Sweet Enough

You’ve probably heard the speel on the negative effects of sugar on more than one occassion. It’s likely that you’ve noticed the shopping centres being filled with more aisles with sugar laden items than fresh produce. If we stayed away from three quarters of the supermarket and stuck to the fresh section we wouldn’t be doing too badly – both our waistline and our wallet would be more than grateful. We’d avoid conditions like diabetes, heart disease, obesity and a host of others that can deteriorate our quality of life.

I do love my chocolate though as I’ve mentioned before. Although recently I’ve been noticing the effects sugar has on my body and mind and I don’t like it. Nowadays I’m more likely to purchase some salsa and plain crackers to indulge rather than a block of chocolate – unless it’s good quality Lindt of course. I figure with the salsa I buy I’m getting some extra veggies.

On Fridays at work we sometimes have morning teas where everyone brings something – this usually means cakes, biscuits, crackers, dips, cheeses and sausage rolls with tomato sauce. Normally I’d stick to a couple of crackers, a few pieces of camembert and some beetroot dip. Yesterday, I had a slice of cake, a biscuit, half a sausage roll and some crackers with cheese and dip. Within ten minutes I felt my sugar levels going out of control. I didn’t like it. I felt jittery and uncomfortable for most of the day. And this wasn’t the first time.

What this experience has taught me is that I have to be more conscious of what I eat and when I eat it. Sugar is extremely unhealthy. It’s funny how you see people digging into the sweets but cutting out carbs when they it should be the other way around. Sugar is a poison and it is slowly killing us from the inside out. Cutting out sugar from our meals and snacks is one of the best things we can do for our health, I figure we’re all sweet enough as it is.

I’d love to say I’m cutting out sugar completely but I know that’s not realistic. I like my chocolate and I enjoy a tea with lemon and honey in the evening. Biscuits and cakes aren’t necessarily a problem though I’m sure if I told myself I couldn’t have them I’d want to binge on them. So I’m just slowly going to ease off the sugar and get ninety percent of it from my two to three servings of fruit per day. Maybe in a few months I’ll surprise myself and be completely sugar free. Next week I’m going to try to cut out the Guylian Seashells and Strawberry Freddos I’ve been having Monday to Friday at my desk.

Are you sweet enough or do you indulge in too many sugary items?

Yesterday’s training was ok. I’ve got Fridays scheduled as rest days but I decided to go for a run at 5:20am because I knew that I’d be having morning tea at work and overindulging. I managed a 20 minute run. First I warmed up for ten minutes with light jogging around my neighbourhood and then I tackled the hill that is my street. It’s about 100m long from the bottom to the top and a great hill to train on. I ran up and down three times and felt exhausted but really content. I’ll be increasing the hill runs by one each week until I can run up and down the hill about 12-15 times. The benefits will be stronger legs and less injury.