not in terms of sugar intake. And the bbq sauce is pretty sweet too and alcohol… to be precise beer, 2 beers. For today I feel like I’ve lost the battle.
Sugar and alcohol.
That’s why when coming home I immediately google for „sugar and alcohol“. Surprise-surprise. Beer has lots of carbs, but it has no sugar, meaning less then 0.5 g per serving! This is so cool!
I find also that red wine has only around 1 g and white wine – 1,5 g sugar per serving. But cocktails like my favorite Pina Colada are even more sugary than a glass of Coke. A 4-ounce (112 g) pina colada contains 28 g of added sugar, though from ingredients other than the alcohol!
What about sweet potatoes? Green flag again! Sweet potatoes is a really misleading name! Two things: it has a lot of calcium in it (which is great) and it is also not having lot’s of sugar, what’s more it is even good for people who have diabetes. Good to know!
I feel relieved and great about making right decisions and rewards 🙂
Result: 1 Chai Latte and bbq sauce. I think I am slightly above my limit because of the bbq sauce but it is not nearly as bad as I thought. Even though it was not a lowcarb dinner, but it was not my goal anyway!
Pitch&Eat 