Usually, well 10 days ago and further back… I combated afternoon sleepiness with eating sweets. Was I doing anyone a favor by doing this? It was like a drug … I was popping candy pills and living crash to crash on a sugar trip.
And, that was (sort of) effective. It allowed me, along with caffeine, past the sluggish 3:00 pm. But after time I needed more and more sweets to fill the need. I knew though that I needed to do something about it. And, the problem was greater than body fat. But, right now I’m going through withdrawal and currently am having…
Fatigue
The first few days off sweets I felt more energy. Now on day 9 I have been experiencing more fatigue than ever . I think my body must be trying anything it can to get me back on sweets. In fact, I have heard tell that it is your own body
………bacteria
which live on sugar are the ones doing the craving! Sorry but it’s true!
Funny considering that for a moment as I call a body meeting where brain and spirit take the head of the table, take charge of this body and Say NO!!! to the bacteria. That should be easy to do except when the bacteria clobber you with fatigue.
Some people ask … No, I didn’t go hog wild and do completely no carbs. I do eat a little bread and pasta. I might decide to cut those out except for whole grain in this little 210 day sugar free experiment.
I’ve been drinking afternoon coffee or tea but that doesn’t seem to lift the fatigue but it does give me something to do and it is momentarily soothing.
I was so fatigued by 9:15 pm that I couldn’t concentrate to write. I fell asleep while looking up fatigue definitions vs fatigues for my poem today.. Funny thing was my brain was just fine, wanting to create poetry but my hand/eye coordination wasn’t doing too well. Anyhow, I thought, maybe I ought to sleep. Duh, right?
That worked. I woke up early and refreshed with new calm and collected enthusiasm. (Yesterday’s poem)
Fatigued Poetry
…
Fatigare, To work, To tire out, a Latin word
Brings us fatigue, tired out from work
Either mental or physical
Some have it chronic
Caused by so many different things
They slog to different doctors hoping for a cure
…
A different use but meaning same is fatigues in the military
My dad, military, used to wear dress whites once in awhile
But most times he told mom he needed to wear his fatigues which meant hard work
I never new the difference as a kid but I remember
A Joke, a Riddle, and a Poem – day 8 of 210 no sweets
You might say that I’m writing my way out of eating sweets… Instead of munching, I’m punching… the keyboard.
A Joke
My children have all told me this clever joke. I must pass it along here. It’s clean and clever, and so appropriate for day 8 of 210 no sweets. Of course, kids hear a joke for the first time and figure mom or dad don’t know it. Sorry to my third child who with all the shiniest best of her first grade self asked me…
“Why is six afraid of seven?
And I forgot all parental protocol and answered…
“Because seven eight nine.”
Even though I knew the answer I could have pretended not to. I could have allowed her the pleasure. We could have both been happy then. And why did I follow with “You are my third child, you know,” with a wink that was all about me. We moms must forgive ourselves. Stop the mom guilt! (Please don’t get me wrong: all’s fair in… teens or adults to answer right off)
A Riddle
A little about my youngest daughter: she has baby status, yet first child status, and oldest child status. How can that be?
Ok, here’s the answer to the riddle: She is the third and last child of mine and the only child of her father’s and the other two are my children from a previous marriage and there are a dozen years between. I know, who wants to do all that math? I’m sure all of you got that riddle first off anyhow.
Now that I am an older and wiser mother, I can’t help but raise her differently. First, we are doing homeschool high school. And, she 11th grade has a year and a half to go. Second, until a month ago we were caregiving her father with advanced dementia at our home, and third, her brother and sister left home when she was about eight.
A Poem
Before I wrote this poem today I had looked up the word enthuse “to cause to become enthusiastic”. As I was thinking about that… is it possible to have contagious enthusiasm – an enthusiastic crowd, for example.
Then I was considering how I’ve maybe heard the term used more often in the negative as in “over-enthusiastic”.
And, what must happen to cause a person to be enthused in the first place is something within themselves if it is actual enthusiasm, because people can seem enthusiastic but it wanes with mood. I think we see it in American politics, but even more so in a basketball game.
