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Sugar rush
May. 12th, 2012 08:17 pmSo, after losing a load of weight on it for the wedding last year and then falling spectacularly off the wagon on honeymoon and regaining a stone, I've been back on the Harcombe Diet for the past seven weeks and am now back at my wedding day weight :o)
'Diet' is a bit of a misnomer, there's no calorie counting, no points, no weighing anything and I'm eating what feels like vast quantities of food - there are just three rules to follow: 1) don't mix fat foods and carb foods in the same meal (very like Slimming World in that respect, I think), 2) don't eat processed foods and 3) don't eat the foods that trigger your cravings.
It's only since going Harcombe that I've come to realise how much of a problem I have with sugar. Not just the fact that I can binge on sugary foods until I feel sick, but the rollercoaster of emotions sugar puts me through, from the dizzying 'I can take on the world and win, I can tackle anything' sugar high to the crash as it works its way through my blood stream and leaves me listless with barely enough energy to walk to the annexe and a bad attack of the 'I can't be arsed to do ANYTHING's which could last up to five days.
In other words, sugar is like a drug to me.
For the last seven weeks I've been completely sugar free and though I miss those soaring highs - oh gods, do I miss them - actually having the energy to get on with day to day life is a definite bonus. I did manage to come off sugar for the whole of January this year, but then took my mother-in-law to a posh country house tea for her birthday at the beginning of February and that set me off for another 10 weeks. So it was with some trepidation that, in the interests of experimentation (honestly...!), I ordered a sticky toffee pudding with tablet ice cream for dessert when we went out for dinner last night.
It was extraordinary. Not just the dessert (though Ross should be very proud of that ice cream, it was superb!), but the way that from the first spoonful I could feel the effects of the sugar flooding my body, almost like a buzz through my veins, wrapping me in that comforting sugary hug. The Harcombe advice, if you're sensitive to sugar and fall off the wagon, is to have something naturally sweet, like fruit, before the crash sets in, as it'll help settle your system back down without leaving you in that sugar crash pit of despair, so I had an apple before I went to bed and apart from a bit of a headache today, I seem to be OK - no cravings, no mad dash for the bakery cookies in Tesco and, most importantly, no crash.
So what have I learnt from all this? Well, I definitely do have a problem with sugar, but I've proved to myself that I'm not necessarily going to be a dessert-free zone for the rest of my days. What I do have to do is monitor it extremely carefully. I'm planning to stay sugar free for the rest of the year unless we're out to dinner somewhere - and even then, if they have a cheese board on offer, I'll do my best to go for that instead. Now I just have to work out what I'm going to fuel my long runs with, because jelly babies are definitely off the menu :o)
'Diet' is a bit of a misnomer, there's no calorie counting, no points, no weighing anything and I'm eating what feels like vast quantities of food - there are just three rules to follow: 1) don't mix fat foods and carb foods in the same meal (very like Slimming World in that respect, I think), 2) don't eat processed foods and 3) don't eat the foods that trigger your cravings.
It's only since going Harcombe that I've come to realise how much of a problem I have with sugar. Not just the fact that I can binge on sugary foods until I feel sick, but the rollercoaster of emotions sugar puts me through, from the dizzying 'I can take on the world and win, I can tackle anything' sugar high to the crash as it works its way through my blood stream and leaves me listless with barely enough energy to walk to the annexe and a bad attack of the 'I can't be arsed to do ANYTHING's which could last up to five days.
In other words, sugar is like a drug to me.
For the last seven weeks I've been completely sugar free and though I miss those soaring highs - oh gods, do I miss them - actually having the energy to get on with day to day life is a definite bonus. I did manage to come off sugar for the whole of January this year, but then took my mother-in-law to a posh country house tea for her birthday at the beginning of February and that set me off for another 10 weeks. So it was with some trepidation that, in the interests of experimentation (honestly...!), I ordered a sticky toffee pudding with tablet ice cream for dessert when we went out for dinner last night.
It was extraordinary. Not just the dessert (though Ross should be very proud of that ice cream, it was superb!), but the way that from the first spoonful I could feel the effects of the sugar flooding my body, almost like a buzz through my veins, wrapping me in that comforting sugary hug. The Harcombe advice, if you're sensitive to sugar and fall off the wagon, is to have something naturally sweet, like fruit, before the crash sets in, as it'll help settle your system back down without leaving you in that sugar crash pit of despair, so I had an apple before I went to bed and apart from a bit of a headache today, I seem to be OK - no cravings, no mad dash for the bakery cookies in Tesco and, most importantly, no crash.
So what have I learnt from all this? Well, I definitely do have a problem with sugar, but I've proved to myself that I'm not necessarily going to be a dessert-free zone for the rest of my days. What I do have to do is monitor it extremely carefully. I'm planning to stay sugar free for the rest of the year unless we're out to dinner somewhere - and even then, if they have a cheese board on offer, I'll do my best to go for that instead. Now I just have to work out what I'm going to fuel my long runs with, because jelly babies are definitely off the menu :o)
