Today has been one of those bad days I've talked about. I had a really long day yesterday, what with teaching for 4 hours in the morning and going to a friend's house in the evening. I slept til noon today and most of the day have felt like I was half-asleep. Rough.
Anyway, about half an hour ago I realized I was craving pancakes. You know the kind: a tall, thick stack slathered with butter and dripping with maple syrup.
The only problem is, I can't have them.
There's an IHOP and a Silver Diner minutes from my front door, and they're both open late. I could go get pancakes. I could even send my hubby to get take-out, and he'd be happy to be able to do something to make me happy after such a rough day.
But I can't.
Every little bit of sugar I have contributes to the chronic headaches I struggle with. I swore off sugar on the 1st of the year and made it til Valentine's Day with flying colors. I also swore off Advil and after some nasty rebound headaches, the frequency started to decrease.
I had a raspberry souffle on Valentine's Day.
A week later I got my period and I had ice cream to help me deal with the cramps - Breyers all natural, just milk, cream, and sugar - but still. Sugar.
The headaches have come back. I've been fighting them off nearly every day and I haven't made it more than 4 or 5 days without a full blown one.
I feel an incredible amount of resentment right now. I resent the skinny girls I saw last night who raved about my sugar-free apple pie but nevertheless talked about how sugar might be bad for you, but it's cheaper than the healthy sweeteners, so they have sugar anyway. I resent people who can enjoy a stack of pancakes without getting headaches. I resent skinny people, healthy people, people who don't get headaches, people who can have Advil when they DO get headaches and don't have to worry about rebound headaches.
I resent what I have to deal with on a daily basis. Sometimes I resent life.
Today has been a bad day.
"I would have lost heart, if I had not believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living."
- Ps. 23:13
5 comments:
Hi there. You don't know me, but I read Kelly's blog pretty regularly, so I've been checking here every once in a while.
I haven't had health problems quite like yours (sugar=headaches), but I was on a special sugar-free diet for a little over a year, so I know how that is. :-p It is very irritating not to be able to indulge in just one little sweet thing, and that there is sugar in just about EVERYTHING.
If you need a sweet fix, though, here are a variety of things that I tried. Have you heard of stevia? It doesn't work in baking, but it's great for sweetening your beverages like coffee or tea. I particularly liked peppermint tea (which already tastes pretty sweet) with a little bit of stevia. (You can find it at health food stores. I recommend the powered kind as opposed to liquid.)
I also liked fruit as another option. Sometimes I would make baked apples just to give myself the feeling of eating apple pie even without the crust. (I was supposed to be low-carb everything, not just sugar, so I also went without grains that whole time.) If you take some apples, butter or oil, sprinkle them with cinnamon and wrap them in aluminum foil and cook until soft, they can be quite tasty. (At least, they are certainly very tasty when you are not eating any sugar! Compared to sugary things, maybe not, but hey -- you take what you can get.) If you're not limited on grains, you could even make a crust and put the apples inside. :-)
I'm assuming by all this that by "healthy sweeteners" you may mean things like Splenda? If so, you may know that Splenda is made from sugar and often acts like sugar in spite of being low-calorie. Does honey bother you, too? That can work well in most baking with the proper adjustments.
Anyway, I hope this all might help.
Jessica - thanks for the tips. The baked apples idea is really good.
I don't actually use splenda, and honey only rarely. I use agave syrup, which is a low-glycemic sweetener so it doesn't act just like sugar. Unfortunately it's primarily fructose which has its own sets of problems, so I need to moderate that too. At least it doesn't give me headaches and allows me to have pie at Thanksgiving.
I'm also trying to cut out grains too...it's rough!
Glad I might be able to help. :-) And just FYI, I definitely remember it being tough going at first and then at certain times... With so many things I couldn't eat, there were many times I thought, "What CAN I eat??" But eventually, I adjusted enough to where I really didn't crave sugar or carbs all that much anymore (a BIG change for me). Something like pancakes with lots of syrup would have sounded pretty gross, actually! Now that I've been off my diet and eating sugar and grains again for a while, I definitely feel like I crave them more often. But even now, I'd much prefer whole wheat pancakes and real maple sugar to all that other stuff. So take heart! Hopefully it will grow easier for you as you continue.
yes, i can identify with the feelings of resentment. Only mine are usually towards people that wake up and wonder what they want to do that day. Go for a hike? go sledding? Go hang out with friends? Go walk around the mall? They have this whole open realm of possibilities and they never have to factor in weather or not they have the energy to do them. For me, there are days when taking a shower sounds like more energy then i can muster.
Jessica - yeah, I've been off sugar before for long periods of time, and I know the cravings disappear. I don't know why I was craving pancakes last night, normally that would sound pretty gross! :-P I think the hard thing is that I'll do well for a long time. No cravings, etc. Then there will be a birthday or holiday or special event and throw everything off again. I just resent that some people can enjoy birthdays and holidays and events without worrying about what's going to happen to them afterwards.
Elizabeth - yeah, I identify with what you're saying too. Sometimes it's hard hearing about other people's lives and how they can do so much. Sometimes it's hard just hanging out with them - I hung out with some friends I haven't seen in awhile on Saturday night, and it was really draining. They don't really know about how sick I've been and even though I didn't feel like I put a facade up, I felt...not fully there. Like I was on the outside of the life they were all living. I'm still in recovery mode from that and struggling with resentment over it.
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