Have I mentioned I gave up sugar for almost 7 months? No? Well, I did. I bet I know what you’re thinking…how could I, a sugar addict, give up the white stuff (once again) for more than a day? I suppose you could say I didn’t TOTALLY give it up. After all, sugar is in pretty much everything, right?

You’d be amazed at the amount of sugar Americans consume in a day. One teaspoon of the stuff equals 4 grams and let me tell you, that adds up quickly. For instance, did you know a Snickers Bar has 28 grams of sugar? Wow. Good thing I don’t like Snickers. Sadly, I adore Baby Ruth’s with 33 grams.

I’m relatively certain only particular vegetables are sugar-free. Potatoes, however, aren’t one of them. Don’t be fooled, folks; the foods that don’t blatantly look sugar-laden convert into it immediately upon hitting your tongue. And don’t even get me started on pasta.

Spicy tomato cream pasta…yum

Anyway, why did I give up blatant sugar? After the holidays last year, I was disgusted with how much of my own baking I consumed. Add to that a back and knee injury, rendering me exercise-less, and I found my pants looking (and feeling) like tights. So on December 28th I decided to go cold turkey.

One word of advice: don’t do that. I mean, seriously, would you ask a heroin addict to put down the needle and skip off into the sunset singing James Brown’s, ‘I Feel Good’? I think not. But in my defense, I was a few days into my sugar strike when disaster hit, providing me the impetus to quit: I got the flu.

Now don’t get me wrong. It was a blessing. And a curse. A curse for obvious reasons but a blessing because I literally had no interest in eating for 4 days. That almost NEVER happens. I should have been celebrating this momentous occasion had I not been bedridden, reluctantly emerging from my cozy Sleep Number bed only to feed my menagerie and pee. Sleep and pee, sleep and pee…

I have no idea what happened the first week of January. For all I know, Xenu, the dictator of the Galactic Confederacy, brought billions of humans to earth after living in extraterrestrial cultures. Oh wait. Never mind. That’s actually the Church of Scientology. And here I thought I was delirious.

Founder, L. Ron Hubbard

Anyway, once I purged refined sugar from my bod, I no longer craved it. I have to admit, it was refreshing not to want to eat ice cream at 10:00 p.m. Or should I say NEED to eat it? As an added bonus, I did feel better. But did I lose weight? Negatory. In fact, I gained because I now craved crunchy, salty things like Cheese Doritos. So basically, I simply traded one awful addiction for another.

This is where I blame my friend Loretta for my predictable downfall because she bought me my favorite birthday cake nearly 7 months into my sugar strike. So I said, “What the hell, I’ll just have one little slice.” I, however, lied. But for 6 months and 19 days I was no longer a slave to chocolate. For me that’s an accomplishment worth blogging and bragging about.

But after all is said and done, you can keep the crunchy, salty things. I’d rather stick with the sweet stuff. As a matter of fact, I conveniently happen to have leftover Halloween candy and I’m almost certain it contains Baby Ruth’s. Funny how that happened, don’t you think?