Actual enthusiasm is a thing to hold on to but it is a really difficult thing to transfer, because what gets transferred is a feeling, a mood. And as I show in my poem, over-enthusiastic people can be killers of enthusiasm, really, though they don’t even know they are doing it. The worst possible dose of other people’s enthusiasm is if someone is enthusiastic FOR another to do something and keep reminding them of it and “encouraging” them. Anyhow, for me that’s the way it is…
No sweets for a week! Not as easy at it might seem!
I had a more difficult day with temptation for eating sweets.
I’m not sure why. But, I think it was because I was feeling tired towards the afternoon. That bowl of candy sits there… because it is part of my experiment, to see if it is possible to have such accessible candy and still stay sugar free. It was only twice I felt like eating it. The first time was more difficult. Talked myself out of it, the end reward, greater than the temporary. And, the second time was a fleeting thought that fleeted, quickly fizzled.
LEARNING POETRY AT TOO YOUNG AN AGE
Now, I bring you Ode to an Ode which I write in sorrow for not having paid more attention in my life to academics. True, I have a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts. But, do you know I just did it to get it done. Truly, I wasn’t interested. Or, I was interested only briefly in snippets of time where I cared about the subject, where somehow a combination of my mind/heart was engaged – I will never forget learning in Western Civilizations about the cradle of civilization being in between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. I remember that because the professor came in and drew it on the blackboard every lecture and then he clanked that chalk down into the curve of the dusty metal below, every single class, before he began his lecture where he used slides on an overhead projector. Me, the visual learner, was stimulated by that. I also remember instruction in creative and expository writing class but that was because I was able to get it. Didn’t mean to get so far into the weeds on my college education but I have to say one more thing…
A TINY MENTION OF MY COLLEGE CAREER
It was back in the day where you go sign up for your classes standing in long lines set up in a gym or student center. I had been in line for a class but it was all filled by the time it was my turn in line. So, I had to find another class that would fill that credit. By then there was only The History of Rock and Roll. I remember the guy there telling me that I could always drop the class and sit in on the one I wanted and try to add it. That seemed crazy to me. Now, some of you might think that a class on rock and roll would be an easy blow-off class. But, like classes you might think are easy and fun, this professor made it the most difficult class ever. He lectured, never about what was on the final exam, and left us to study the material and answer multiple choice questions about the nuances of rock and roll and its effect on our world.
Here I am… back on track… As the below poem alludes, I never could figure out poetry and of course evidently couldn’t figure out rock and roll – beyond the beat – at those young ages.
But, all in all, I wish I had paid better attention in school and not been as concerned with my hair or whatever boy I was excited about passing me a note… I might have actually enjoyed poetry, odes and all things learning.
Mondays are my favorite…on Day 6 of 210 not eating sweets
…
This post has nothing to do with giving up sweets … but it has everything to do with staying with it. It’s a Monday attitude sometimes the only thing that’ll get you through!
What can Monday be good for? Don’t most people relish hating Monday’s? My answer’s in the Ode.
…
Ode to Monday
…
Monday comes dressed to impress
Smart and clean
after the weekend
Of t-shirts and jeans
…
You freshly greet us
And you don’t make a fuss
“You still sleepin’ you lazy bumpkin!”
Oh no, that’s not a Monday voice
…
You leave that to other days
You’re sharp yet sweet
Like a first grade teacher
It’s discipline first you know we need
…
You come each week
Ready, rain or shine
To do but mostly be,
Always so refined
…
Good thing you are a Monday
So you can never see
Me rumpled up on Friday
While you, neatly pressed, pristine.
…
~Julie Robinson
IPad Pro Art… Tree at the Guadalupe by Julie Robinson
..In a relationship, where it gets comfortable, seen in the stoppage of flowers and deep conversation
..On a skateboard, with one foot on the board and with the other you’ve pushed off to get a good speed
..In school, after working hard at the beginning and getting excellent grades and then you for some crazy reason deciding to pull back effort
So when I say I’m coasting it means I know full well I had better watch out. Right now it is easy but after it gets less exciting, mundane, difficult, then I will have to climb the mountain (see poem below).
