I do things in extremes. I feel things in extremes. There are very few things about which I have no opinion or feelings and this seems to translate to every aspect of my life. In class this translates to my need to loudly voice my opinion about most every subject. In personal relationships, this leads to intense friendships that quickly become close or dramatically blow up. In my career, this translates to huge ideas about all the amazing things I will do or crippling fear of failure. In all honesty, I enjoy living my life this way. I enjoy having big feelings, big opinions, a loud voice, a distinctive laugh. I enjoy feeling things intensely and showing my love for people unabashedly. I enjoy filling a room with my personality and I love making people laugh with off the wall comments and jokes. I'm not saying it's always comfortable to live with a personality of extremes, but I do enjoy it.
Unfortunately, this translates to less than healthy eating habits. In a word, either I'm eating all the cupcakes or I'm not eating. I'm either eating the entire carton of ice cream or I've sworn off ice cream for all eternity. Thus, this first week plan of just "cutting down" has been a little difficult for me. When I meant to cut down, I went cold turkey, which has been a little difficult the past couple days.
At this point, I should probably point out that when I say "I'm going to quit sugar," I don't mean candy and desserts and coke or just added sugar. I mean I'm not eating tomato products or fruit. I mean I bought bread without sugar. I mean I'm not replacing regular foods with the "sugar free" version. I'm not using stevia and agave. I'm not eating sugar.
The pros of quitting cold turkey: the improvement in energy level is drastic and noticeable and you feel hard core and strong.
The cons of quitting cold turkey: the added guilt complex that comes with "slipping up," it requires sudden extra planning at every meal, and oh yeah I WANT TO BE HOOKED UP TO A SUGAR IV.
For the last two days, I noticed I didn't have that slump around 3:00. Work was noticeably more exciting and I was able to engage for much longer periods of time. I was actually damn impressive at work. And then after two days of going cold turkey, I wanted sugar so badly last night that I got a sprite after I worked out (classy, right?). And then I felt guilty.
So I went back to the book and read about this week. I tried to re-define what "cutting down" means in my life. It means that instead of buying a carton of ice cream on Monday night and finishing it with my roommate by Friday, I go out for a little bit of ice cream once this week. It means ordering my iced latte with one splenda instead of a shot of flavor and skipping the muffin. It means drinking a ton of water instead of hooking myself up to a sweet tea IV at lunch and continuing until bed. It means packing a turkey sandwich for lunch instead of grabbing fast food. It means telling myself I'm going to make chicken and rice for dinner instead of ordering pizza.
In short, cutting down is, in my mind, proportional to what I was doing before. Before, I ate all the cupcakes. Before, I had dessert all the freaking time. Before, I did not plan my meals and ate whatever I could get my hands on when I was hungry. Cutting down for me does not mean stopping all together. It means finding a little bit of balance. And in this one part of my life, I will strive to tread the middle ground.
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