Healthy Pumpkin Spice Muffins You'll Love

It's a rainy, warm, and muggy day in July (translation - movie day!), but inside my house it may as well be November! I've got my cozy pants on, fall scented candles burning, and pumpkin spice muffins in the oven. I just ran out of the zucchini muffins my little one brings to school, so it was time to make another batch!

I like muffins because they are portable, don't necessarily have to be refrigerated during the day, and they are easy for kids to eat. But, muffins can also be a calorie and sugar bomb if you're not careful. I've adapted this recipe over time and now feel confident giving them to my kids as a sweet treat that won't send them into that crazed and dazed look that they get when they have too much sugar. 

 Here's what Dr. Sears has to say about the affects of excess sugar on kids.

Here's the recipe and the nutritional low-down so you can make some of your own!

Pumpkin Spice Muffins

Who says you have to wait for fall?

1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup bread flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
1 tsp pumpkin spice
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup orange juice
1 cup pumpkin
1/4 cup butter, melted
1/2 cup raisins

It's Easy:
1. Mix your dry ingredients and wet ingredients in separate bowls, and then combine them, stirring just enough to combine them. Do not over-stir or your muffins will be too tough.

2. Spoon into greased muffin tins about halfway full. I opt for smaller muffins. We can always have another one, but its hard to undo eating a big one!

3. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Enjoy!

This recipe should make 14 muffins, and each has 112 calories, 4 grams of fat, 3 grams of protein, and 5 grams of sugar, most of those coming from the raisins. Please note that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends 12 grams of sugar each day for children. One of these muffins represents almost half of a child's sugar needs for the day. Take a look at a typical muffin recipe, note the amount of sugar called for, and consider where that muffins may fall in your child's sugar needs for the day!

To reduce the sugar in these muffins, do not use as many raisins.

Read more about sugar allowance in Sugar Shake Up: How Much Do You Need?

These muffins are sweet and simple, and I love that my kids love them. They made my house super cozy today and when paired with low-sugar yogurt or low-fat cheese, will make a great snack later in the week.

And, they make my house smell great!

Get out there and get healthy today, even if you bake muffins!

Is a calorie really just a calorie? (We need to talk about soda.)

Okay guys. We all know that in order to lose or maintain weight, its simple addition and subtraction:

calories eaten in food - calories burned through exercise = net calories for body function

Click here to learn how to calculate your body's calorie needs.

If we burn more than we eat, our body begins to lose weight. If we eat more than we burn, our body begins to gain weight. Simple, right?

Except there are all sorts of ways to make it complicated. Some experts say that a calorie is a calorie, and a net deficit in calories leads to weight loss regardless of whether those calories are in apples and spinach or in candy bars and ice cream. Technically, that is true.

Then there are experts that tell us that all calories are not created equal, and that some foods are better for weight loss than others. This is also true.

And still more experts argue that on top of eating nutritionally superior calories, we need to pay attention to what foods we eat when, and with what other foods we eat them, and at what point in relation to exercise. And yes, this is true as well.

Before we know it, this very simple math problem turns into a Master's program in nutrition, becoming so confusing and frustrating that many of us don't even try to eat right because the sheer magnitude of figuring out what to eat is too overwhelming.

Well, I don't have a Master's degree in nutrition, but I know this much is true:

• I've lost weight eating crap and gained it all back.
• I've lost weight eating clean and maintained it easily for going on five years.

While all calories may be created equally for weight loss, all calories are not created equally when it comes to health. Yes, I'm talking about sugar. Advertising companies will tell us that we can have sugar as part of a healthy lifestyle, but leading research is showing just about every day that this is not true. Sugar calories are not only completely void of nutrients, but they are direct contributors to obesity and impaired brain function that leads to overeating.

A Sip of Soda: What's the Fuss?

