Making It Through The Holidays Sugar Free

December 25, 2008 ↓ Comments (4)

Unless you stay home, prepare all the meals yourself and have a supportive family, it’s nearly impossible to remain sugar free during the holidays. Most people won’t even try to make it through December without eating sugar. After three years of avoiding sweets I still want to binge on chocolate desserts for the whole month. Especially being with my family.

I am not in my home this year; I am visiting my parents. The first gift I got was from my good-humored mother. This was on the night table in the guest bedroom.

Start Being Sweet

The label reads, “Start Being Sweet” and inside the bag are spoons coated in chocolate (stir them into anything hot to add chocolate flavor) and other sugary goodies. I honestly don’t know what else is in the bag because I haven’t looked. It’s too tempting!

She also made sweet desserts. The cheese cake? I already know just how good it tastes so I’m not missing anything by passing it up. The chocolate pecan pie? Let me tell you, it is good. But I didn’t eat any this year. My father purchased “sugar free” syrup—but it’s sweetened with sugar alcohols. I’d rather eat pure maple sugar but ended up eating the sugar alcohol maple (flavored) syrup. It was the lesser of two evils when compared to the High Fructose Corn Syrup maple flavored syrup. And yes, I ate pancakes. (They don’t make me want to binge and I don’t do it often.)

At the supermarket I saw that pure maple syrup sells for $7 to $10 dollars per jar compared to the fake stuff which sold for a $1.99. Skippy peanut butter was only $2.19. A smaller sized jar of all-natural peanut butter was over $4. High Fructose Corn Syrup laden bread was .99 cents a loaf while bread without HFCS (but still containing sugar) cost $3.99 for a smaller sized loaf. Eating well isn’t cheap.

Why was I at the store? I was purchasing apples and natural peanut butter. I’ve made it through the past several days by eating that plus cheese and crackers. The crackers contain sugar but so does everything else in the house. I’d literally have to buy a boat-load of groceries to stay sugar-free while visiting. There have been several requests for me to bake cookies but so far I have not done it because then I’ll be tempted to eat some. And this brings me to my point.

When you stop being sweet it isn’t all or nothing. To get through the holidays you must continue to avoid the refined sugars and especially the super sweet desserts. If you are struggling, eat your borderline replacement foods. You might also end up eating more than you usually eat. There’s no need to freak out about this. Just go slowly, take it one bite at a time, and avoid the urge to throw in the towel and postpone your unsweet habits. Hang in there! In less than a week everyone will want to stop being sweet with you and you will be light years ahead of them!

Comments · Making It Through The Holidays Sugar Free

Joy Raboli
Dec 26, 2008

I love this post! Your gift from your mom is hilarious! I appreciate that this is not all or nothing. I just ate cheese because I have nothing in my house. My sugarpolooza is now over and I don’t have anything to eat. I would love your thoughts about re-entry into sugar free. Do you go cold turkey back to sugar free or do you meld into it with borderline foods? In your experience, what has worked best for you?

DavidVanadia
Dec 26, 2008

Avoid your trigger foods and eat the borderline foods until you get to the point where you can cut them out. Just like you did last time. So with your trigger foods it’s cold turkey all-or-nothing. With your borderline replacement foods you meld into it.

Joy Raboli
Dec 26, 2008

Thanks David! Day one was surprisingly easy. I eased into it and ate my borderline foods. I am actually going to sleep at 9:15! Whoo hooooooo. I think the sugar adventure really heightened my appreciate for being unsweet. I was getting shortness of breath, anxiety and out of control. I had a hopeless feeling on sugar and even today, being off of sugar, I felt much better about myself.
Joy

Betsy
Feb 14, 2009

I went sugar free for about 1 month (mid Dec to end Jan); then stress took me back for the past weeks. I am trying like hell to go sugar-free again. For the past two days - urgh..it is like beginning all over again. Not the cravings but more “wanting what I can not have” :-(. I guess it is the next-day-feel-good-about-myslef-for- not-being-sweet that I am looking forward to now… PS: I re-read your workbook again today to get me going! and I am blogging