Viewing: My Personal Journal

Not Eating Sugar on the Road

I’m writing this post from Longview, Washington after having bicycled 75 miles on the BP protest ride. Tonight I stopped at a local restaurant and it wasn’t much better than the last place.

The salad was better but only by a bit. The veggie burger was nicer (everything else on the menu was meat). However, I don’t think I’ll ever choose to replace french fries with potato salad again.

The small health food cafe was closed but it will be the place to eat at in the morning.

Only one more day and then it’s back to my own food in my own home!

Posted on Aug 31, 2010 : Comments: (0)

Eating Sugar on the Road

It’s hard to stay on the wagon when you’re wagon goes off your usual trail.

I’m on my way home after a week-long college residency. While away, students eat in the cafeteria located on campus. The food isn’t terrible, but eating three square meals a day in that place gets difficult, especially for someone who’s off sugar.

The dessert table is located right by the doorway of the serving area so everyone has to pass it on the way to the dining hall. I always noticed when they had chocolate snacks such as ice cream or brownies.

Dessert, eat all you want.

While it’s easy for me to avoid dessert, and thus the sugars in the desserts, what’s not easy is avoiding added sweeteners in the actual meal. Based on how I felt, and judging from the labels on the foods for sale in the restaurant supply store near my home, there’s most likely added sugar in everything the cafeteria served.

Bread of course has sugar (I still eat dinner rolls). Soups often have added sugars as lots of restaurant soups are purchased pre-made. Salad dressing (I opt for oil and vinegar if there’s any question), yogurt, granola, cereal, waffles, pancakes, soy milk and any number of flavored cooking sauces contain corn syrup and/or added sugars of various kinds.

But that’s all behind me now. This past week was my last full residency and so I’ll never have to spend a week eating that food again. Yeah!

Now I’m on my ride home. If you don’t know, I’m bicycling from Port Townsend, Washington to Portland, Oregon. This means I’m still at the mercy of restaurant food for two more days.

Last night I stopped in a local restaurant and got a Garden Burger with a side salad. The salad was weak. The waitress handed me a tray of salad dressings all of which contained sugar.

Salad?

The Garden Burger was terrible! The french fries were so salty I used Ketchup on them. That’s sugar or corn syrup in my system. The fries are basically poison. I was hungry though and so I ate everything. The meal was so salty it made me thirsty for the rest of the night.

All gone.

No more!

Today I ate fruit and vegetables. I also eat Subway because they sell the Veggie Delight sandwich, which is just assorted vegetables. The ingredients are always pretty fresh, the bread does not cause me any trouble and I never feel bad after eating one of those sandwiches.

At this point I can’t wait to get home and eat the foods that I know and love. It’s just a matter of days now.

Posted on Aug 28, 2010 : Comments: (2)

Crashed Today

I’m away at school for the week and students have three square meals per day provided by the local eatery. The food has something in it that kicks my butt. Also, not being able to eat for hours at a time and then dropping a big breakfast, lunch, or dinner is not my style. I’m an eat-a-little-all-day kind of guy and might be hypoglycemic.

For the first time in a long time, I crashed and napped for two hours this afternoon. It’s not hard to tell when food is effecting me after having been sugar-free for so long. I felt irritable, groggy, distant and got a headache in the back of my head. That was before I ate. After eating I couldn’t focus and grew tired and lay down. Two hours later I was up and it was time for dinner.

I want to get off the roller coaster. I’m going to try eating nothing but whole foods for breakfast, lunch and dinner. That means only fruit and veggies that haven’t been cooked in whatever it is they use.

Sorry eatery chef, I know you’re just doing your job. But it’s killing me!

Posted on Aug 23, 2010 : Comments: (2)

3 Ways to Avoid Cake in the Community Room

Cake

I’m away at a college residency. The program director turned 40 and they gave her a cake. It was a big chocolate production with icing and chocolate covered strawberries around the outside. Now there’s a bunch of left over pieces sitting out in the community room waiting to be eaten.

The cake looked really good when it was served. People who had some said it is really rich, which is just how I like my chocolate cake! Still, it’s easy to resist. Why?

You’re Sick of the Roller Coaster

When you first go off sugar for a while you’ll find that you have good and bad times. That is, you’ll last for months without sugar only to fall off the wagon and start eating sweets again. Do that enough times and you’ll start to associate a little taste of sugar with falling out of control in a not fun way.

Exercise Your No Thank You Muscle

If you’ve just started to avoid sugar, expect that it’s not easy. In the Stop Being Sweet eBook I explain that saying no (with your words or actions) is like exercising a muscle—you have to build it up by repetitively using it. The only way to get good at avoiding sweets it to keep avoiding them. My “NO” muscle is strong enough to deal with most any typical situation where sweets tempt me.

Don’t Be Around It

If you are still having trouble with the stuff, stay away from the stuff. Sugar is tempting. If it’s not within your reach it’s easier to avoid eating it. I’m in the same room as the cake but not at the same table!

It’s Not the End of the World

If you make a mistake then just move on. You don’t stop talking just because you mispronounce a word. Keep going, little by little. eventually a little becomes a lot and one slip up doesn’t ruin your unsweet lifestyle. (See yesterday’s post.)

Posted on Aug 23, 2010 : Comments: (2)

Carob Covered Almonds: Sweet?