Sugar hides in many of our foods, but one place where it is loud and proud is in soda. Just ditching your soda habit can help you lose weight, reduce your sweet tooth, and put a stop to a myriad of other health complications waiting in the wings. Like these:

Via: Term Life Insurance

Losing weight is just one part of the whole-health picture. Calories are precious and should be working for you, not against.

Get out there and get healthy, and make it as complicated or simple as you want it to be! You don't need an advanced degree to figure out the simple formula of good health: eat real food, get exercise every day, and your body will take care of the rest.

The Sugar Shake-up: How much do you really eat?

We all know by now that we as a nation need to reduce our sugar consumption. It's making us fat, giving us diabetes, raising our cholesterol, raising our blood pressure, and causing who knows what else that we'll learn about later! 

Read here about why to reduce sugar in your diet today!

But, sugar is cheap and lobbyists are good at their jobs so its not likely that we'll see sugar making an exit on its own. To get rid of it, you have to take matters into your own hands. You also need to get a teaspoon, a bag of sugar, a ziplock bag, and a calculator. 

What's that, you say? You stopped eating candy and dumped soda? That's great! But I'm willing to bet you are still eating lots of sugar. Its hiding everywhere. Here's a quick way to find out just how much of it is making its way into your metabolism.

On the Nutrition Facts label of a food package, it will sometimes (not always) list the grams of sugar per serving. Four grams is about 1 teaspoon of sugar. One teaspoon of sugar is about 16 calories. So, if a product has 12 grams of sugar you can divide that by 4 to realize it is 3 teaspoons in each serving. If you're worried about calories, that's 48 calories.

Read this long but well-researched New York Times article, "Is Sugar Toxic?"

Here's how to drive that home a little more. Get that teaspoon and spoon out three teaspoons of sugar into a ziplock bag. Would you eat that? Or pour it into your child's mouth? Of course not. But, that's what you do when you give your child one of these:

Which, I should admit, was in my pantry. My kid loves these, and they used to be a once-a-day habit for him. Now we're down to two or three a week and he has to eat fruit and drink some water first. He knows now that even though they taste really good (to him, they are way too sweet for me), they are a "sometimes food." Not a treat, not a reward. They're junk food that we only eat once in a while because its bad for our bodies. Even though it says organic. Organic sugar is still sugar.

Now, in all fairness, most foods also contain fiber, protein, and other nutrients that help your body absorb that sugar better than if you just poured it into your mouth. But the American Heart Association (AHA) recommends the following limits for sugar in our diets:

• Women: no more than 100 calories, about 6 teaspoons.
• Men: no more than 150 calories of added sugar, about 9 teaspoons.
• Preschoolers: no more 4 teaspoons a day.
• Children ages 4-8: no more than 3 teaspoons a day. 
• Pre-teens: maximum 5 to 8 teaspoons.

Read more about what the American Heart Association says about sugar in our diets.

And keep in mind that the AHA is likely heavily lobbied by sugar producers.

So go through your pantry and fridge and do the math. Start with cereal and yogurt. Then, if you really want to remember this lesson, tape that little bag of sugar to the front of the package and leave it there so you can see it the next time you reach in for a snack. Is that where you want to spend your sugar budget?

Sugar is not all bad. But, the impact of too much of it is. Get out there and get healthy today, even if you have to spend a lot of time standing in your pantry with a calculator and getting really ticked off.

The Business of Food

The USDA Plate vs. the Harvard Healthy Eating Plate.
Chocolate milk as an after-workout recovery drink.
Sugar is sugar: high fructose corn syrup is perfectly fine to eat!
And today's message: how sugar is more additive than cocaine.

These messages and more clog the airways every week with some new breaking news about what we should really be eating. For real this time. No, seriously, this is the real truth. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!

They all have an element of truth, and we all believe at least a little bit of them. Navigating food has become a high-contact sport and relying on "research" to justify our nutrition choices makes it easier to decide which fork in the road to take: is dairy really bad? Is natural organic sugar really better? I don't know, I just want a sandwich! Is that okay anymore?

