To Sugar or Not to Sugar

Goddess Divine told me that she would really like to see me remove sugar from my diet. We all know that sugary foods are unhealthy and should not be a component to our regular diet, but I had no idea some of the more pertinent reasons behind it. I thought that my relatively high level of physical activity would attenuate some of the negative impacts of my sweet addiction. When I feel particularly guilty about having a smidge too much chocolate coated goodness, I tack on an extra mile or two to my runs, or throw in an additional class at the gym.

So the body totally doesn't work like that. Our kidneys retain sugar and only releases a certain amount. By continuously adding sugar into your system, you retain it for a longer period of time and it perpetually circulates at a steady rate that is probably slower than the rate of ingestion. *

When I relayed this information to my Beau, he became very upset. As cliched as it might be, sugar definitely makes me sweet because there is absolutely nothing that a Thomas Sweet Ice Cream Blend-In can't fix. Had to work over time because your boss didn't do his end of the assignment until 4:45 PM the night before the morning deadline (despite his weekly email and daily vocal reminders over the past 5 weeks) and now you need to edit, process and produce?** A chocolate pudding blended in with peanut butter cup will fix that situation right up.

What happens when I don't get the chocolate pudding with peanut butter cup blend-in? My poor Beau winds up walking on egg shells with his ears and eyes wide open. If I so much as repeat myself once in the course of a conversation, there is a high risk of me losing it. I try to control my inner rage, and I have to say to myself that even though that they do kind look alike, my Beau is definitely not the man that sits in the office next to mine.

So is sacrificing sweetness for health and higher levels of physical performance (reducing sugar also directly increases your muscular strength ... or something like that) a worthwhile trade? My Beau doesn't think so, but I think I might give it a whirl anyway.

* I think that statement is mostly right, but I need to look into this a bit closer to really understand why sugar is so evil.

** In his defense, my boss has too much of a workload for him to handle alone, and it seems that all of his clients are very difficult to contend with. When he gets into trouble, professional licenses are on the line, and lawsuits become eminent. With that aside, there are also egos to assuage, politics and bureaucracies to deal with, and schedules and budgets to meet ... even though the dealing and assuaging may render schedules and budgets useless.