Idle Hands

My first week (mostly) sugar free seems to have gone pretty well. I ended up eating a piece of good dark chocolate most days, just to get over the hump, and I didn't notice that the pasta sauce I used had sugar in it (Newman's Own of all things) until after I'd already enjoyed a decent serving on my whole grain pasta. I am beginning to feel like the withdrawal is waning.

The things I continue to struggle with are the ones that always give me trouble. One is my never-ending sweet tooth. When I did this before, I fed it with fruit. That is something I'm having and even harder time with. I am guessing it has a lot to do with the season. Dried is OK, but it doesn't take much and you've had too much. Along with that is of course the lack of good fresh produce in general. My big successes last summer had everything to do with the gigantic portions of fresh veggies I used to fill myself up. I think I'm adjusting, it is just taking time.

The other thing that always gets me is snacking when bored. When food is your comfort, it isn't just for stress anymore, it is for everything. That time, after dinner, before M goes to bed, that sucks. The time after she goes to bed, before my 8 PM cut off time for eating (which I have done a remarkably good job of respecting), is even worse. If I workout, I tend to be fine, but if I don't, I should install locks on the single serve bags of popcorn and dried fruit.

I've decided that the only way to resolve it is to keep my hands busy. If I'm focused on something else, then I won't be bored enough to want to nibble my time away. I should be working more on housework, but while a super clean house would be nice, I think it would leave me more miserable if all I did was clean.

Instead, I'm going to go back to doing some knitting. Not just any knitting either, I'm going to take on new challenges, as well as a really large project that is overdue to for my sweet husband. The first I started this weekend. They are a pair of cabled wrist warmers. I took this original pattern, couldn't seem to get it to work, then completely ripped it out a few times and reworked it in to my own pattern. There are still more improvements I'd like to make, so after I finish the pair, I may do it again. I just didn't want to start over another time when there is nothing really wrong with them, I just want to try more complicated cables.