Honestly, I'm not a scientist or a nutritionist so I can't tell you anything more than my opinion based on my experience, which is this:

1. I used to get caught in the web of confusing food rules (and sometimes still do) and it all got a lot easier for me when I tuned it out and started eating primarily fruit, vegetables, lean protein, and whole grains in moderation.  I was happier, healthier, wealthier, and much less stressed out.

2. When I ate 99.999% "perfect" and did two hours of insane workouts every day I had a kick-ass body and was in excellent, excellent shape.  It was awesome. When I started eating dessert once in a while and drinking a glass or two of wine on the weekends, I gained a little back but was nicer to the people around me. That was awesome too. You just have to choose the kind of awesome that is right for you.

3. Food is a business, and most people's minds are for sale. When I dig around behind the scenes of articles like the ones above, I usually find the motive - a food lobbying group that funds research to prop up whatever idea they want to convince us of. That's not to say the research is faulty or that every funding group is up to no good. It's just a reminder that it's there. Most research has a motive, and it is not always in your best interest.

If you're lost in the web today, there are some quick ways to get out. First, ask yourself whether you are eating in a way that is sustainable for the long haul. Can you live without an entire food group for your entire life? Can you eat in restaurants with your friends on occassion without feeling like you need to "splurge"? If those answers are "no," then you are not sustainable. Second, assess whether you are being true to yourself. Are you walking one way and talking another? If you're eating one way in public and another way at home, check yourself before you wreck yourself. And third, are you happy with how you feel? You're the only one who lives in your body 24/7, so be honest: does the food you put into that machine make you run like a race car or a clunker? How does that feel at the end of the day?

Research, marketing, fad diets, and promises made on late-night television cannot erase how you feel when you eat. Dump the hype and do what you know is truly, really, honestly healthy: eating clean, from the earth, healthy food that doesn't necessarily come with a marketing budget.

Get out there and get healthy!

The Case of the Missing Sweet Tea

I'm born and raised in the south, where sweet tea might as well be part of the state constitution. It's sold by the gallon, gulped and slurped through straws in styrofoam go-cups, and practically poured into baby bottles.  So naturally, I hear all the time from people who want to lose weight that, "I'll never be able to give up my sweet tea." 

I just nod and smile because I've been there and thought the same thing. I've never been a sweet tea drinker myself (I blame that on my midwestern parents) but diet soda?  We used to go steady. I'd go through four cans of Diet Vanilla Coke in the course of one football game (that's what kept me from eating chips, dip, wings, and pigs in a blanket).  Eventually, though, I wised up to the damage of artificial sweeteners and weaned myself off. Now I've been soda free for going on five years. *applause!*

Sugar, whether it is real or artificial, has a death grip on our country. I'm not exaggerating too much - we're learning more and more about the role that sugar plays in obesity and disease. So it's imperative that we start creating strategies for getting off sugar and retraining our tastebuds to appreciate food and drinks without it.  I help people create these strategies all the time, and nothing makes me happier than two recent events that had me smiling from ear to ear.

The first was my incredibly handsome and witty husband. I've been systematically lowering our sugar intake for years, but he continued to drink his coffee with loads of artificial sweetener. I felt like such a hypocrite buying it at the store and would want to hide it under other groceries in case I saw someone I knew. But, he's an adult and it's his coffee so whatver.  Well, a couple of weeks ago he stirred up his coffee, took a sip, and made a face. Looking at his mug with an upturned lip he said, "I just can't drink this stuff anymore. It tastes way too sweet!"  Then he wanted to know why I was smiling so much. I filled him in on some exciting news - his taste buds were changing. Enough sugar had started to be eliminated from our nutrition that his taste buds were actually changing. I had a very hard time not doing the happy dance right there. 