Here is a little secret… For 2 years…From 10/4/2006 to 10/4/2008 I did not eat sweets… for anyone who thinks I can’t do it…!
BUT ended up that I was coasting..
Until one day I was telling someone about how I don’t eat sweets and had not for two years and I was embarrassed that I was so proud of myself and also maybe I was a little bored of doing it and talking about it.
So this time I decided to give it an appropriate window of time which I want to call:
THE SEASON OF SWEETING
which begins at Halloween and ends at Easter.
Because it’s a challenge it makes not eating the sweets a game instead of giving something up. Does that make sense? It’s a game where I get to win:
a thinner body – I know I will lose weight and I did pack on more than a few
a stronger will – That will muscle is getting exercised and boy was it flabby!
a clearer mind – I’m thinking more clearly and excitedly than ever.
a quieter spirit – Can I just say it? JOY! There’s a song my daughter turned me on to and I’m sorry I don’t remember who sings it – but when I first heard it “I choose Joy” I about came out of my skin. Cool song, really!
Ok, so I got to write a poem now that I’m all excited about the no sweets.
a Thank You to Morning Star Memory Care in Fredericksburg, Texas
Before I go on an oatmeal ode, let me first say…
Visiting my Husband at his Memory Care
goes better with Coloring Books…
I think part of my ability to go off sweets is that I am not under the continual distress of being a constant caregiver. The memory care, Morning Star Memory Care, is now my husband’s caregiver. I visit him as often as I can. Today I took along some markers and an adult Christmas coloring book I found at the dollar store. We three, me, my husband, and our sixteen year old daughter, sat and colored and then read the book. It was a shortened story of Ebenezer Scrooge. After we colored a little while we had fun doing the voice drama. He just loved it. We invited a new resident who was wandering around looking for her husband, to join us in the coloring. She talked to us like she knew us and then asked if we all wanted to walk around outside with her. So we enjoyed the beautiful Fall Fredericksburg day in the lovely back yard of the memory care. Peaceful that whole place is, inside and out. I highly suggest anyone who is going to visit a person in a nursing home or assisted living to bring some kind of thing to look at together. If they can’t color, then pictures and a story are nice to share.
So thanks to Morning Star Memory Care!
A sweet place … isn’t that a cheap yet sweet segue into my …
It’s true, Sweets are Addictive, and I’m an Addict!
Now, on to how I’m doing giving up sweets. Have you heard that it has been discovered that the link in the brain to sweets – and therefore a sweet addiction – is the same place in the brain as an addiction to cocaine. I can believe that. I went to bed last night with heart palpitations. I believe it was my body reacting possibly to the few days thus far of not eating anything sweet! If there was a place to go “dry out” from sweets, I’d go there. I can picture it by a white sandy beach…. AHHH!
WHY DOES OATMEAL HELP?
Oatmeal with nuts and fruit and cinnamon fills me up for breakfast and it is naturally sweet. It’s full of protein and “sticks to the ribs” well. I think it evens out my blood sugar… but I’m no expert, just a practicing artist.
An important part of my giving up sweets is eating my morning bowl of oats. I get the Quaker Oats original oatmeal, not steel cut, not quick cooking. The oats cook in the microwave in 4 minutes anyhow. I put that in and then put the coffee on so they are done about the same time. And, I don’t add any sugar or sugar substitutes, of course.
Snacking today: Same as yesterday, I ate a handful of salty nuts and prunes. It was helpful to keep from eating the sweets. I don’t think I mentioned before but I left the bowl of trick o treater candy by the front door right where it was on the fateful night of my “before binge” as an experiment. So far I haven’t wanted it.
…
Important note to reader:
(My Ode to Oats is below, but let me preface it by saying: CHOCOLATE CAKE… THE ULTIMATE, HANDS DOWN, SWEET THING I LOVE WHEN I’M NOT RAVENOUS FOR SWEETS. WHEN MY SWEET TOOTH IS CHILLED OUT AND I’M WANTING, NOT CRAVING, I GO FOR GOOD CHOCOLATE CAKE.)
