My first weekend without my good friend sugar!

Well, I'm sure everyone has been waiting with baited breath since my post on Thursday to see how if I survived the sugar hangover (well surely there was at least one person out there who had some sort of mild concern anyways!).  Good news is - yes I did yay:)  I have to admit Thursday and Friday were not great, I was tempted on so many occasions to just have "a small bit of chocolate" you know just the once piece isn't going to do any harm, but I didn't give in and against all odds I lived to tell the tale, and so did everyone else I met on those two days as well so happy ending all round!  Having survived that awful two days, I no have a new appreciation for life so if you see me smiling or appearing to be enjoying life more than usual, you know that's the background story for that!

To be honest, I was DREADING the first weekend off sugar.  I have mentioned before that every week I start off with great intentions of being healthy and giving up the "crap" food, and then gradually just fall off the bandwagon during the week, until everything I eat on the weekend more than likely cancelled out any bit of lettuce or tomato I ate, and every biscuit I turned down from Monday to Wednesday.  The weekends are traditionally my bad time, I am a big fan of saying things like "sure calories don't count on a Saturday anyways", and convincing myself without a shadow of a doubt that next week will be different and then using that "plan" (I say this in inverted commas because I knew deep down it was a plan that would fall apart pretty quickly) to justify my awful eating habits from Friday evening to Sunday evening!  Again, don't judge me, I know I'm not alone in this habit:)

So, this last weekend was going to be hard.  I had a few social events I had to attend and I really didn't know how I would cope.  On Saturday, I caught up with a few friends for lunch, I had looked at the menu before hand to see what I could eat, and decided on a salad without the dressing (boring I hear you say??? well that's exactly what I was thinking, "Salad without the dressing, I'm not some sort of rabbit type species, I like the dressing!").  So I found myself for the first time ordering a salad without the dressing.  Surprisingly, I really enjoyed it, the salad actually tasted good, and I realised that probably all this time I had been convincing myself that salad needed "taste" when in fact it has plenty of it and that is the taste of yumminess!

As the traditional dessert bringer to any "bring a plate" occasion (you don't get a figure like mine by not being a big dessert fan trust me), so Saturday night found me with another dilemma, what will I bring for dessert.  I found a sugar-free (read fructose free as it has rice malt syrup), dairy free, but thankfully not taste free in the end, chocolate cake, which I whipped up.  Now either my friends are super polite or it actually tasted good, and it appeared to go down a treat all round.  I have shared the recipe, and a not so glamorous photo for anyone who would like to give it a go in the future (it really does taste nice!):

https://iquitsugar.com/recipe/flourless-berry-chocolate-cake/

The last thing I found difficult over the weekend was my trip to the supermarket.  I remember reading somewhere on some "handy hints for being the healthiest person in the world" link on FB or something that in order to avoid bad food and ensure you eat "real" food, you should only buy food from the outsides of the aisles and not venture into the middle of the aisles.  Well, this person had obviously not met the marketing person at my local Coles!!!  On Saturday as I walked around Coles, EVERY single aisle edge had some sort of "junk food" on special offer, Tim Tams 2 for $3, 2L of coke for $1.50, a 500g bar of dairy milk for $2, chocolate milk for $1 (meanwhile, as an aside, a cauliflower cost $6 a kilo and 2 avocados were on "special" for $5!!!).  I'm not exaggerating, walking to the middle of the aisle to pick up my olive oil I was convinced that Coles had decided to do some impromptu tribe to Gene Wilder by creating their own Chocolate Factory, and then to make matters worse I queue up at the counter only to have 20 different chocolate bars staring me in the face.  It really made me wonder how any parent who tried to avoid "junk food" can even face bringing their children into the supermarket and how they manage to come out without having given in and just bought their child something on special - if you're reading this and you have mastered this art hats off to you it can't be easy!

So that's me, one week in, survived the hangover from hell and the first weekend "sugar free", and have come out the other end feeling great!  Thanks for reading!  Until next time:)