Then last week a friend who is on her way to becoming a Wellness Without Pity success story (13 lbs down, yahoo!) confided that what she thought was the impossible, giving up sweet tea, was happening. On a road trip, she ordered sweet tea thinking she would splurge and treat herself. The shock of the sweetness was too much and she simply couldn't drink it. Again I couldn't contain my smile. Just a few months ago she had stood before me and adamantly sworn that she would not, could not, absolutely positively had no intentions of giving up her sweet tea, ever.

Well, until her tastebuds changed.  Now she just plain doesn't care for it.

I'm estatic over these two cases.  To me, it's proof that deliberate behavior change can achieve more than we ever dreamed possible in our nutrition if we just give it a try.  I've been there. I have a sweet tooth, too. But I don't live with the paralysis of thinking I am destined to a life of obesity because of it.

Give your tastebuds a fighting chance against sugar.  I promise you 100% they can and will change if you give them time. If you need help, let me know.  I love to do the happy dance.

Now get out there and get healthy!

Shopping Cart Ambush

As I was doing my usual speed shopping last week, trying to set the land speed record for time in and out of the grocery store, I screetched my buggy to a halt in front of a display of Crystal Light Pure.  I've been meaning to take a peek at the ingredient list because it is advertised as having no artificial sweeteners.  As I suspected, it is sweetened with Truvia and Stevia, which are natural sweetners although I still don't care for them because I am opposed to sweeteners in general and prefer to eat food the way it actually tastes.  But that's beside the point.

  



I flipped the box over and looked at the list of ingredients.  Numero uno was our unfriend sugar. Not a surprise, although look at the picture on the front.  Does this girl look like she drinks a lot of sugar?  Don't be fooled - Crystal Light Pure may not have artificial sweetners, but it is still sugar so if you drink it, just be aware!

As I put it back on the shelf, I noticed that it was stocked right next to a supply of Kool Aid. How ironic!  I flipped that package around as well and looked at the ingredients.

Pop Quiz: Do you see anything similar about the first ingredient in each of these items? (hint: they're the same)



Crystal Light Pure Ingredients

 

Cherry Kool Aid Ingredients

Now, as an adult, would you make yourself a pitcher of Kool Aid and carry it around with you all day thinking you're doing the healthy thing?  Of course not!  Please, if you buy and drink sugar, do so in measured moderation.  I like tasty things too...I just don't want you to sacrifice your health to have them.  Put a wedge of lemon in your water if you want some extra flavor!  I do it every day and live to tell the story.

But if you buy this...we need to talk because that is just wrong!

  

Be healthy! :)

Sugar: Who Needs It?

A friend sent me this video last week, and watching it was pretty scary because I could see myself being like one of these women someday...and I don't want to be either!



It's a spoof on the commercials expressing how high-frutose corn syrup really isn't bad for us at all, not any more than real sugar.  To the uneducated ear, it makes a perfectly sound argument.  But the truth is, even if is was the same as real sugar, we still don't need it in our diets because we don't need that much sugar.

WE DO NOT NEEEEEEED PROCESSED SUGAR.

We need glucose.  Glucose is a naturally-occuring sugar in fruits and vegetables that is necessary for energy and balanced nutrition.  But we do not need added sugar in our diets.  I promise.  I swear to you on a stack of apples that you can absolutely stop drinking sugar, putting sugar on your cereal, baking with as much sugar, or tricking yourself into thinking that because it is expensive or fancy-sounding it's an okay sugar.  Agave is sugar. Honey is sugar. Sugar in the Raw is sugar.  And sugar don't like you.

If you don't believe me, read what some scientists said about it.

And then, test your sugar IQ with this quiz.

And then cut out the sugar.

Bye, sugar!

Sugar: Knock it out in 4 steps

Sugar.

