Extreme Lent Challenge™ 2006: Sugar

In honor of Lent, here's a little fake movie I made to psych myself up as I attempt to do a thing I've been thinking about doing for years – give up sugar.

Partly inspired by the shocking photos my parents have taken of me during my last two visits, and partly by my own admission that I'm never going to be 20 years old again, and thin, and able to eat anything I want at any time of the day or night, and also partly by my miserable blood chemistry, or whatever it is that's making me feel exhausted all the time in spite of rest and exercise and a generally pretty healthy diet – inspired by all these things, I've decided to see if losing some weight will help me feel better about myself.

I know that isn't what Lent is supposed to be about. Aside from developing self-discipline and a resistance to temptations of the flesh, there's also the theory that by abstaining from whatever it is for 40 days and 40 nights (plus Sundays, which apparently don't count toward the 40-day total even though you must also abstain on Sundays), we deliberately enter into a state of constant yearning and craving that can – if we keep our minds in the right place – give us a direct and visceral experience of the deep desire for communion with the divine ... or something like that.

My first experiment with Lent was three years ago. In keeping with my lofty goal of spiritual enlightenment, I chose what I thought was a suitably challenging subject. I gave up chocolate.

I was expecting to feel this enormous, cavernous, unbearable longing, which I would then oh-so-virtuously transform into the spiritual longing that would then go on to transform my life. That was what I hoped I would feel.

Surprise! It hasn't happened. I haven't even missed it. I've stood in front of a bakery case full of chocolate croissants, chocolate chip cookies, chocolate mousse, chocolate bread pudding, chocolate everything, and felt nothing. I tested myself by picking up a box of my favorite dark chocolate bonbons and carrying them all around the store with me before placing them, not even reluctantly, back on the shelf. Today someone from my office brought in these cute little gold-foil-wrapped Lindt bunnies and mine is still sitting on top of my monitor, waiting for Easter.

I was actually a little disappointed in my results with the chocolate experiment. I had had a pretty sick and obsessive relationship with it up until I started, which was why I'd thought it was going to be so hard. But after the first couple of days I was fine, and on Easter, when I finally did bite off the head of one of those bunnies, it wasn't as nearly satisfying as I had thought it would be. In a way, that meant I'd been successful – the spell of chocolate had been broken. I still love it, but it's never regained the hold it once had on me. At the same time, it's also kind of sad. I miss the intense pleasure it used to give me.

This is just the kind of change I would like to see in my relationship with sugar, though, so I'm entering this year's experiment with high hopes. So far, a mere 36 hours into it, the hardest thing has not been struggling with my cravings but simply remembering not to indulge them. It's a habit: I see something yummy, I put it in my mouth. Or, I'm hungry, and I eat whatever comes to hand first. So many of my behaviors around food are characterized by impulse and an utter lack of planning ... Retraining myself to notice sugar and avoid it (though I doubt I'll ever give it up completely) will be a good thing.

In conjunction with the Lent challenge, Mr. A is joining me in an attempt to get our carb consumption under control. So in addition to white sugar, I'm also avoiding anything else that's been processed into oblivion (white flour, white rice, etc.) as well as limiting other kinds of sugars (especially fresh juice, which is probably going to be the hardest thing of all because I love it more than anything else, and still believe it's good for me).

Last year I totally bailed on my dream of getting skinny enough to wear look good in leather pants by my 40th birthday. This year, if I can come up with a picture I like for my parents' hallway display of family photos, I'm ready to call it good. The leather pants can wait til I turn 50. It's only eight and a half years away!