Saturday, March 28, 2009

A Word About Will Power

I'm on day 14 of my sugar-free, wheat-free, dairy-free diet. This week I endured
  • a friend's baby shower at work, where home baked cake, breaded chicken wings, and a traditional kosovar bread-roll of some sort were being served - on Wednesday
  • the left-overs of said baby shower on Thursday, and
  • a benefit event to raise money for Palestine - where the food being sold came in the form of sandwiches, tarts and butter rolls, and brownies, on Friday

Today, I subjected myself to cake-baking. No one told me to make the cake, I just really wanted to make it. For the first time in probably my life, I didn't lick the left over batter off the pan. Instead, I made a second batch of cake for myself where I replaced the wheat flour with Kamut flour, the milk with almond milk, and the sugar with stevia (big mistake about the stevia, horrible aftertaste, but now I know to use honey for next time)...
I haven't cheated yet. I think what stops me is that I've made it all so public. If I broke down now, I'd have to tell you all. I'd have to post it to Facebook. I'd have to start counting at 1 again. If I only had myself to tell, I would have broken down at least 5 or 6 times by now. I'm sure of this because I've made the "no more allergens" promise to myself countless times before. I've typically made it to mid-morning of the same day the promise is made; on the days my will power has been phenomenal, I've made it to just before bed time. But in the end, I've always caved.
I like to think this isn't just my lack of will power, but how humans work in general. We need to own up to someone or we cave. I've figured out what makes me tick, what motivates me. I know I'll break sooner or later, but my plan right now is to go on for as long as I can. And when I break, my plan is to announce it, lick my wounds, and start over. It's worth it. I feel so much healthier. And it's easier every day.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is how humans in general work - see cognitive dissonance in a psych book!!
Good job!!

Anonymous said...

Is the plan to re-introduce those things one at a time to see how it affects you, or to permanently reduce those items in your diet?

noha said...

Anonymous (I'm assuming you're HH), thanks! Yup, good old cognitive dissonance. Just trying to 'walk the talk'...
COTW, the plan for now is to permanently reduce them in my diet. the reason being I've done the gradual re-introduction several times over the past few years and the end result is always the same: Noha ends up sick. So, as longs as I can pull it off, I will.... How's your health now?

Anonymous said...

You rock! And yes, Stevia – gahhhh! Honey is good or you can buy raw, unrefined sugar for special things like cake. The bad part about sugar isn’t the sugar itself, but the refining process which uses all sorts of bleaches and chemicals. Another tip – Karmut flour is very heavy and if you find your baked goods are too solid you can try reducing the amount of Kamut and adding some rice flour for lightness. Or just use Spelt, it’s lighter, too. Oh, I just realized that Green Door sells spelt baguettes!! Oh my. And other wheat-free, dairy-free, sugar-free goodies

noha said...

Thanks XUP! Yeah, big mistake with the Stevia... I knew it had that aftertaste,but I didn't have enough honey on hand so I convinced myself the aftertaste might disappear in the baking -which, of course, it didn't. Shoulda been more patient. Yeah, spelt's fantastic and I basically alternate between it and Kamut. For baking bread, I definitely notice the extra "heaviness" in kamut, but with this cake, even though it didn't rise as much the texture was still very soft so I liked it. I just had some lying around it was old, so I used it.Now that it's done, I'll use my spelt flour next time.
Spelt Baguettes at Green Door! Yummm. Too bad it's totally not on my route to anywhere...