Where did July go?

Blink. It's almost August.

July has been a busy month, no doubt, but it's hard to believe the summer is half over. Here's a recap of the past month:

• Attempted a sugar-free diet for exactly 6.5 days and then promptly fell off the wagon when we went on our camping trip. Hello over-processed, sugar-laden convenience foods, my old friend.
• Speaking of our amazing eight-day camping trip to Skaha Lake in Penticton, I got all crafty and made a video of it. As Steve and I said to each other, the sure sign of a good camping trip is when, on the last day, instead of wanting your own bed and comforts of home, you decide that you would stay an extra week if you could.
• The weekend after we came home from camping, Steve and I dropped off Charlotta at summer camp in Squamish, and then went on to have a glorious, child-free 24 hours to ourselves in Whistler. (Steve's sister Julie took care of Ashley and Jack for the weekend.)
• In between all of this, I've managed to get in a few days of work, but today I was off to Squamish again to pick Charlotta up from her camp. She had a great time, and the counsellors took really good care of the kids.

Charlotta (on the right) and her friend Hailey with their camp counsellors.
(Nothing says 'summer camp' like tie-die t-shirts.)

Looking ahead to August, things look just as busy. Whatever happened to those lazy summer days spent reading a novel in a hammock and sipping gin and tonics? (oh yeah... that was before kids...)

Sugar Free Me

OK, it's been six days since I started cutting sugar out of my diet, and so far I'm doing pretty good. I haven't turned into the wild-eyed, desperate lunatic that I thought I would have, so that's a good sign, right?

According to my self-made 3-Step Program, I'm well into Step 1, which is eliminating all the obvious sweets, bakery goods, juice, jams, chocolate, etc, from my diet. I've also been very careful about the sugar contained in the processed foods I'm eating (Step 2). You would not believe what all has sugar in it. Take this test:

Which of the following contains sugar:
a) mayonaise
b) ketchup
c) beef jerky
d) all of the above.

If you chose d) you're right. (By the way, I don't normally eat beef jerky but was at Costco the other day looking for a sugar-free snack food and thought beef jerky would have been a safe bet until I looked at the ingredients list.)

Take a look at the some of the products/condiments in your home and you'd be surprised how hard it is to avoid sugar. If I was the paranoid type, I could come up with this great conspiracy theory about World Domination by Food Manufacturers by getting us all hooked on sugar.

As for Step 3 in my regime, I'm still eating fruit which has natural sugars in it, and I don't think I'll give that up.

Overall, I've felt OK and haven't felt nauseous or had a headache (which is what happened when I tried to go without coffee for 24 hours back in university.... crazy girl). But I still have this vague feeling of not being satisfied even after I've had a big meal. I've been trying to quell my craving for munchies with nuts, so obviously any weight I would have lost by eliminating sugar has been replaced by the bazillion calories in every handful of nuts. But still, I do crave SOMETHING SWEET.

We're going camping for a week on Saturday, and I think (I know) I'm going to fall of the wagon with all of the convenience foods you rely on when you're camping. However, at that point I will have gone a week without refined sugar, so at least my body will have had a break from the 'white poison.'

Hi, My Name is Kim and I'm an Addict

It began innocently enough a few days ago at a Canada Day BBQ. I was chatting with a friend who had recently gone on a "cleanse" by eliminating sugar from her diet for 3 weeks. She said she felt great (well, actually the first week was Hell on Earth, but for weeks 2 and 3 she felt great), she dropped 10 lbs and when she started to consume sugar again, she felt that she didn't have the appetite or crave it has much as she had pre-cleanse.

So, my friend's experience combined with the fact that we know how bad sugar is for your health, made me think of my own habits. And friends, I am willing to admit it: I am a sugar addict. I know this after trying to go a measly two days without any sweet treats. Sugar, I'm beginning to believe, is an addictive substance just like alcohol, nicotine or drugs. The proof is simple: try going without it for any length of time and see how hard it is.

However, like with most addictive substances, I think the key to success is not trying to quit cold turkey. I did try that a few years ago (when I had thrush while nursing one of my kids) and it was darn near impossible. Instead, I have a 3-step plan to wean myself from sugar:

Step 1. Try to eliminate the obvious sugary sweets from my diet first. That means the jam on my toast, the square or two of chocolate after dinner, the dessert, the ice-cream, the vanilla syrup in my Starbucks Earl Grey Tea Latte, any bakery goodies, and on it goes. I think this first step will be the biggest and hardest to do, but the key is not to give up if I cheat a little. Which, let's face it, is bound to happen.

Step 2. Avoid the processed foods that sneak sugar in (even though they don't taste sweet). You'd be surprised at the wide range of foods that have sugar in ingredient list: ketchup, salad dressing, flavoured potato chips, "healthy" cereal, peanut butter, and a bazillon other condiment-type products in my pantry.

Step 3. Reduce the amount of high-sugar fruits I consume. I'm not sure I'll even get to this step (especially with all the yummy summer fruits now available), but it would be the final step to consider if I wanted to be hard-core about doing this sugar cleanse.

I'm on Day 2 of Step 1 at the moment, so I don't want to get ahead of myself. So far, I've turned down Timbits (donuts) that Steve and kids brought home yesterday, chocolate brownies, and the temptation to reach for a square of chocolate when I was doing the dinner dishes tonight. This afternoon, I actually felt really tired and had low-energy -- a sure sign that my body was missing the sugar.

It will, no doubt, be an interesting week ahead as I detox. I hope I don't get too grumpy or decide that it's all not worth it and snarf down a box of Oreo cookies in one sitting.

I'll keep you posted...