Some people say it's the devil.  I have been one of those people!  Truth is, when you've got sugar cravings or you're trying to reduce it in your nutrition, it can definitely feel like you're fighting a losing battle.  But rest assured, it can be done and is well worth it.  It's not easy, it's NOT EASY.
It. Is. Not. Easy.  Seriously.  But it is sooooo worth it.
Here's how:

1. Know your sugar. Sugar goes by many names, and lurks in just about every processed food, even clean products.  We have gotten so conditioned to expect sweet foods in our society that sometimes sugar is one of the first few ingredients listed.  Since ingredients are listed in order of quantity, this is a huge tip-off.  Look at the ingredients and the nutrition label to see what kinds of sugar are in the food and how many grams. 

2. Do the mental work. Getting off sugar is mostly mental. You will crave it, but that's just your brain wanting it.  You don't need processed sugar.  You just want it.  Luckily, in the next step, we can change that.

3. Re-train your tastebuds. It doesn't take as long as you think, but give it a few days or maybe a week for your tongue to get used to the taste of food without added sugar.  Expect your tongue to turn into an angry toddler at first, kicking and screaming for the sugar it knows and loves. Cut it some slack, it didn't know you were going to do this!  But once you break it's will and it realizes who is in charge, it will grow up and begin to like the actual taste of real food.  Trust me, this is a hard step but it doesn't take long.

4. Notice the difference between sweet and sugar.  Our tastebuds are conditioned for astronomical levels of sweetness.  If you eat a traditional baked good after a few weeks of not having processed sugar you'll be shocked at how saturated it is with sweetness.  But, plenty of food is naturally sweet without added sugar!  Eventually, these naturally sweet foods will become your base and your tastebuds will recognize them as all you need to satisfy your sweet tooth.

The next time you have a sugar craving, stop and ask yourself whether it is sweet or sugar that you really want.  Eat a mango, a handful of strawberries, or mix some fresh blueberries into plain greek yogurt.  Give your tastebuds a chance to appreciate the difference, they're smarter than you think!

Good day!

Psst...did you know you can subscribe to this blog via email?  Just enter your email address into the box at the top right of this webpage!

Define That Food! Dextrose...what is it?

So by now you know that it's National Nutrition Month, and I'm taking time to learn more about the ingredients that go into the packaged foods that I buy.  Last time, I examined Soy Lecithin.  Today, it's dextrose.

I knew right off the bat that dextrose was a sugar because pretty much anything that ends in "ose" is a sugar. Fructose, sucralose, glucose, etc. are all sugars.  Other ways that sugar may be listed on food labels are as any kind of syrup, honey, anything originating from a cane, molasses, evaporated cane juice, date sugar, beet sugar, high fructose corn syrup, brown sugar, granulated sugar, or xylitol.  And sometimes, it just says, "sugar."

Well it just so happens that I have a friend who writes nutrition text books!  Fancy that!  And she was so helpful after my post on Soy Lecithin and offered to help me define any other additive that I wanted to know about.  Mwhahahaha...she has no idea the Pandora's Box that she has opened!  I asked her about dextrose and here is what she told me:

Dextrose is chemically the same as glucose, which is a naturally-occuring sugar found in foods. The difference is that dextrose is processed primarily from corn and added to foods as a sweetener and bulking agent. So:

Glucose = natural sugar
Dextrose = processed sugar

Our bodies need sugar, as it is a primary source of energy for our day.  But, sugar doesn't have to come from processed foods.  You'd be much better off consuming glucose from nutrient-rich fruits, vegetables, milk products, and whole grains, and not from sugar added for flavor and "bulking."  We have enough bulk in our country, don't you think?  Let's not add any more.

Dextrose is not dangerous for you as long as you limit your consumption. Your body is not going to process dextrose differently from glucose, but when you get sugar from foods that have naturally-occuring sugars (the colorful stuff)  instead of foods that have sugar added (the beige stuff), you also get the power punch of all the other nutrients, antioxidants, fiber, and other good mojo that comes in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. 

In other words, eating whole foods gives you more bang for your sugar buck.  No news flash there, but its always nice to have a reminder.

