Archive for February 28th, 2010
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Day 1: Join Me. Go Candy-Free, Chocolate-Free, Ice Cream and Cake-Free for a Year!
We’ll suffer rejoice together in sugar-free
hellheaven while white-knuckling it taking it one day at a time! Join whenever you want and keep track of your own 365 days by just adjusting them to the day count of the blog.Last-century’s steroid-free superstud Jack LaLanne (still kicking butt at age 95) calls us “sugarholics.” Worse, he says we’re “soft and weak.”
(BTW, is there anyone hotter than Jack in his jumpsuit? “Students!”)
Check out the below video of Jack exhorting us to get off sugar but don’t miss this fantastic interview with LaLanne in Outside magazine. I love him because he admits he’s just as bad as any of us – he just has ferocious discipline. Here’s how Jack responded to the interviewer asking him if he ever, God forbid, snacked before bedtime.
“Never!” he snarled. “You don’t get it. I am one runaway son of a bitch! I am an animal! I want to eat everything! I want to get drunk every single night! I want to screw every woman there is! We are all wild animals. But we must learn to use our minds. We must learn to control the bestial and sensual sides of ourselves!”
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Day 1: Yesterday was My Last Day Eating Sweets (Allegedly)
Yesterday was my birthday. I had a lovely day. It was a special day, too.
Why? Well, yesterday was another in a long-ish series of one special last day before I give up sweets days. See also: New Year’s Eve. Everytime I do this, I’ve got to make sure I eat plenty of my favorite candies for old times sake – just this one last time.
I don’t always eat that many sweets every day either. Sometimes just one candy bar or one (okay, two) scoops of ice cream will do. Not a binger – I just want some sweetmeat every single day of my life. I’m consistent.
So for my latest last candy supper, I bought 15 milk chocolate palets (small, thin discs of pure milk chocolate) and 15 caramel palets at the chocolate shop behind the famous Hotel Negresco yesterday. (I live in the south of France, remember.) I also got a frozen Mars ice cream bar and a frozen Bounty ice cream bar at the Epicerie Centrale right below my apartment.
The guys at the Epicerie Centrale mock me when I buy my beloved nutrition-free 50 centime bags of Haribo Polka candies and ask me if the packages are for “les enfants.” (No, you height-challenged, broad shoulder-free jerks.) And yes I bought two bags yesterday.
I also ate two Carambars, an American-type French caramel that I adore:
The way it works with me is that I’m my own “enfant.” Which means that when I let myself have whatever I want, sometimes I don’t even want it – and vice versa.
Yesterday, since it was birthday and also my last day before giving up sweets, my rule (as it always is) is that I could eat whatever I wanted. Yet this Piglet didn’t even want her second ice cream bar. But she ate it before midnight so she wouldn’t get up and eat it first thing Feb. 28, 2010 and abort this blog before it was even born.
Thanks for reading and… keep coming back. I need your support.
I must at least keep my snout above water.
Ta,
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Day 1: I succeeded once giving up candy – for almost two years. Really I did!
I actually did give up sweets one other time, for close to two years. My super-inspiring friend Michael Mitchell, who runs the amazing Body Soul Adventures in Paraty, Brazil (Go!) challenged me to give up Starbucks Frappucinos and sweets in early 2002. I tried it for a month and kept going!
I did so well that I didn’t touch sweets once, even during an unpleasant breakup with an unpleasant man. But my Waterloo Candyloo came over the Christmas holidays in 2003 when I was climbing Mount Roraima in Venezuela. (You can read my New York Times article here.) The last three-hour slog up steep boulders was tough and our Indian guide handed us a big yellow box of Brazilian chocolates like the serpent offering Eve the apple. Mmmm, yum.
Bingo – exit Sugar-Free Paradise. I slipped down that slope so fast back into Candyland I never looked back. Six months later I went to Burning Man in Black Rock City, Nev. We had to bring our own food in for a week – and we packed a lot of candy purchased in bulk at a Wal-Mart.
I’d never had a weight problem before. But returning to sugar after a two-year absence screwed something up in my metabolism. I put on 15 pounds in 2004.
Since then, I’ve struggled to return to Candy-Free Eden – to no avail. Will this time be the charm?
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DAY 1: Yes, I love candy corn. Bite it not me, snobs!
Hello sweetfreaks,
You’re wondering about that gorgeous image of candy corn fronting this brand-new blog?
What, just because I’m a super-sophisticated American* living in the south of France you were expecting pictures of tiramisu, pain au chocolat, creme caramel, crepes Nutella, moelleux au chocolat (OMG my favorite with the melted chocolate tunnel hole,) milles feuilles, apple tatin, strawberry and mascarpone trifle, coconut flan etc.?
Yes, I love the above stuff. But I also love the down-market American rotgut just as much, maybe even more. Sorry, despite the scorn heaped on me for years by my friends frenemies, I like cheap American candy. But candy corn? Yes, it’s a proud tradition in the motherland, dating back to the 1880s, according to candy corn historians.
Of course candy corn haters abound. Just read this entry
Let’s just say they quote Oscar Wilde saying, “If I had a choice between eating candy corn or an elephants anus, I would choose the candy corn. But still, you get my point.”Candy corn isn’t necessarily my favorite candy but it’s right up there and as this year progresses, it’ll no doubt surface in my candy cravings and candy dreams.
Today is the first day of My Year Without Candy. It was my birthday yesterday and I decided to give up make the choice to abstain from my addiction of choice – candy, ice cream, cakes and all manner of sweet treats – for at least a year.
Bear in mind, I’ve planned special last days to mark me going cold turkey making the sensible choice to abstain from this damaging vice maybe a million times.
My Catholic cousin Kathleen wanted us to go off bad stuff for Lent this year and I agreed even though I was not raised Catholic. Rebellious mother, long story. (Though I was baptized, confusing much?, and I just recently found out from an understandably bitter Irish Catholic that I recently interviewed that you are considered forever Catholic if you are baptized. WTF? If you want to “defect,” you have to do this.)
Anyway I told Kathleen sure, I’ll give up sweets for Lent. I lasted two days but did not tell her until now. Sorry, Kathleen.
Right now I’m about six hours into my Year Without Candy. Wish me luck. I’m on the honor system here and yes I am an honorable person. I fall off the wagon, this blog disappears from view forever.
Wish me luck, b’s.
Sweetly,
DK
About
Recent Posts
- Day 365: Tell the Women of Congo You Love Them!
- Day 364: What If the World Did End in 2012?
- Day 363: Twilight of the Dictators, Twilight of No Candy
- Day 353: Howl of a Candy Addict
- Day 351: Self-Deprivation Sucks
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