Overall, this week went pretty well. The first day seemed easy, but the second and third, I really noticed that I'd started craving sweet treats at certain times. Evenings were the challenge, when I had downtime that seemed like it could be improved by the addition of some small sugary thing. I'm lucky that I don't drink my coffee and tea with sugar, or I imagine it would have been much more difficult. If there's one thing I'd recommend to start the steps to decreasing sugar, it would be to slowly take it out of your coffee and tea. Once you get used to drinking things without the added sweetness, it becomes hard to drink them with it.
I did make a few mistakes, usually when people offered me something small and before I could think about the sugar content, I'd already accepted. I didn't let this stress me out too much. Often, in the past when I've taken on dietary changes, I've allowed myself to believe that any mistake is unforgivable. I've noticed it's a common trend with people, that everything is all-or-none, and that the art of making healthy changes is being able to say, "oh well, I ate something with sugar, but I'm doing pretty well overall, so there's no need to feel like I failed," because as soon as I use the term failure, there's zero chance that I'm going to keep working at it, which long term is much worse for my health than one slip-up. In my experience, perfectionism rarely pays off.
I'm going to keep working at this challenge, like all the other ones, because I know that it takes a few weeks before I'll stop craving excess sugar. Everything else is going relatively well, except that stretching after workouts is slipping a bit, so I think I'm going to go back to doing yoga 4 out of 7 days, because I realize it was helping a lot. On Monday, I'll be taking on another challenge that won't be so easy for me, but is definitely a good idea.
I did make a few mistakes, usually when people offered me something small and before I could think about the sugar content, I'd already accepted. I didn't let this stress me out too much. Often, in the past when I've taken on dietary changes, I've allowed myself to believe that any mistake is unforgivable. I've noticed it's a common trend with people, that everything is all-or-none, and that the art of making healthy changes is being able to say, "oh well, I ate something with sugar, but I'm doing pretty well overall, so there's no need to feel like I failed," because as soon as I use the term failure, there's zero chance that I'm going to keep working at it, which long term is much worse for my health than one slip-up. In my experience, perfectionism rarely pays off.
I'm going to keep working at this challenge, like all the other ones, because I know that it takes a few weeks before I'll stop craving excess sugar. Everything else is going relatively well, except that stretching after workouts is slipping a bit, so I think I'm going to go back to doing yoga 4 out of 7 days, because I realize it was helping a lot. On Monday, I'll be taking on another challenge that won't be so easy for me, but is definitely a good idea.
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