I’m away at school for a week long residency. While here, I like to go to the food co-op and purchase some unsweetened carob covered almonds. Yesterday I did just that.

When I got back to my room, I began to eat a few. They were even sweeter than I remembered so I ate a few more. And then I ate some more. Before I knew it, the whole bag was gone. Had being away from carob covered almonds for so long made them taste sweeter?

Today I was back at the co-op and noticed that the carob almonds are in the bin directly next to the grain sweetened almonds. I must have gotten the wrong ones. No wonder I was peeing all night long. Today I’ll eat the carob covered almonds and see how they make me feel.

Posted on Aug 22, 2010 : Comments: (0)

Eating on the Road

Real food

I’m currently in a motel after the first day of a long distance bicycle ride to protest the BP oil disaster. When I asked the front desk attendant about where to get some food within walking distance (I’m tired of biking and I have a flat), she directed me to the “pretty decent” food mart at the Texaco across the street.

I went across the street but every single item they had for sale was pre-packaged junk food products. They did have a few sandwiches but they were microwavable long-shelf-life kinds of scary things.

I asked the cashier if there was a deli nearby. She looked at me and repeated, “Deli?” I said, “A place with sandwiches and stuff.” She directed me to the Quick Mart (I think it’s called) located inside the gas station at the bottom of the hill where she said they serve nice sandwiches and a salad bar.

The Quick Mart did have some natural foods. The salad bar looked like the condiments selection of a Subway sandwich shop but was really neat was the fried food display. They had all kinds of brown, crispy things including egg rolls, chicken and corn dogs! There were also FIVE machines for making flavored, sweetened ice drinks.

I ended up with two hardboiled eggs, carrot and celery sticks (didn’t touch the Ranch) as well as a small bag of potato chips and some potato salad. Mayonaise often has added sugar or HFCS which I didn’t even consider until tasting it.

It’s always a chore to not eat sugar on the road.

Posted on Aug 15, 2010 : Comments: (0)

Nothing for Me, Thanks

How to Go to a Bakery and Order Nothing

Last night I went to Last Thursday with Gwenn and our friend Dave. Last Thursday is a monthly outdoor street festival here in Portland (see pictures). Dave wanted to stop at a one of his favorite bakeries and so we did.

Dave knows I’m off sugar, or at least he’s been told so in the past. Yet, he kept asking if I was going to get something, in a nice way. He’d be like, “You’re not getting anything? Did you look?” I simply said no thanks several times. Dave got a white chocolate thing and Gwenn got a chocolate thing.

Dave Dessert Gwenn Dessert

The good thing is that Gwenn got something otherwise Dave probably wouldn’t have gotten anything. That’s why you (unsweet person that you are) are no fun to go out with. When people want to get dessert and you don’t, they suddenly feel self-conscious and want to deprive themselves of their confectionary desires.

Don’t Look

I didn’t even look at the array of sweet delights that the bakery had on display inside their glass counters. That’s the first step to avoiding sweets. When you can’t see what you’re missing it’s a lot easier to not want it.

Ask the Server

What I did instead was ask the server at our table, “Do you have any sugar free desserts?” Doing this always produces a strange reaction on the server’s face, but they’re usually really sweet (pun intended) and say something like, “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I’ll check.”

Asking if there’s any sugar-free dessert at a bakery is a bit like asking if there’s any alcohol-free beer at a bar. Most likely the answer is no. However, candy shops often have a sugar free section but the stuff is usually sweetened with Maltitol. Not good.

Anyhow, the server returned with the desserts and placed them on the table before she remembered to ask if they offer anything sans sugar. She made a display of asking another employee right in front of me and the other employee said no. I was not surprised.

Drink Water

I sat and observed as they ate their desserts. I drank water. It was hot outside. I also noticed that each and every table at the bakery had a huge jar of sugar on it. As if the desserts weren’t sweet enough, you might just feel the need to add a little more.

AddSugar

Keep in mind that I’ve been off sugar for about five years now. Had I been just starting I would have ordered something without sugar to eat. An appetizer, small salad or sandwich would have kept me busy and not made anyone feel odd nor would I feel left out.

Posted on Jul 30, 2010 : Comments: (2)

No Sugar = No Limits

Years ago, when I was obliviously eating tons of sugar, I went mountain biking with some friends. It was one of those “let’s ride together this weekend” kind of casual invites. Mark had been biking pretty regularly and he was looking to act as a mountain-trail tour guide of sorts. As a result, he took us over some tricky, hilly terrain. I’ve ridden bikes my whole life but about 20 minutes into it I got completely wiped out and had to stop. All of the energy drained from my body and I nearly passed out.

Everyone waited and stared as I lay against a tree just trying to breathe! It was awful and embarrassing. Who knows what I ate for breakfast that day; I can’t recall. In fact, I never made the connection between sugar and that event until years later.

No-Sugar Power

At the end of August, 2010 I am going to embark on a 450-mile Beyond Petroleum Bike Ride. I’m pretty confident that I will survive simply because sweets are no longer a part of my diet. I’ll be blogging here at the Stop Being Sweet blog about sugar and food as I ride and the details of the trip will be located in the BP section of my site. It should be an interesting adventure!

Posted on Jul 16, 2010 : Comments: (0)

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