Leave the bulking agent on the grocery store shelf!  And if you have a hankering to learn more about nutrition, check out my friend's book.  Thanks Sharon!  

Good day!

Attn: New Mothers! Breastfeeding is no longer necessary!

New baby at home? Congratulations!

Be sure you stock up on plenty of soda! Thanks to my hilarious friend Christy for this little dose of fear-mongering. I always wondered why I never seemed to fit in at school.  Now I know the truth.  Thanks for nothing, mom!

Have a healthy (non-cola) day!

Training Season for Tastebuds

One of the common themes in most news from the media about the sources of our national obesity problem is the amount of salt and sugar in the foods we eat. In fact, American processed food has become so salty that one researcher predicted that if things continue on the way they are, the food we eat 15 years from now will be like brine! The amount of sodium in packaged foods can be alarming, and the fact that there are about 25 different names for sugar is a pretty good indication that we're eating way too much of it.

So it is not suprising that one of the first things mourned by people looking to change their ways is sugar. I hear the same complaints over and over: "Coffee tastes weird without a packet of Splenda." Suggest to a Southerner that she not drink sweet tea and be prepared for mutiny. For real, one of my co-workers almost hit me with a stapler when I implied that her ginormous styrofoam cup of sugar water may be part of the reason her clean eating hasn't taken off. Liquid calories are still calories, and liquid sugar is like calories that haven't taken their Ritalin. You can eat fruit, vegetables, and whole grains all day long but if you top it off with an innocent "treat" of some sugar, you will erase all of that good work. I know, it isn't fair. Get over it.

I know it can seem insurmountable to consider life without sugar. As a former sugarholic, I've been there. I can clearly remember thinking it was completely unrealistic to think that I could live the rest of my life without added sugar. But I do. I get plenty of sweetness through fruits, vegetables, and the occasional drizzle of honey and by and large have lessened my sweet tooth to the point where baked goods are actually a little nauseating to me. I know. It's weird. I never expected that.

It ain't easy, but it does happen. You can retrain your tastebuds to recognize and appreciate foods in their natural, unsalted, unsweetened state. All it takes is some time and nerves of steel. Before long, what was once as bland and watered-down as a rice cake (don't eat rice cakes) will simply be food. It won't be a reward, it won't be a companion, it won't be anything other than wonderful, healthy, nourishment for your body that you will eat and then move on from. And isn't that what food is for anyway?

Some tips to get yourself over the first few days/weeks/homicidal thoughts of living the unsweetened life:

1. Stop expecting food to soothe, reward, vindicate, justify, or erase feelings. Food doesn't give a crap about you or your problems and isn't going to fix anything. Stop expecting it to do anything other than interact with your body in the only way it knows how. It doesn't know that you had a bad day and those calories weren't supposed to count.

2. Don't set yourself up for failure: change your behavior as well. If you know that every time you go to XYZ Restaurant you want to order the huge ginormous dessert, don't go there. I used to get a piece of 60% cacao chocolate almost every time I went to the grocery store, to the point where I became like some Pavlovian dog as I neared the end of my grocery shopping, knowing that I was going to have that chocolate. It was becoming a problem, as I didn't have a need for that much chocolate in my nutrition plan (unless I was seriously PMSing in which case back off) and I didn't like the habit I was forming. But instead of just trying to use self-control to not buy the chocolate, I changed my total behavior at the store. I shopped at a different store for a few trips and was sure to be either on my phone or otherwise engaged when I neared checkout so I would be distracted from it. It worked. After just a couple of trips, the habit was broken and I was no longer self-sabotaging.

3. Avoid sugar alternatives. Fake sugar is not acceptable in a cleaneating environment, and it will not help you get over a sugar habit. Quite the opposite, actually, as research points to evidence that man-made sweeteners actually trigger your brain to crave more of it. No, the point here is to alleviate your dependency on sweetness althogether. We are learning to eat food in its natural state, not a hyped-up version of it.