…
What happened to me in previous occasions I have given up sweets is if I ever end up wanting something it would not be junky candy which is why having a bowl of it still isn’t at all causing me trouble but if I ever do want something it would be higher up like a slice of perfect homemade chocolate cake, not store bought, not box, not even Texas sheet cake, but the kind made by the lady who brought it to Baptist church potluck when I was eight years old, moist, with fudge icing with just the right amount of chew. It was The Lord’s Work she did, that delicious cake maker lady. In April after my 210 days are up, I am going to try to recreate that cake in my kitchen. By that time I will probably only desire a tiny slice. Right now because I have lost the ravenous crazy, I can wait ’til April. Hopefully…
So, I know you’ve been waiting for it… so here’s my Ode. I wanted to do the ode because that way I can talk to an inanimate object that I really like and people won’t think I’m nuts. I think. Oh, and when I make that chocolate cake in April I will write an ode to it. That, I will put on my calendar so so as to not forget.
…
ODE on Oats
…
By your natural tendency,
And spiked by added raisins,
You soothe me in the morning
You’re exactly what I’m cravin’
…
When’d it start, this love of oats,
Not omelets, burritos or cinnamon rolls,
‘Twas what my mom cooked on a cold winter morn
When we’d all whine, “Not again!”
…
Now how’d it happen, a little older,
Eating breakfast much more sober,
You humbly greet me at my table
Cinnamon topped, fully able
…
Your gentle steam and quiet content
Your pleasing ways are solid, endure
And I’ve learned not love another
Your pleasure, sweet and somehow pure
…
Slow but sure,
You stay all morn
All the way to lunch or after
Keeping me from eating sweets
…
~ Julie Robinson
Want to join me on this quest, want to cheer me on my way, like me, leave comments, tell me what you have to say! If you aren’t a sweet junkie, what sweet do you enjoy in that more rational way? If you are but want to give up the junk, then join me! I’m only day 4 and not eating sweets til after Easter. Already I feel more clear headed, and got a better spring in my step.
Come, like, comment, join me?
My current unfinished oil painting yet unnamed. I think it looks like the forest is rolling out its blue carpet.
This post contains: 1. No Sweets!, 2. “Progress” on my continuing application process for veteran’s benefits, and 3. a Peanut Poem…
Day 2 of 210 – No sweets! But what I did instead is:
1. I found a potential SOLUTION TO SWEET ADDICTION: “SUBSTITUTION FOODS”
Roasted salted peanuts in shell the kind you get at a ball game, almonds with sea salt, prunes, bananas, strawberries, and raspberries. My anti-sweet arsenal for when sugar is CHASING ME AROUND THE KITCHEN and PURSUING ME in THE PANTRY.
Thinking of this sweets challenge makes me happy. I once gave up sweets for two years. That was in about 2006 and at the time I was working more than full time. Now, I’m home hoping to make work of my writing career. It could happen. Anyhow, I so like the idea and dilemma of a task that is “biting off more than I can chew”. The sheer size of the goal right now feeds (pun intended) my determination the bigger the goal.
Two times I went for these sweet substitutions. After lunch I ate a few prunes because I was feeling a bit frustrated with all the paperwork (see #2 below). Did the prunes help? They were sweetly satisfying. And then at around 9:30 pm I ate a few Blue Diamond Gourmet Almonds garlic herb and olive oil flavored. They were very nice. Crunchy and flavorful. Was glad I had done a little pre-planning. I am not messing with anything else I’m eating. Just no sweets. And, that isn’t hard to figure out. No sweet tea, sweet soda, but I can drink diet soda. I don’t ever drink sweet anyhow. I never drink sugar or sweeteners in my coffee. I prefer my coffee with milk only. And, desserts , even if they are “sugar free” I stay away from because they are possibly a gateway sweet.
2. APPLICATION FOR VETERAN’S BENEFITS
Now, the following is a great way to spend your first full day giving up sweets. Today I am organizing my paperwork for applying to the veterans for benefits to be able to afford my husband’s assisted living center monthly fee. I bought two large folders and have some acetate pages that I can easily slip in all those lovely government forms. I bought some binders to help in this process. It will be the most lovely veteran’s benefits file you’ve ever seen. What have a learned about Veteran’s benefits. I’ve learned there’s a lot… to learn.
