Day 9

As I was typing in the title for this post, "Day 9," I was surprised/happy/relieved that in have made it this far. Surely there are challenges ahead, but I now have momentum to keep going. I don't have headaches anymore, my hunger has normalized and now represents true hunger instead of blood sugar dips, and I don't feel I need a nap at 3:00 each afternoon. Do I still have room for improvement? Absolutely. My main focus to this point had been, and will continue to be for some time, on the overt sugars: pastries, cookies, chocolate, ice cream. The obvious stuff. I also don't eat sugar-laden yogurt or ketchup or cereals. But there are still small amounts of covert refined sugars in some of the foods I eat, like store-bought pickles and hamburger buns. These things take up such a small portion of my diet that they seem to me to be much less important than avoiding the overt offenders. I am very familiar with reading food labels and try to make as much food from scratch as I can, so my sugar intake now is very low. When I go sugar-free, many people ask me about fruits or assume I won't eat them. A whole piece of fruit with the vitamins and fiber, especially when in season, is very healthy, and I am happy to keep them in my diet. 

Life is still sweet when you don't eat sugar, you just adjust and appreciate the natural sweetness that has always been there instead of overstimulating with hyper-palatable foods.