4. Be patient. Sugar is a tricky little devil. It's been said that sugar withdrawl can be even harder than quitting smoking, so be patient with yourself and the amount of time it will take for your tastebuds to get with the program. It can take days or even a couple of weeks for your body to adjust, but it will. I promise. Eventually, you will look at those big frosted brownies in the bakery case and think, "ugh, I used to eat that whole thing?!"

I know that seems crazy but it is possible if you are willing to put in the time, patience, and forward-thinking that it takes to give your tastebuds a fighting chance. They deserve it!

Are you struggling with sugar withdrawls? Have a unique challenge or question for how to make the conversion? Let me know how I can help; I've been there!

I'm Not Your Sugar Mama Anymore

Hello! I am writing to you today from my new digs: my old self. :) A couple of weeks after giving my old routine the finger, I am back in business as a lean mean cardio machine. And I must say, there are some pretty nice things happening these days in the abdominal area as a result.

I'm running intervals. I'm doing laps. I'm doing the elliptical. I'm doing the bike. I'm popping in the weight room for another round of strength before heading upstairs to Pilates. I'm downloading Jillian Michaels on DirectTV. And now that the weather is nicer, I am strapping the kiddo in the bike seat and heading out around the neighborhood looking for hills.

I am finally back on cloud nine and all it took was a ninja kick to popular thought and a return to gut-check living. Isn't that always the way? I mean, I don't want to make a big deal about it, but I was kind of right in the first place. You know, in case you were keeping track. That's two points for little old me.


So I read an article a few weeks back about how for many runners, the endorphins can actually become addictive. Cardio slaves will find themselves craving their daily fix, becoming grumpy when they can't work out, and resorting to unflattering and compulsive measures to alleviate stress, like heckling other runners from their cars as they commute to work or demanding that everyone in their office do walking lunges whenever entering or exiting the elevator, both of which seem perfectly reasonable to me. For me, endorphins are a pure example of getting out what you put in. The more I exercise, the better I feel. The better I feel, the more I want to exercise. People ask me all the time where I get the energy to exercise as much as I do and the honest and true answer is that I get the energy by doing it.

But I think something else is going on these days. I think my sudden return to civilized society has more to do with what I have removed from my life than what workouts I have added. Today, in Pilates, during a roll-up, I started retracing my steps back to a not-so-distant past when I was so tired and bitter and grumpy I could barely stand myself. I tried to determine what was different in my life/work/nutrition between then and now, and it all came down to just having a lot more energy now than I did then. At first I chalked it up to eating more complex carbs. But then it hit me - it's what I'm not eating.

Processed sugar.

I am six weeks out from my fitness challenge, so I've been making a huge effort to clean up my nutrition. I know, I know, you're wondering what I could possibly have to clean up. And, since I already eat clean, there isn't much work to do besides watch the wine and keep an eye on portion sizes. But as of the middle of August, I am 100% sweets-free. No cookies, no brownies, no candy, no birthday cake, no chocolate-covered espresso beans (I blame my husband for those). For real. None. And I could not care much less.

Like most people, I have been plagued by a sugar addiction for a looooong time and have tried to give it up time and time again. But, it was not until I finally booted artificial sweetners to the curb that I found my sweet tooth starting to disappear. At the beginning of 2009 I ditched diet soda and other fake sweeteners, and now 10 months later am realizing I have not had a baked good in two months and never missed it. Previous entries of this blog even contain praise of my weekly chocolate that I used to feel like I needed to stay sane. Well, I am sane no more! Wait, that didn't come out right. You know what I meant.

Anyway, I stopped eating crap and now I have more energy than I know what to do with. Coincidence? Maybe. But I don't think so.


Regardless, I am soaking up all of this love from the cardio gods and so glad that I connected the dots today. I love how giving up sugar sneaked up on me and caught me by surprise. I never expected that, which makes it...all the sweeter. :)

Have a great week!