One New Years' Resolution for each month of 2008

Living sugar free has its insights.
When embarking on this not-so-sweet journey I held no preconceived notions of
the themes that would emerge. I found it surprising how quickly sugar as a drug
and me as a junky evolved and perpetuated itself as a major theme over this
past month.

Sugar . . . Soma . . . hmm...

Bulletin

Holy Crap! The celestial baker has
gone insane! It’s early afternoon and already sugar accumulations have reached about 10 cm and
it’s still falling. [See last blog entry for reference]

To my amazement sugar fell from the
sky—little sweet white granules sent from heaven. I tilted my head back,
allowing divinity’s gift to land gently on my tongue. Yum . . . sugar how sweet
you are and oh how I have missed you. Icing sugar sprinkled during the night by the celestial baker sweetens the morning. Grass, trees,

For dinner last night, my beautiful,
near-perfect partner made pizza. Well . . . actually . . . she prepared the
crust and I did the rest. In my books, that’s a fair trade. Left to my own
devices, I’d buy a prepared crust. Making pizza dough and the crust from
scratch, it’s . . . all Italian voodoo to me.

No Sugar Tonight

Lonely feelin' deep inside

‘SUGAR!’ was a swear word in
my early childhood. 

For example:

While my beautiful,
near-perfect partner’s kisses have always been sweet, today I discovered how
much deeper that sweetness goes—that magic sweet moment just after a breath
mint. As long as I don’t French her and steal the candy from her mouth, I’ve
not broken my resolution.

Today I discovered the mother load of all websites—a place
for a sugar junkie on withdrawal to surf. It lists most fruits and their sugar
content. Fruit juice to a sugar junkie is similar to methadone for heroine
addicts. I’ll be freebasing bananas by tomorrow.

In a previous blog entry I wrote about my attempt to keep
honey and maple syrup on my menu and off the list of ban substances. On the eve
of my resolution, I argued with my beautiful, near-perfect partner and her
sister over the fact that sugar is one of the most basic elements in our diet.

With concern about sugar (or equivalents) being in the food
I eat, I’m reading more labels. I’ve discovered that Health Canada regulates
our food labeling and that the format and contents were revamped in 2005.

Now that I’m off sugar, sugar info seems to be turning up
everywhere. Today I heard on the radio that during Elizabethan times the
average person consumed 1 pound of sugar per year and that in 2008 the average
person will consume 98 pounds of sugar.

On New Year’s Eve, the weight of my decision to break my old
resolution by making a new New Year’s resolution grew which each passing
minute. Cold turkey is always a dodgy strategy and having been a voyeur for a
few episodes of Intervention, I knew the

Chocolate, ice cream, candy bars, soda pop and alcohol are
all popular items to give up for a New Year’s resolution. Bah!!!! Try all of
them at once!

While my beautiful,
near-perfect partner filled the basket with vegetables, pasta, cheese and
yogurt I found myself drawn to the cheery juice, the orange juice and the
organic apple cider. Before the food could be put away, I had a shot of each.

A part from eliminating
sugar, my eating habits haven’t varied much and yet something is happening to
my dietary system. I seem to be hungry much more than I’m used to.

I haven’t been able to
freebase all the bananas I’ve been buying and few were turning quite black.
With the best of intentions and not wanting to see my fix go to waste, my
beautiful, near-perfect partner decided to make banana bread. Even though

It’s incredible how powerful
one shot of fruit juice has become. Ahh that ritual of putting salt between
thumb and pointer-finger, licking it off, shooting pomegranate juice and then
biting into a piece of lemon . . . no, it has gone that far yet.

Thinking back to green drinks
last night, there is no way that Steamworks buys pure cranberry juice—it’s too
expensive. I bet dollars to sugar cubes that I was served soda and cranberry
cocktail—which has sugar. Damn! It’s so hard not to be a sweet boy. From now on

When there is an absence of
oxygen, yeast eats sugar until it’s all gone, then it dies. Wow! The ultimate
sugar junkie!

Quickly two mints were gone
and one remained. Just moments before, my dinner companions had popped the
little sugar fixes that customarily accompanies the cheque into their mouths.
My lonely mint conspicuously remained. Instinctively, I reached for it and as

On December 31 ’07, I decided that my first resolution would
be to give up sugar for the month of January ‘08. I had gone without sugar once
before during a 12-day cleanse and thought to myself, “It won’t be that hard,
there’s always maple syrup and honey to keep things sweet.”

For me, the time between Christmess and New Dears has always
seemed like a bit of collective train wreck—part wasteland, part twilight zone,
part gluttony, part shop-a-mania, part forced family joyousness.

I’ve only ever kept one New Year’s resolution: never to make another New Year’s
resolution. Yeah, I know . . . it’s lame and I’ve stuck to it now for about 25
years.