The dreaded third week

Last Sunday, the week I'd been dreading since the first day I started this whole thing arrived: the week of absolutely no sugar. People, this is where it gets serious. And I have really been dreading this. And I'm almost afraid to write this, lest it call down more cravings, but...I thought it would be harder. I mean, don't get me wrong. This afternoon, all I could think about was chocolate cake and then the ice cream truck drove around my neighborhood for a good half hour and it was all I could do not to lean out the window and yell very bad words at the ice cream man, but I promise it's usually not like that. Normally I'm quite civilized.

I was listening this morning to an episode of This American Life called "My Own Worst Enemy". For the introduction, Ira (yes, we're on a first name basis. I'm a true NPR nerd.) was interviewing people who routinely eat foods they're severely allergic to. Y'all, there was a woman who ends up in the hospital after popcorn and eats it bimonthly, a man who keeps an epi-pen nearby because he can't keep the shellfish that makes his face puff up and closes his throat out of his mouth and a woman who spends the night in the bathroom twice a week after pizza. My first reaction was to judge these people fairly harshly. Ok, "fairly harshly" is an understatement. I was disgusted and seriously suggest these people seek professional help. And then I began to wonder if these people are really all that different from me even a month ago.

I'm an intelligent person. I grew up with parents who refused to let my sisters and I eat cereal for breakfast, who bought local grass-fed beef, and who taught be how to cook from scratch. Obviously, it wasn't perfect. I've got more than my fair share of food neuroses (like you didn't know that. There's a whole blog here devoted to it, people). Honestly, I'm not sure I know anyone who doesn't have food neuroses. This is America. BUT I did grow up on better food than much of the United States. And my dad is a chiropractor and knows about nutritional supplements and and and...really, there was no reason to be treating my body the way I did. So knowing everything I knew, was I really all that different from the people who knew full well the consequences of what they were putting in their mouths and continued to eat food that would make them sick?

I'm not trying to get preachy or trying to suggest that this is everyone's experience. My epiphanies are my own and apply only to me, but here is my epiphany: if I know it's bad for me, I really shouldn't eat it. I KNEW what sugar was doing to me. This was not a revelation that came upon me when I started this crazy experiment. I KNEW better. I just didn't want to do anything about that. And now, I'm having to face up to what I've been eating and all my weird emotional stuff about food and re-define what food actually is to me. Seems straightforward, but stay tuned. That's not a one post kind of discussion.

So the lesson of the day? Well, now that I've read this over, it seems I've outlined an argument for continuing my sugar-free lifestyle past the eight weeks I first agreed to.

Aw, crap.