Wednesday, February 23, 2011

DAY 54 -- Avoiding Artificial Sweeteners

Yesterday I posted about my awkwardness when offered sweets.  Today's post focuses on artificial sweeteners.  I avoid those too, for two reasons...

1) Artificial sweeteners do awful things to my body.  Some make my heart race, some give me super bad headaches, some give me severe stomach pains, and some give me bad gas.

2) Artificial sweeteners are still addictive to me.  I am addicted to sweets so even if an item is artificially sweetened, I would still want to overindulge in it.

Combine those two reasons together and it can cause major problems.  The first Valentine's Day after going off sugar, I decided to buy some sugar-free chocolates for our celebration.  I ate the entire box of chocolates and was sooooo sick and in soooo much pain afterwards!  That was the end of that.

One time a friend of mine went on a fad diet where she only ate a certain supposedly healthy cold cereal for breakfast and for lunch and then ate a regular meal for supper.  She called me up one day and told me she was having severe stomach pains ever since starting her "diet" and since she knew I was into "healthy eating" she wondered what I thought might be the problem.  I asked if she was using an artificial sweetener on her cereal and she admitted she was.  I told her to STOP USING IT!  She did, and the pains went away.

I have another friend that wonders why she gets bad headaches regularly, yet will not give up her diet soda.

People ask me what I sweeten my foods with.  First of all, I don't WANT my foods very sweet, second of all many foods are naturally sweet and don't need anything added.  But I do put natural fruit like banana or peaches in my shredded wheat, oatmeal, and hot cereals.

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