Two Weeks Down: Reality Check

Well, perfection doesn't last long.  Let me just say that Memorial Day weekend and going to a sugar-stuffed cabin do not make for an easy sugar-free weekend.  It was tough.  Really tough.  We spent the weekend in McCall, Idaho, a wonderful little town surrounding a beautiful lake (Lake Payette).  We had a great time, but it was really hard for the diet.  I was able to resist the homemade s'mores over the campfire, the "mountain sized" scoops of Ice Cream Alley, the sugar cookies, and all the candy.  But, I couldn't resist the homemade granola bars (honey) Emily made or adding a little Caesar dressing (sugar) to my otherwise way-too-dry chicken wrap.

I admit I am a little disappointed with myself for not making it for more than two weeks.  Actually, it is just plain sad.  Maybe it is just an excuse, but it seems to me that unless you live in a city large enough to have a grocery store with 30 different loaves of bread, dozens of condiments, and a decent-sized health food section, there is just no way to make sugar-free work unless you starve yourself.  McCall is cute, but it just doesn't cut it in terms of specialty foods.

Ultimately, the point of this "experiment" is to see whether I can make it without sugar for a year.  Technically (based on my own rules at least), I have now officially failed.  At the same time, I did resist a lot of big things:  the ice cream, the chocolate and marshmallows, the cookies.  As I drove back from McCall today, I kept thinking about what the lesson here was.  I think there were a couple:

1.  Don't spend a weekend in a cabin full of things you can't eat. 

2.  Reasonable is always better than extreme.

I seem to need to keep learning this second lesson over and over again.  As many of you commented when I came up with the rules, absolutely no sugar whatsoever may have been a tad on the extreme side.  So, I am reluctantly going to amend my rules to say that I can have food items with honey (which is just about as natural a sugar as there can be) and small amounts of condiments.  That means I don't have to feel guilty every time I have a bit of mayo on something or want to use a little Grey Poupon (which, apparently, has sugar in it). 

The other rules, at least for now, are still in full force:  no sugar, no sugar substitutes, etc.  Here's hoping I can make it more than two weeks.