Slip ups

My camera man is away on holidays today, weigh in with pictures will be tomorrow.

There have been a few things I've struggled with so far and I'd like to share them and how I went about overcoming them.

The most obvious is the sugar cravings at the start. Strangely, these took a couple of days to kick in but once they did, it was quite annoying. Coming off the mince pie diet was quite a shock to the system. I found that green tea can be very helpful. Mostly, when I notice that I'm craving sugar, it's out of boredom and going to the effort of making green tea can direct my attention enough that I'll get distracted by something shiny and forget about food for a little while.

For the inappropriate hunger pangs, (e.g. just 20 minutes after a meal when I know I couldn't possibly be hungry) I've been having a glass of soda water. For the first few weeks, I made sure I always had soda water with me everywhere I went. What I'd been mistaking for hunger a lot of the time was just excess acid in my stomach and the bicarbonate in the soda water can help neutralise that. After a few mouth fulls of the stuff, I'd usually find that I wasn't hungry at all.

I haven't counted calories at all during this challenge, just listened to my body and ate when I reckoned it was time to do so. Portion control for me meant eating very slowly. It takes awhile for the body to register it's been fed so by slowing down my eating, the amount I was eating was closer to what I needed.

Temptation wasn't too much of an issue for me this time because I'm doing this publicly and for charity. I've had a lot of support; no one's been trying to tempt me into hell with their homemade cheesecake. If there are some biscuits doing the rounds, they generally don't come my way and I've been careful to keep my kitchen sugar free. I've been in surprisingly few situations where my will has been tested.
That said, since the start I've had an almost obsessive craving for a slice of toast with marmalade which I finally succumbed to last night; one of two infractions since Beerlin (the other one was a single sneaky housewarming bottle of beer last week). I was disappointed and pleased at the same time to find that my taste buds have changed and it was tasteless and bland. I had a fillet of salmon soaked in lemon juice later and it was infinitely tastier. When I finish this challenge, I think I may continue with this way of eating save for the odd bottle of beer.

There is one thing that I'm still struggling with though and this is where my self restraint meets it's limit. COFFEE. It's not exactly going to damage the outcome, it'll just make me feel a bit crap along the way. I said I was going to give up coffee as I couldn't cope with the insulin spikes and dips but I lasted approximately 4 days. There was one morning I was up at 6am for work and used that as a justification for "just one cup" which the following day that became two cups and it's snowballed from there. Why does it taste so good and make me so happy only to bring me crashing into an abyss of grumpy crapiness?! I know it might be obvious that green tea could help here too, but sometimes I go in to the kitchen to make a cup of green tea and my hands suddenly get a mind of their own and completely without my permission, I leave the kitchen with a steaming cup of damn fine coffee, black as a moonless night and sure once I have it in my hand, with all those lovely smells, I have to drink it. I'd be interested to know if anyone has a solution for this heinous addiction.

P.S. I do not recognise decaf coffee as a viable alternative.

Mmmmmmmmmm.............. coffee..................