Diaries of a Girl Gone Dark and Bitter (I'm talking chocolate of course!)

January 1, 2012: Day 1 of Reduced Sugar

I thought I’d kick off my month of no sugar by treating myself to some of the world’s finest chocolates (I have not given up all sugar, I can have 70% to 100% chocolate, you can read about my plan here). So today I just casually snacked on bits and pieces of an Amedei Toscano Black (70%), an Amedei Porcelana (70%) and an Amano Madagascar (also a 70%). The blog post on these will be up in the coming days when I have more time to really taste and compare, but next time with Amedei's Chuao bar thrown in. 

The thing about eating a lot of sugar for several weeks (i.e. the weeks leading up to Christmas time, when there tends to be a lot of parties with desserts, truffles, chocolate, candy, etc.) is that you are instantly bored on the very first day that you stop eating sugar.

I have been wandering around the house restlessly trying not to think about tea and cookies all afternoon.  I have snacked on crackers, cheese, almonds, Greek yogurt (it wasn’t “plain” yogurt, but it was a honey-bottom yogurt, so I just did not stir it so that I could avoid the layer of honey at the bottom), rice noodles, green peppers, and the list goes on and on.  I feel like I am on some sort of strange crash diet where I am told that I can eat however much I want, except for the things that I want to eat most of all.

Of course, I am not really on a diet.  I have not decided to stop eating savoury things, like chips, French fries, hamburgers or other kinds of junk food.  But I do not normally eat a lot of that stuff anyway.  When I want something unhealthy to snack on, I usually start with something sweet and it is almost always something chocolaty.  And, I have only decided to drop everything that has added sugar (or sweetener like honey), so that cuts out cookies, cinnamon rolls, honey, muffins, etc.  Again, I do not often consume these things....well, except for the cookies. I like oatmeal chocolate chip or butter cookies that have been dipped in dark chocolate...go figure.  But for some reason, by suddenly deciding that I can’t have something, I want it even more.  And now I can’t stop thinking about cookies.

I have not set any limits to the amount of chocolate that I can eat, just that this week it has to only be 70% or darker chocolate, next week 80% or darker and so on until the end of January. However, I am nursing my baby and feel guilty every time that I eat more than 50 grams of dark chocolate in a day (because of the caffeine). And being unable to eat cookies and being unable to eat any more 70% chocolate today, I started restlessly wandering...which led to the restless (and endless) snacking. 

If only it wasn’t a holiday, and I just had more to do....maybe tomorrow will be easier when I am working again.  Except, of course, I own a chocolate and pastry business and won’t even be able to snack on cake scraps or broken TOFFLEs.  Yikes, this is going to be a long month.