Well lo and behold ...

... hallelujah, and bless my soul. It appears that without even really trying – I haven't even gotten any exercise to speak of in almost a month – I've dropped about eleven pounds in the last few weeks. This morning I put on some jeans I hadn't worn in awhile and they felt kind of loose. And they'd just come out of the dryer! So I raced into the bathroom, threw off everything I was wearing (including ponytail elastics and earrings), took a quick pee (every ounce helps, right?) and jumped on the scale. Shocking!

I had already more or less decided that even after the extreme sugar challenge ends, I'm not going to go back to eating sugar. I just can't. And incredibly, I don't feel like I need to. As I had suspected, once I'd gone through the initial throes of withdrawal I wasn't missing it much. There have been a few hitches – as when Mr. A ordered a chocolate mousse and I, to reward myself for being good, virtuously ordered a decaf espresso only to completely unconsciously pour my usual half teaspoonful of sugar into it without even noticing that I was doing it – which is the whole point of this kind of exercise in self-deprivation – that it throws your unconscious habits into the spotlight where you can start noticing them – but overall, despite a few lapses, living without added sugar has been a lot easier than I ever would have thought. Even fresh fruit juice, which does not have sugar added ... I'm doing fine without it.

And wow, eleven pounds?! Could it really be that simple?

A couple of weeks ago as part of a pre-spring cleaning spree I got rid of several giant garbage bags full of clothes. The bag that hurt the most to say goodbye to contained (among other things) two of my most favorite pairs of old army-issue cargo pants that I had loved and worn to death for upwards of 15 years, to the point where they were both too worn out to patch anymore, not to mention too small. I agonized all morning in my office over whether I should run home and try to snatch them out of the garbage bin before the truck came by ... but forced myself to let them go. Now I'm kind of regretting that. If I tried them on today, maybe they would've fit!

I did keep one item of sentimental clothing, however: a similar pair of cargo pants that I'd cut off for shorts when I was in college. They were loose and baggy and comfortable and I could carry the whole big paperback copy of [insert Penguin classic du jour] in one pocket and my sketch journal in the other, plus pens. I got them in 1986 and have kept them ever since, vowing that someday, I would be able to wear them again. Two weeks ago I could barely squeeze them on – I was actually pretty shocked I could get into them at all – but there's no way I could even begin to zip them up.

If this sugar thing keeps happening for me, maybe in a few weeks I'll try them on again.

Listening to: Takako Minekawa – Milk Rock (Cornelius remix)