Tag Archives: sugar

Binging

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Binge
noun
1. a period or bout, usually brief, of excessive indulgence, as in eating, drinking alcoholic beverages, etc.; spree.

verb (used without object) binged, bing·ing or binge·ing.
2. to have a binge: to binge on junk food.

binging. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged. Retrieved September 08, 2011, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/binging

 

Sound familiar?

College students do it with booze during their college years.  Supposedly it’s a big problem.

Dieters do it with food.  It’s no accident that the definition came with an example of “to binge with junk food”.

Such it is with me.Try hard. Count calories. Log food intake. Head out to the gym for some time on the treadmill. Lose a few pounds. Plateau. Keep trying. Gain. Keep trying. Gain. Keep trying. Lose a little bit.

Finally, it’s fuck it. It takes forever to lose the weight half pound by half pound. Then it’s dinner with friends, a birthday cake, a craving for ice cream, a work reception.  All of a sudden, I’m up three pounds in a day when it took me two weeks to get it off.

Two weeks of counting calories, two weeks of hitting the treadmill, two weeks of logging in all my food intake making sure I don’t eat anything with too many calories that would fully negate any exercise I’ve done.

So, I say fuck it. I start binging.

Ice cream, steak, potatoes, toast with jam, rice, muffins, cookies. Morning, noon and night.

I get on the scale and I’m disgusted but I don’t do anything. It’s raining cats and dogs so I don’t go out, I have appointments to keep most of the day so I don’t make it to the gym, I don’t feel like it, plain and simple because I know if I start it’ll take me forever to work off what I’ve put on by binging.

Binging on food is not like binging on booze.  With booze you wake up with a hangover, you throw up, take a couple of aspirin and you’re good as new. With food, you’re not good as new the next day. You’re 5 pounds heavier and the clothes that were feeling a little loose have tightened up, again.

Binging sucks.

Sugar, Motivation and Forgetting Why

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One of my Twitter buddies @LStephenCleary was tweeting the other day about the difficulty of kicking the sugar habit because sugar is in everything.

It is sooo true.

Sugar and high fructose corn syrup are in just about anything you put in your mouth. More important is that fact that many of sugar’s cousins or half brothers are in even the healthiest of foods like, say, a banana or orange. Sugar substitutes like Splenda® (a sucralose-based artificial sweetener derived from sugar) or its “natural” alternative. Stevia are in lots of things or available as stand alone products.

Then there is the “fake” sugar like aspartame.

What it all boils down to is that we love sweet and the food industry is going to make certain that doesn’t end anytime soon.

The downside to this, for me, is that is sets up a sugar craving or sugar addiction that needs to be fed from time to time.  With me, it tends to be the occasional nibble on a graham cracker or, more recently, real cookies and a Dairy Queen Blizzard.

I have a hard time, for some reason, staying motivated to keep on the “healthy” lifestyle of counting calories and eating only the good stuff.  The sugar jones is part of it.  The other part is forgetting why I want to reduce my weight to something I will feel good about.

It’s struggle, exercise, count and see a little progress at the scale. One day of going “off the wagon” and the needle starts spinning around the dial like a top.

It’s no wonder people opt for surgery.

Sugar Jones

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Sweetness is one of my addictions. Yeah. I’m sweet.  But what I’m really talking about is my addictions to all things sweet.  Candy, cookies, cake. candy bars (why do these all start with C?).

I’ve been trying to get my sweetness from fruit – clementines and bananas, mostly – and, of course, there is all the sugar in everyday food. Bread has sugar, salad dressing has sugar, diet soda has a sugar clone, breakfast cereal (another C word) has sugar.  It’s a freakin’ conspiracy. However, I really have been trying to be a good boy.

I feed my sugar jones with chocolate grahams (the word cracker is no longer on the label since this cookie-that-looks-like-a-cracker is really not a cracker). Two full sheets (8 small quarters) is a little over 100 calories.  Not too bad. I stay away from ice cream and the rest of it…as best I can.  I’m told the longer you stay away from it the less you want it.  I’m told that after awhile, sugary sweet things taste too sweet.

I’m not so sure.

I went to my Rotary club meeting this morning and they has these really nice (and big) chocolate chip cookies that were left over from the previous night’s Board meeting. I mean, these cookies were deluxe. And big.  Not huge.  Maybe about 4″ in diameter.  There was a cookie pusher.  “C’mon. These things were expensive and we don’t want them to go to waster!  Take one. Free.”

I took two.  I figured I would munch very slowly on one and keep another one for later.  Lunch or something.  I took a bite.  Oh…My…God.  It tasted so good.  Before I knew it I was done with Cookie #1 and Cookie #2 which was in the passenger seat of my car was not going to last for the drive home. If I had taken 3 or 4 cookies they would have been gone, too.  Luckily, my one attempt at self control – only taking two cookies – saved the day.

As soon as I got home, I swilled down some water and managed to get myself under control.  It was a little lesson for me.  I can’t have just one.  At least, not yet. The stuff tastes so good that I just want to have more and more and more. I gotta remember, “Just Say No”.

Damn.

Food – The Problem With Weight Reduction

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As I continue on this journey through weight reduction, it occurs to me that one of the biggest challenges with getting rid of the weight is food.  I know that sounds silly and stupid. Yet, for met it’s a big, big challenge.

You see, I don’t really cook.  At least, not well and nothing ever very fancy.  My wife doesn’t either.  She just never got it passed down from her mother who was a Depression era mother in an urban area.  So cans and processed foods were the way things were done.  Still are.  Easy, if not cheap and laden with so many calories you can’t keep count.  Ditto sodium which is none to good for old blood pressure readings.

So, the solution is to eat a lot of sandwiches or stuff on the run.  Things that come out of a box or a restaurant.  It’s really kind of sad but I klnow there are millions of people just like me who eat on the run or grab something simple or pre-prepared at the grocery store.  Sure.  Apples and bananas are simple and easy to eat and I go for them.  But, a lot of the time I’ll through some ham on two pieces of bread or fill up a bowl of cereal.

So, tonight, I’m thinking about food.  Now that Christmas is over and all the people who cook are done cooking and I’m left to my own devises,a gain. (Note:  all that “home cooking” over Christmas was so sugared up, fatted up and salted up that it might as well have had a skull and crossbones on it.  But it tasted soooo good.)

Maybe I should take cooking lessons.  Ya think?

Sugar Fix

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Try as I might, I have not been able to rid myself of these damn sugar cravings.  If it were socially acceptable, I’d probably sit down with a bowl of sugar and wolf it down like some people eat butter.

Thank God, I don’t have a butter craving.  Don’t get me wrong.  I love butter on lots of stuff.  I just can’t eat it straight.

But, back to sugar.  I get up from my reading, from watching TV, from going to the movies, at work, at play and I cruise around looking for the stray donut, muffin, cookie, candy bar, chocolate.  Anything.  It’s crazy.

Yeah.  I’ve tried hypnosis and just about everything else.  The sad part is that sugar, in one form or another, is in everything.  Ketchup, bread, potato chips. Even fruit, for God’s sake, which is supposed to be good for you!  So, even if I wanted to quit, I couldn’t.

It’s a commie plot.