Sugar Free and Hating It

I'm quitting sugar.  It almost hurts to write that, but it's true.  It's time.  My energy level is nil and I'm sick of it.  That's not to say that I'm not bursting with energy at 9:15 am after my morning visit to Starbucks where I often walk away with one venti mocha (iced please) and a cranberry-orange scone in hand.  Yeah, plenty of energy at that point.  But then there's the inevitable crash.  It can strike anywhere from 11am-2pm.  I get crazy tired, not just, "I could use a nap" tired, but Poppy Field in the Wizard of Oz-tired.  It's as if I can't keep moving. But, you see, I (like everyone else) have things that I have to do each day.  My four year old twin daughters couldn't care less about my "energy level".  So we go, go, go...

Plus there's the whole thing about owning aprox. 32 vintage Lilly skirts that almost fit.  And by "almost" I mean that I can almost pull them up over my hips.  But we don't need to get into all that.

I was talking to a friend about this and she mentioned this diet that she's been doing.  She raved about her energy level while sticking to the diet and basically had me sold.  She said she'd be happy to let me borrow the book that explains the diet. I conveniently forgot to grab it before I left and went home without the book.  Not to worry! She was so sweet and brought it to me later that day. I discovered that the book explains, not so much what to eat, but mostly what not to eat.  But I put it on my desk with every intention of reading it.

The next day, my computer was slow and the book was sitting here, so rather than swearing at my laptop screen, I started to skim through the book and I found myself thinking, "I can do this".  So you know the deal right?  It's not Atkins, but same concept as far as how glucose levels encourage the release of insulin which converts sugar into fat and so on.  So the trick is to make your body start using fat stores and eventually dietary protein for energy.  But, and this is key, you've got to get off sugar because our bodies love sugar, it's a cheap date and loaded with energy, just not the long-term kind, hence the crash.

But before I can do anything, I'm supposed to do this two week liver healing phase for this particular diet.  The liver healing-two week phase is brutal. I swear, I've not given my liver much thought, in fact, I can honestly say that on more than one occasion (okay, way more than one) I pretty much abused the ol' liver.  Yet, here this well-intentioned book is telling me to "love thy liver" for two short weeks and I find myself doing it with complete resentment, as though someone besides me really needs the diet and I just got stuck going for a ride on the diet bus.  It's all pretty silly, because this is what I want, right? "Right", angry diet girl agrees.

I'm on day four. I want chocolate so bad I could scream and pretzels have taken on a whole new appeal. We'll leave cupcakes out of the discussion, as it's just too painful.  Just to give you an idea, usually when I look for images to include in posts, I do it pretty quickly.  When I was looking for images of candy for this post, I spent a good half hour looking at, I mean for just the right one. It does look super cute though, doesn't it?

 So dear readers, please tell me that I'm right where I'm supposed to be and that this is all a normal part of sugar withdraw.  And please, tell me this without using the word: exercise.  It's next on my list, I swear.

Thanks Much!