Sugar. Heroin. And the Difference Is?

Sucrose suppositories. You know, to take the edge off.
Source

My friend Skye posted the following as her Facebook status this morning:

I just read that treating yourself to chocolate for breakfast can help you with craving sweets for the rest of the day......I just ate 3 brownies and wouldn't mind 3 more. Where do they get their stats?

I am inclined to agree. I try to eat cooked oat groats for breakfast every day in an effort to lower my cholesterol. My favorite way to eat oatmeal of any sort is with eggs, vegetables, salt, pepper, olive oil, and cheese. I don't do the whole cinnamon and brown sugar thing - in fact I find it quite gaggy. I thought I would give myself a treat last week though, and decided to top my groats with a smattering of butterscotch and semi-sweet chocolate chips. There were pecans involved as well, and it was pretty much delicious. I thought I was doing myself a favor, getting the sugar out of the way early in the day. 

Not so. Every day that started with my modest sugar consumption seemed to snowball into a sugar binge. I felt like a junkie. Every moment was spend wonder when and where my next hit of sugar was going to come from. Weight loss ground to a halt. Water was retained. Caffeine was consumed. Sleep was lost. My body became a jittery roadmap of pain until the sugar coma finally overtook me. After two or three days of this, I added a bag of Kale to the rest of the cooked groats and started to feel better.

I am realizing more and more that sugar makes me feel like crap in general, and that starting the day off with it is a particularly bad idea. Don't let General Mills fool you, it is a drug. A tasty, tasty drug. The high might be good for a minute, but the low and the crash sucks for days. 

I need to stop the madness. I need to break the addiction. I wonder if Betty Ford will take my case?

From the Laboratory of Uranium J . . .

OHI Confessions: I ate out this weekend and I was generally bad as far as eating. The silver lining is that I was far more active than normal, so maybe that canceled my poor food choices. As of right now, I am recommitting to OHI. I have a lot more energy right now and I plan to use this to my advantage. I feel like my meds are really working well for me right now. I have a fairly positive attitude, and I don't feel totally out of control, so I'm counting it as a win.

 That Sprout and I will be on our own for the next 25 days or so as j^C is in Louisiana on a teaching engagement. In order to keep ourselves busy, I have decided to undertake some "little projects". These are science and engineering projects, so I feel kind of like a mad scientist in her lab. I'm pretty excited about this. It's nice to have the energy and the drive to get some things done.

My first science project is already under way. Even as we speak, I have a very pretty jar basking in the sun on my front walk full of what will soon be chamomile detox tea. If this goes well, I plan to use up all my medicinal teas and then start brewing some herbal teas. Hopefully, That Sprout will like them and we can end our dependence on store bought juices. Right now, the goal is to A) discover whether or not the jar leaks, and B) find out if the tea tastes good. I am sure any leaks can be fixed, it's the taste I'm not sure about. At any rate, I hope to get That Sprout in on the action soon - I remember making sun tea with my mom when I was little and it was a lot of fun.

I'm also experimenting with my daily facial routine. Right now I am having my first acne breakout since high school. My face is covered in a myriad of pimples, zits, whiteheads, and boils. Not pretty and very painful. I bought some Clearasil the other night with the hope that it would help. I have really dry skin, so the goal is to keep my skin properly moistened without encouraging the growth of more acne. Thankfully, I have a doctor's appointment this week, so I will be bringing this up. I have a feeling this is a reaction to my medicine.   Let's hope it goes away soon and my skin care efforts are not in vain. I am proud of so few of my physical attributes, I need to have at least one trait that gives me confidence.

I am going to leave you all for now - I've got other projects and experiments to start. Hopefully I'll have good news to report to you all later. :-)