Refined Sugar and Me Week 14 -- Hey! I don't want dessert!

Let’s check in on week fourteen of refined sugar & me in 2017! This week I lost another pound, bringing that total to 11 pounds so far this year. At this point I’m losing about a pound every two weeks, which is maddeningly slow — but at least it’s in the right direction, so I will be patient. 🙂

I cannot see eleven pounds gone in the mirror at all, though. My pants are looser, but I’m not down a size yet — BUT, see these boots? They’re nothing special, just some old Kohl’s clearance boots, but I wore them twice this week because: Last fall it was very hard to get these on over my calves, and now they slide right on comfortably. So apparently this is where I lose weight! (It would not be my first choice, lol.)

This week’s news: For now, I’ve lost my desire for dessert

It’s so weird to type that. I’ve been a sugar addict my whole life, it’s true — and until deciding to cut out most refined sugar, I ate something sweet just about every day. Now, I’ve indulged in a couple of my favorites just twice over these 14 weeks, and realized both times that 1) they didn’t taste as good as I remembered, and 2) I felt pretty awful physically after eating them.

I mentioned before that my thought going into this was that I’d get to a point where I would have dessert once a month. I’ve been thinking about that more this week, and realized that making “once a month” a specific goal really feeds into old bad habits of using food as a reward. Bad day? I’d look forward to chocolate or ice cream. So putting “dessert” as something to look forward to once a month, probably not such a good idea.

But even beyond that realization: Today I was looking back on some older recipes, like these peanut butter cookie Snickers bars. I remember these bars being really, really good (and when I made them last fall I ate too many of them!), but today my brain is looking at this photo and registering them as too sweet. It’s still a great easy dessert recipe that I’ll likely make again to bring to a friend’s house or for a gathering, but for the first time I don’t feel the impulse to eat them all myself. (And the rational side of my brain thinks that is probably more important than the very slow half a pound a week.) Will I never eat dessert again? I don’t know; this is a journey — but right now, I’m OK without.

So, that’s me this week…

How are you doing on your own healthier eating plan so far — and what have you found that helps you stay on track?

Earlier installments in this series

Here are a few highlights:

And you can catch up on the whole Refined Sugar and Me series here.