Jogging Behind the Sugar-Free Wagon
Stop eating sugar and eliminate wrinkles. Seemed easy enough. Or so I thought.
It appears I have a sugar monkey on my back that I thought I’d gotten rid of years ago. I fully intended to omit the refined sweetener from my diet completely when I wrote the blog post “Does Sugar Cause Wrinkles?’ two weeks ago. But after two days of clean living I took a nose dive off the sugar-free wagon and have spent the last two weeks jogging along behind it with a bowl of ice cream cupped in one hand and a bag of chocolate chips clenched in the other. (And a giddy smile on my face.)
I’ve hopped aboard the wagon again. The question is: what healthy-but-sweet treat can I substitute for my nightly three scoops of Breyer’s Mint Chocolate Chip topped with a handful of chocolate chips and a puddle of homemade chocolate sauce?
I found a couple of things I like: Dates so sticky they remind me of truffles. The tender flesh that gives way to the delicately seedy crunch of a sweet dried fig. And prunes with the texture of soft caramel.
I’ll continue to look for even more alternatives to an obsession that, in two weeks, has plastered six extra pounds on my womanly frame. Great! Now it’s wrinkles and cellulite.
Saturday Long Runs 
Hey…I have a sugar monkey too! I even had ice cream INSTEAD of lunch the other day. OK…I’m not waiting to see how it goes…I’m on the no refined sugar bandwagon too! (call me if you get a sugar craving….I’ll suggest a cup of herbal tea with a big squirt of agave nectar).
BTW: Is agave nectar considered refined sugar? (I’m hoping not)
http://www.earthlygourmet.com/products/holykakowchocolate.html
Check out this site. This is yummy chocolate sauce that we purchased here in Oregon made from Agave. Good stuff!
Thanks for the suggestion, Melissa! I’ll buy a bottle to try it out (and get one for Jenn too!). Love the product name…Holy Kakow!
Whew, what a relief. I thought I was the only one with an out-of-control sweet tooth. Ice cream for lunch — hey, you’ve got protein, carbohydrates and fat. It seems like a balanced meal to me! ;-D
Ahem, I mean I am on the sugar-free wagon again too. And planning to take one day at a time. You know what they say about eating an elephant … you slather him down with Haagen-Dazs chocolate chocolate chip and eat him one bite at a time.
Ok, so learned a little more about agave nectar. It has the same number of calories as honey, but it has a lower glycemic impact,so it won’t cause as great a rise in blood sugar. (That’s because a high percentage of the sugars in agave nectar are in the form of fructose, which is not absorbed into the bloodstream but processed in the liver– I found this info on the nutrition data blog). Thus, it’s no better than sugar from a weight loss standpoint, but better from a blood sugar standpoint, and still not sure about the wrinkle part…
Math time!
My three 1/2-cup scoops of ice cream and 1/4 cup chocolate chips totals 730 calories, 42 grams of fat and 87 grams of carbohydrate.
The good news is it also contains 10 grams of protein. But that’s one helluva lot of baggage, or should I call it “saggage,” to justify the amount of protein in two eggs.
Those 87 grams of carbohydrate equal 21.75 teaspoons of sugar in my innocent looking bowl of ice cream with chocolate chips.
And the 42 grams of fat roughly equals a half stick of butter.
Jeez — this is sobering.