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Day 2 of attempt to stop eating so much sweet stuff, which includes diet soda.*

Naturally, one of the upstairs employees just sent out an email saying she's selling candy bars as part of a fundraiser for her son's prom. :/

* The theory, which I am probably messing up, being that the sweet taste revs your body to expect the calorie load from sugar and when it doesn't get the actual load ... er, something I forgot, which results in your body craving even more sweets. I don't know if that's behind my constant craving for sweets or not, but it's worth a try. Plus, and more to the point, I am tired of spending money on diet soda.

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Oh awesome! My boy and I are doing a challenge to see who can get further into the month without eating chocolate. And then I had girl scout cookies I ordered delivered... oh well, they will make a book treat at the end of the month! Perhaps you can do the same with the chocolate bar?

I am preventing myself from eating the chocolate bar by not going upstairs to get it. XD As long as none of my ILL requests come in today, I'm fine. :D

Ahaha. That is smart thinking too. Whatever happened to work pushing stair walking and dieting? It doesn't really go hand in hand with candy bars.

Well, there's the difference between what HR wants everyone to do, and what everybody's childrens' schools want them to do. XD

Luckily, I'm not really in the habit of purchasing too many candy bars and things from my coworkers, so it won't be *too* hard to resist. :D

Sorry I realized there was a separation between HR and the individual selling the bars, but I figured that HR would would kind of look down on something like that. Apparently selling candy in the office is a big thing to talk about as I saw a thing in the paper the other day about it. I personally don't think it is that big of a deal.

Eh, nobody here cares much about people selling stuff for fundraising activities.

er, something I forgot, which results in your body craving even more sweets

The sweet taste switches your pancreas from secreting glucagon (which breaks fat down into sugars) to secreting insulin (which stores sugars as fats); it can't do both at once. If it secretes more insulin than you need to deal with the sweet thing you've just eaten-- which, in the case of diet soda, is any insulin at all-- then you get what's called hyperinsulinemia: the excess insulin wanders around looking for any sugar it can grab onto, and fixes on your blood sugar. Which it binds and stores as fat, which causes a blood sugar drop, which makes you crave sweet things so as to boost your blood sugar immediately back to where it was.

Stopping this cycle from starting, for a period of a few weeks, will get the pancreas onto less of a hair-trigger, and make it more likely to only secrete as much insulin as it needs to. One other thing that can help with that is chromium supplements-- chromium is a necessary co-factor for insulin to work efficiently, and it's hard to get enough from dietary sources. I've found that a daily chromium supplement, taken fasting in the morning, really helps my appetite to stay commensurate with the amount of energy I'm using. (Be sure to get the chromium labeled GTF, for Glucose Tolerance Factor.)

Interesting, thanks! I just realized, also, that this might have an effect on frequency (or at least pain level) of migraines: I know that blood sugar levels have an effect on the levels of pain I'm feeling during them. Huh.

I thought caffeine withdraw was also triggering headaches for you though. So how can you get the caffeine without the sugar?

Tea. :) With 1 packet of Sweet & Low instead of my normal 2-3 to kill the bitterness. I'm not eliminating sweet, just reducing it, although I may switch to real sugar in my tea once I get around to buying some packets of it - the biggest problem is artificial sweeteners causing your body to look for expected calories, not real sugar, which supplies the expected calories.

Oh smart! You know I actually prefer fake sugar in my tea because I only have to put in a pack instead of a ton of the real stuff. I wonder what the amount of difference is in artificial sweetener in tea and soda. I would assume it is much higher in the soda.

I use fake sugar in tea for the same reason, although if I manage to adjust my sweet tooth down then theoretically I won't have to use as much real stuff. :)

I do, however, promise NOT to be all self-satisfied about saying "I only use REAL sugar!" as so many people I know do every time I make a grab for the pink stuff. That's incredibly annoying.

Ugh yes. I use fake sugar because I only need one packet and because to me it seems to dissolve quicker. I haven't run across too many people like that though. But on the other hand I think the splenda packets look more like real sugar than the neon pink sweet and low.

I tend to get a very faint off taste when I put Splenda in hot tea that I don't get from Sweet & Low, so I stick to the pink stuff. XD

Go you! I have found that I can give up/reduce my soda, sugar, and sweetener intake without much fuss, but they will have to pry my chocolate chip granola bars out of my cold dead hands.

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