I said in this post that I was going to report on how my no-sweets rule worked over the holidays, and now it’s January 4, so it’s time. And I have to say that it worked really well. I did participate in the chocolate tasting led by my sister-in-law, but all of the samples were dark chocolate except for one, and fine dark chocolate is not candy. I licked off one fingerful of the batter for the white chocolate cheesecakes I made for said SIL’s birthday party but that was pretty much it. I made sure that the snack I brought to the Christmas brunch at my brother’s house was something savory: smoked salmon spirals. I’ll include a description and recipe for that item later on this week. And I passed up on dessert at Christmas dinner. For the rest of the dinners we hosted over the holidays I relied on the Wagon Wheel Cookies that Jim and Gideon had made earlier this month and stockpiled in the freezer. I didn’t have any of those, either. I guess I should post that recipe, too. People go absolutely cuh-razy over them. And I drank not one drop of pink eggnog. The thing of it is, I know how it tastes. So why do I need to drink any? It’s just fun to watch everyone else drink it and come back for more. (I guess I’m in the same situation as a vegetarian who cooks a prime rib roast and enjoys seeing everyone else dig in.)The thing is, I didn’t feel particularly deprived. There were a couple of times when I felt a faint pang, or perhaps qualm, about a particular item. The little individual cheesecakes were so cute! But I had bought some raspberries at Costco when I was doing the shopping for that dinner, and they were an excellent dessert item with some heavy cream poured over them. If I was hungry I just ate something non-sweet. (A good snack for when the horrible sinking feeling hits: a handful of raw almonds and a cup of milk.) For me, abstaining works and moderation fails. I fall into the Lay’s Potato Chip camp: I can’t eat just one. Or some. My mind gets confused if I try to indulge just a little.
One guideline I followed: I did not over-explain about why I was abstaining. My family already knew, and others probably weren’t all that interested. If you don’t call attention to the fact that you’re not eating something, most people won’t even notice. As I’m sure I’ve already said, perhaps multiple times, just smile and say “No thank you.” And don’t worry about hurting someone’s feelings. Again, if you don’t make a big deal out of it they may not realize you’re not partaking. Don’t fall prey to the “What Will People Think?” disease.
So, I have to say that it’s a really nice feeling to sit here at the beginning of January and have no regrets about how I ate over the holidays. I managed to get my A1C number down to 5.9 back in mid-December, and at that point I was just initiating the strict no-sweets rule. At some point I’ll get re-tested and will hope to see a result below 5.7, which is the new pre-diabetes benchmark. It’s too bad that I have to have a health threat hanging over my head to get me to behave myself, and it’s too bad that I can’t indulge occasionally without going overboard, but there it is. I yam what I yam, as Popeye would say.