Hello, Hello, Hello !
I love candy.
But mainly, I – LOVE – sour candies.
I like the squishy ones, the crunchy ones the ones shaped like tablets, the ones that look like lemons or watermelon slices, anything covered in that mouth-puckering, zingy, sprinkly, citric-acid-y, powder and ALL ‘sour’ version of jelly bellies, gummy bears, jujubes and/or licorice. Favorite brands include; SweeTART in Extreme Sour Chewy and Original, Lovehearts, Sour Patch Kids, classic ‘Sours’, Tart’n’Tinys, Lotsa Fizz, and Sour Warheads.
Oh – so – delicious…mmmmmm
Ultimately though, I am an equal opportunity dessert-a-holic, I generally won’t say no to any flavour of cookie, piece of cake, chocolate or syrup-slicked slice of baked-good at any time of day or night.
Interestingly, if you asked me my preference for sweet or savory, up until now, I would have answered before you even finished your question, the latter as I have never met a potato chip or dip I didn’t like. But this past year has opened my eyes to my mania. With all of us homebound these days, I find our default ‘activity’ is snacking. And so the kids are always rummaging around in the kitchen for some inappropriate but delectable nibble. It was they who discovered I have stashes of candy everywhere. In the mixer, hidden behind the baking ingredients, in the cookie jar, in the rice cooker, in my car, my coats and my purse. And they have even caught me red-handed hiding multiple bags of the latest sour-ized version of retro confectionary. “Mom!!”
So sue me. I have spent just about the whole of my children’s lives sourcing, creating, preparing and offering them healthy choices and modelling good eating habits so what if I want a treat for myself now and then? Their biggest gripe is that I am keeping these mouth-watering morsels all for myself…uh, yah! naturally… why would I share??
Now to the crux of it all, this year, like many of you, I thought I might try a diet re-set if you will. I wasn’t going to lose my mind and do dry January or some other equally insane exercise in futility but I thought I could manage say a week watching my caloric intake specifically by avoiding; sugar, carbs, OK, OK… alcohol (but just for 7 days!) and at the same time, drinking more water, eating more fruit and veggies, cardio… yadda, yadda, yadda, you know the drill.
I should mention here that I have been nursing a bad knee for the better part of a year now and so my running days had been on hiatus for a while, replaced with physio exercises and ice. Guess what happens when you cut out sugar from your diet for a week? Yah, yah, yah (to all of you know-it-all, healthy life-stylers calling out the answers) I have discovered sugar causes inflammation in the body and my little vacation from all things sweet and carb-y has basically cured my knee.
You know what else sucks about getting old? At this point I can’t even think of anything that doesn’t suck.
So, I rounded up all my lovely, lovely bags of bonbons and went out to the back yard to the recycling bin, past it and to the bike shed where I found a high shelf out of sight behind a gas can to place my Rubbermaid tub of contraband goodies….shh, don’t tell the kids.
To all of you ‘elderlies’ out there, I wish you good sugar management and a periodic trip to the ‘bike shed’.