I'm What?

This ends the 4th week since I've made a conscious effort to eliminate sugar from my diet. It's getting a bit easier to get used to they way foods, like coffee and oatmeal, taste without sugar. Although, I still use creamer in my coffee. It does contain a little sugar (vanilla silk creamer has 3g), but I refuse to give up my creamer!

Last week, I went to the doctor. Since my old doctor retired, I saw someone else. Seeing someone new always causes me great anxiety. Doctors are not my favorite people. It seems that, although, the industry has certain consistent standards, there is such a huge spectrum of philosophies within the profession. Not to mention some pretty strong personalities. When I find a doctor I like, (easy going, promotes a natural method for staying healthy instead of a chemical method), I am extremely loyal. Anyway, I saw someone new. I liked her straight away. Since she had never seen me before, she ordered a full panel of lab work, just to get a baseline.

Earlier this week, the nurse called me with my lab results. Diabetes and hypothyroidism runs in my family, so I'm always nervous that lab work will show a problem in those areas. Well, she said everything was fine, except that I was very deficient in vitamin D. Um, excuse me? How is that possible? I don't live in London or Seattle...She said that it was more common than people think. Since a number of adults work indoors a majority of the day, they don't absorb enough vitamin D from sun exposure. I thought about it for a minute; I am a firm believer in sunscreen. It's rare that any part of my skin that's exposed, isn't protected by sunscreen. I stopped drinking (dairy) milk about 6 years ago and eat very little dairy. And during the winter months, I'm inside at work shortly after the sun rises and coming home just after the sun sets.

As soon as I got off the phone with the nurse, I immediately started reading about vitamin D. How could I recognize if I'm deficient in the future? I found this article that gives a pretty good overview, in layman's terms. Fatigue - yes, moodiness - yes, always in the winter time (I loathe the winter), more body fat? Hmmm. I also read on another site, that people who experience difficulty in losing weight and/or notice a tendency to distribute fat in the abdomen, should have their vitamin D levels checked. Well, who knew?

It will be interesting to see how supplementing my diet with 2,000 I.U. (international units) of vitamin D will affect my energy level and weight loss. This week, I'm down 2 more pounds. I've been feeling like I'm catching a cold, so I haven't really exercised much this week. Hopefully, I'll get back into my routine next week.

Bumps in the Road

It's been 3 weeks since I decided to (try and) eliminate sugar from my diet. I live on the 6th floor of my building and have become accustomed to taking the elevator. The elevators are old and slow. There's no telling how many minutes I lose waiting for elevator. So, unless my hands are full of heavy groceries, I've started using the stairs. It's actually not so bad. By the time I want to abort taking the stairs, I'm almost to my floor.

After losing a few pounds (3 to be exact), I had to go out of town. Although, I tried to make smart meal decisions, it was difficult. When eating out, I couldn't be sure of how something was prepared, and I refused to be one of those people. You know, the one who makes restaurant servers want to put visine in their food. Needless to say, my weight remained constant over the weekend. But it was better than putting the weight back on!

Once I returned from my weekend trip, I was back on track with my diet. I lost two more pounds! Then. The. Weekend. Happened. Oy vey! Saturday night, I hosted a "Girl's Night In - Game Night."


While we're still somewhat coherent...


I have no idea what Shanda is "miming."


And the winner of "Guestures Best Performance" goes to....Trina!


I made a vegetarian version of scalloped potatoes. We had plenty of food and sugary cocktails. Of course, I indulged. A LOT. Those two pounds I lost? I found them again. Just a side note...we played a game called, Partini, and it was a blast. The packaging, in and of itself, is fun. I'm such a sucker for packaging.

This week, once again, I'm back on track. Yesterday, though, I had a huge craving for sugary sweets. I had some dark chocolate cooking chips at home, so I had a handful of those. My hope was that if I indulged a little, I would satisfy my craving and avoid it overwhelming me to the point that I would completely binge. It worked pretty well. I wonder if the craving was my body's reaction to the sudden change in my sugar intake. Seems logical, right? Although, I am still getting sugar from fruit each day...but according to the video previously posted, sugar from fruits & veggies aren't so bad, because it's offset by the fiber contained in the food.

This morning, I weighed myself; 2 more pounds gone! That's a total of 5lbs since I made a conscious effort to nix sugar from my diet.