The complicated relationship between me and sugar

Okay, so it’s not really complicated, it’s quite straightforward. I love sugar. My bum does not.

Since I got back on SparkPeople.com I’ve been watching my carb and sugar intake more. I’m not depriving myself, but I’m trying to stay near the low end of the range that SparkPeople has given to me.

One thing I’m really striving to do is be more mindful of my food as I eat it, taking the time to taste and enjoy my food as described in the book French Women Don’t Get Fat, and that has made my carb intake very deliberate. When I eat a biscuit with my tea, I’m taking the time to taste it and enjoy it more.

What I’ve discovered is that I’ve been eating less carbs and not really noticing the change in my diet or feeling deprived. Instead of eating 2-3 biscuits with tea, I eat one or maybe one and a half, slowly in smaller pieces, enjoying the taste as I eat it, and I honestly don’t feel disgruntled at all that it’s less than I typically ate only 3 weeks ago.

One thing I did last night that surprised me:

I got a new cookie, Cinnamon Sugar Spice made by LU Biscuits, and while it’s good, it’s much sweeter than the McVitie’s Rich Tea biscuits and Digestive biscuits I’ve been eating with my tea. So instead of adding honey to my tea like I usually do, I drank my tea without sweetener and ate my cinnamon cookie. The extra sweetness of the cookie made up for the lack of honey in the tea and I was perfectly happy about it.

I think that a few weeks ago, I would have added honey to my tea and eaten the cinnamon cookie, and I wouldn’t have thought that the combo was too sweet. But now that I’ve been decreasing my carb intake each day and being more mindful of what I’m eating as I eat it, I was able to adjust my teatime snack because I could tell that the extra sugar was too much.

I know this might sound kind of stupid, but I really feel proud of myself for doing the adjustment. I don’t know if this will help anyone else trying to eat healthily, but I’m going to continue to try to monitor what I’m eating so I can make these small adjustments and learn to eat healthier. Every little bit counts, right?