No painting for me today. Doing the paperwork does not put me in the painting mood.
Peanuts and paperwork
Never eat those Planter’s Peanuts
Concurrently
While pushing paper, No! Please
Those shells and salt and all that grease
That makes the fingers need a licking,
and those pages dirty turning
for this reason, I am warning
Snack and study time don’t mix.
~Julie Robinson
When I’m off sweets, this is true. When I’m on, hello cupcakes! Please o please, some balance!
Come on y’all & join me giving up sweets. Won’t you? Give up sweets for one hour, one day, one week, one month, one year. I’m doing 210 days – Halloween to Easter, the sweeting season. Let me know in the comments how goes it…
Ushering in “No Sweets November” and, ok, just one more tiny little poem.
Between projects is a difficult place to be. I only have the hope of the future projects – but not one yet underway. It makes me feel a little artistically heart fluttery nervous. Why is that?
So to solve this problem, I get to thinking, what is is that I treasure the most? So, I thought that first a bit of personal inventory might help:
During the month of October,
I placed my husband in long term memory care after he wandered out dangerously for the last time in the middle of the night climbing out of his window and walking a mile! And I’m strangely torn without him here, unused to not taking care of him all the time. It is expensive. I have faith that God will provide the needed resources to keep him there.
Also I finished the first quarter homeschooling my daughter 11th grade. She does lessons by video and I oversee and ask her to teach me what she has learned. It works well that way since relating something just learned helps greatly with interest and retention. Hey and it’s good for me too as I think I’ve forgotten all that. Actually I think at her age I was doing nothing but concentrating on some boyfriend. I paint and write while she does school. As I blog away here she’s doing violin class and I will add… a lot less squeaky than when she first began at the beginning of the school year.
I wrote a poem each day for the past 31 days. That was exhilarating. Really. I did not know that doing it would be like running a race each time. Yay for getting across the poetry finish line.
But back to answer my original question what should I do now that poetry month is over
1. I am in planning – brainstorming – looking at photo references – for a brand new oil painting project to show in my art club’s copying the master’s challenge but first I’m finishing the painting below. I’m not very happy with it right now which is lending a little to my art troubles but I wrote a poem about it so I am including it.
2. I’m sugar free (but just as sweet) and will blog about my upcoming 7 mos of eating no sweets. And yes I can eat fruit
3 Art projects with memory care. I am excited they asked me would I bring in some projects to do with the folks at my husband’s memory care facility. I am considering bringing some tempura paints and brushes and some cheap Walmart canvases. So I will be sharing about my Art memory care experiences.
4 Poetry Monday’s: I am thinking I ought to write poetry on a schedule of one day per week so I can keep poetry challenged.
Below is my current painting propped for picture in the window. Interesting how the lavender sky outside is all matchy matchy with my painting.
Faith
Oh! A lavender sky
Where below the cattle gather,
Heads low, munching,
Not at all watching
Any kind of weather.
~Julie Robinson
Sweet Report: Day 1 of 210 (is that 7 months?) I haven’t actually started this day yet! But, I am full of optimism, I’ve gathered all the faith I got like the cattle under the lavender sky, and unless the sky rains snicker bars, I’m ok. Check back each day for my Sweet Report. Think I can do it?
Summing up this post, goodbye October and ushering in important thing: FAITH! I went back up into the post and italicized every place I talked about it. That is the treasure I seek for November. Faith
This is the last day for the October poetry challenge, #Octpowrimo and I am glad I participated. I plan to continue writing poetry within my other posts. Thank you to all of you who have encouraged me.
I wrote the following poem to kick off my holiday sugar free challenge.
Anyone want to join me? Leave a comment below… I will probably blog about it in conjunction with my regular posts about dementia, homeschooling a highschooler, art and poetry.
I wrote this poem on 10/4/2018… and it is true that I did give up all sweets 12 years ago on 10/4/2006. I remember the date because it was 10/4 in CB radio language…“over and out” on sweets because I had been eating sweets like a crazy person. It is also true I didn’t eat sweets for 2 years and that I’m now back to sweets/crazy status. So 10/4/2018 I gave up eating sweets for as long as I can.
