Well,

I did it. I went a week without any real junk food. No candy, chocolate, ice cream, cookies… I actually at about 90% whole foods. It was a great clean eating week for the most part. I did eat more granola with dried fruit than I normally would, but it was healthy granola. Amazing that when you’re not eating much sugar dried fruit tastes like candy! Even the bit of no sugar added jam on my peanut butter in the morning tasted incredibly sweet.

This is the update I wrote on Thursday:

At Midweek, I’m feeling fine. Great actually! More than fine… It hasn’t been excessively hard, even when buying treats like a giant bag of Peanut Butter M & M’s for my husband and watching him and a friend demolish it over the course of an hour. Actually, that kind of grossed me out, hehe. It was a huge bag and both of them stated they just couldn’t stop. It was kind of empowering to not be right in there with them, stuffing candy in my mouth, feeling slightly ill and regretting it.

Resisting candy hasn’t ever really been an issue for me though. I’ve never really been a candy person. Sweet things always do make me feel ill pretty much immediately. I feel nauseous and thirsty, and basically feel like I’m getting diabetes.   To avoid any cravings for the junk I do love, I’ve been trying to eat more real food so I just don’t have room. It’s usually when I’m hungry but don’t feel like eating a real meal that I reach for cookies or ice cream. The last couple nights, I’ve had a bowl with some milk, granola, nuts and dried fruit instead. Probably not the greatest choice in the entire world, but definitely better than others.

The only downside is, I didn’t really notice anything about how I felt other than I didn’t have any moments of feeling slightly ill because of eating sugar. I mean, I felt great, but was it worth it? I think so, but it’s not going to turn into a NO JUNK month. I know that if I deny myself things I start to fetishize them and then stuff gets weird. I might find myself zoning out, going into a trance, and devouring a whole bag of chips or something. What I was really hoping to accomplish was two-fold:

1- See if I could do it… How much willpower do I actually have, and how hard will it be? 2- Break my habit of eating a treat (or two) every day.

It really wasn’t that bad, and they say it takes 7 days to make a habit, so I think the challenge was a resounding success. Considering it’s already past noon (1:32pm) and I haven’t had any junk yet, even though it’s legal now, I’m feeling pretty good!

You can read about my next challenge here: http://wp.me/p32wA4-3p