The temptation began on March 1, the first day of my second attempt at a “No Sweets” month. With February’s failure still on my mind, my daughter reminded my wife and me that we’d promised ice cream to her when she went to bed the previous night.She was looking for Dairy Queen.Through some smooth talking—but really, how smooth did it have to be, it’s still ice cream—my wife convinced her to “settle” for Baskin-Robbins. So after dinner I made a Baskin-Robbins run and bought cones for three of my kids. None for me though. Victory!For one day.But the temptations kept coming. March 4 was pancakes with strawberries and whipped cream. March 5 my wife made banana bread. I love my wife’s banana bread almost as much as I love my wife. March 7 my parents came over to visit the kids. My mom brought some fancy chocolate and caramel cake. March 8, more cake. March 9 a nice grandmother at work left a donut and two chocolate chip cookies on my desk.Do these people hate me?March 10 I went to the store to get my wife some medicine for her ailing foot. “Can you stop at McDonald’s and get me an ice cream cone?”Have you ever realized how long March is? Thirty-one days! That’s 744 hours without sweets. And the temptation just kept coming.My wife made chocolate chip cookies. Twice.We went to a birthday party for my friend’s son and they had plenty of cake.Toward the end of the month four boxes of Girl Scout Cookies arrived at our house. Girl Scout Cookies! Thin mints, Samoas and Tagalongs. What person in their right mind declines Girl Scout Cookies?Much to my own amazement, I declined them! This is even more surprising to me since I vividly remember an occasion three or four years ago in which I bought some Girl Scout Cookies at work and proceeded to eat half the box of Samoas while sitting at my desk.(Don’t act like you haven’t done the same thing!)This rare-for-me exhibition of will power and impulse control continued for the entire month of March. No ice cream. No candy. No cookies. No cake. I did it. I made it through the entire month of March without having any sweets. I have no official confirmation of this, but I suspect it’s the first month I’ve gone without sweets since I was still swimming in amniotic fluid.(As always, there’s one footnote to be made: My four-year-old daughter made some cookies and a cake with her Easy Bake Oven. She was very proud of her culinary skills, and gave me some to try. When your four-year-old daughter bakes cookies and gives one to you, you eat it. No questions asked. If you want to count that against my No Sweets feat, go ahead. But have you no soul?)So what the heck was the point of not having sweets in March? Well, once again, I proved to myself that I could do it. That’s enough for me. However, I did learn a few other things.Sugar probably is addictive. I avoided food that’s explicitly loaded with sugar (my definition of sweets), but there’s hidden added sugar in gobs of foods like bread, ketchup and peanut butter. When I eat sugar I want more sugar. But that doesn't seem to hold true if I have just a little sugar, like what's added to many "non-sweet" foods.The first few days are the worst. If I have some sugar and then I want more sugar, it makes sense that my body’s not going to be too happy if I don’t give it more sugar. So for a few days it yelled, “Give me some sugar,” and I said, “Shut your face, Body! I don’t want to hear it.”It gets easier. Eventually my body learned the new normal. It stopped demanding more sugar. It stopped looking at cakes and cookies and all that other sugary good(bad)ness. After eleven or twelve days, not only did it become easier to say no to sweets, but my body didn’t even ask if it could have them, so I didn’t have to say no.Sugar is sweet. This is obvious, you’d think. But until I celebrated the end of No Sweets month with one of my wife’s ridiculously tasty chocolate chip cookies at midnight on April 1, I never realized just how sweet. I’m quite sure I tasted every single grain of sugar in that cookie.
And my favorite ice cream place reopened on April 1, so I ate there, too.And I loved it.
Since then I’ve continued to eat sweets. Carrot cheesecake/cake. Gummy bears. More chocolate chip cookies. My body craves it once again. But tonight I plan on eating the last piece of that carrot cheesecake and then telling my body to shut up again for a week or two.In the meantime, I’ll concentrate on succeeding on April’s challenge for my Year of Doing Without: no peanuts. This may seem like no big deal to you, but I assure you it’ll be a challenge for me, especially considering it’s the time of year for Reese’s peanut butter eggs.Failure IS an option.PREVIOUS POST: That Time I Met a Girl at a BarIF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: PB&J the Right Way+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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