week 7 - my toughest week

Week 7 - my toughest week

Where did this week come from? Last week I was feeling so good, so confident and sugar was no longer an issue...but that was all about to change.


Sugar free chocolate with polydextrose - got me sucked in!

 This week I have really craved sugar - big time. It is also the same week that I have reintroduced fruit and I"m starting to wonder if I should have waited. I'm not talking alot of fruit, just a few strawberries or a kiwi fruit here or there. Maybe it was enough for me to get that fructose rush again. I found myself looking forward a piece of fruit - or maybe it is the sweetness I looked forward too. After all, fruit is the sweetest thing I've eaten in 7 weeks. On Thursday, I caved. I bought sugar free chocolate (picture attached) and loved the taste of every mouthful. My brain had a rush of dopamine, which is exactly what my brain was asking for in this crazy cycle of addiction - it needed a 'fix'. Although the Nutrition Information Panel (NIP) said that it contained 0.2g sugar per 100g, I was smart enough to read the ingredients and see that it contains polydextrose. Anything ending in 'ose' is sugar in some shape or form. Polydextrose is supposed to reduce the sugar and calorie count of foods (which it did and I got sucked into buying it...) but increase fibre. Click here for more information on polydextrose. Either way, it satisfied my brain and gave me that warm fuzzy feeling - thanks dopamine!


The following day I made things worse. While celebrating someones birthday I had a few chocolate coated strawberries. This itself isn't a huge deal to me as this is what I wanted to do - keep sugar to special occasions - not everyday, but as I was the one making the chocolate coated strawberries with my daughter, I have to say that the temptation of helping her clean up the chocolate bowl was too strong and there I was, in the kitchen cleaning up the chocolate bowl with my 3 year old daughter. Ruby thought it was great.  What happened next blew me away, I got an instant headache! I could not believe it. I had the worse headache and felt very sick. So sick, that I didn't even touch the birthday cake.  I also felt like crap knowing that I was re enforcing this sugar addiction  into my daugther's brain (I am only re enforcing those brain pathways) - the smile on her face said it all. Her dopamine levels were as sky high as mine - and what comes up, must come down...the seratonin will kick in soon.
Today is a new day, I thought that I'd be craving sugar all day today but I'm not. I started my day with a healthy omlette and I'm just making sure that I'm too busy filling my stomach with the good stuff that I don't have time to think about the bad stuff. So far it's working.



From this...



to this!

I also made my own minced garlic this week after discovering 'sugar' in my jar of bought minced garlic. I know that sugar is a preservative, but so is my freezer! I bought 20 knobs of garlic, pulled them apart, bashed the cloves with a meat basher and minced it all with a little olive oil. I then froze them into ice cube trays and am keeping them in the freezer to grab when I need them. There are certainly no vampires at my house this week. I also chopped a whole heap of spring onions and home grown chilli's and have them frozen in the freezer too.  If you do this at home and end up leaving your minced garlic in the fridge for a few hours or overnight, be aware that the garlic will turn green or blue. Yes, green or blue! Mine turned green overnight as I had so much, I was freezing it in batches leaving the rest in the fridge. I did some research as to why it was green and found that it was a reaction between the enzymes in the garlic (depending on how you process the garlic will depend on the colour it may turn). It is completely safe to eat still, but it made me realise how the sugar in my bought minced garlic was keeping it a nice natural colour - imagine without preservatives buying green garlic in a jar. Click here for more details about how this occurs.



Gourmet Kitchen's inspiration

I've been continuing to try to be a bit creative with my cooking and this week I made a delicious tuna roll for dinner, I simply mixed 425g tuna with some zucchini, parmesan cheese, ricotta, lemon and garlic and rolled it up on filo pastry. To prepare the pastry, I used chilled filo (much easier to work with then the frozen stuff) and lined six sheets on top of each other with butter spread in between each sheet. Roll up the mixture in the pastry to make a big log, spread some melted butter on top with a sprinkle of poppy seeds and it cooked in the oven for 30 minutes. It was yummy. Ruby loved it too. You'll probably notice too that I never cook with cabbage, broccoli or cauliflower and that is because I am breastfeeding. Zucchinis, beans, snow peas, lettuce and peas are really my main greens at the moment. For the full detailed recipe from 'Gourmet Kitchen' click here.