I don’t know how much I have talked about my relationship with sugar, but it is a love-hate relationship. I love sugar, I will find anyway to incorporate it into my diet, a lot of the time not realizing I am doing it. The hate is from the sugar itself. It changes my body for the worse, that it is seductive and I crave it, meaning that when I workout, I am working off the sugar and not really changing my body or lowering my weight. Or that is what has happened in the past. After going to my trainer, which I documented in an earlier blog, she advised me against eating a lot of sugar and told me that even if I wasn’t eating a chocolate bar everyday, I was still eating a lot of it even with the “low sugar” oatmeal, the banana and my propensity to eat sweets most weekends. So I cut that out too.

This week, with my inability to keep some meals that I eat, I decided to have a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. It was in the shape of a Christmas tree and that was that. I had to eat it. The shocking thing for me was that by the time I had two bites, I was finding it to be too rich and too sweet for me. I kind of shrugged it off, since I haven’t had a peanut butter cup since September. Then today I made myself a protein shake and I added half a banana to it, to aid in my continuing digestion issues. That half a banana made the shake so sweet!! I cannot get over how sweet that shake was because of the banana. And mere weeks ago I was eating a banana for breakfast and putting sugar on it to help make it “taste” better! It amazes me how much my taste buds have changed in such a short amount of time. Now if only I wasn’t attracted to hot chocolate still (that taste hasn’t change) and ice cream (again no change).

There is medical evidence that people who eat a low sugar (and low sodium) diet can change their taste buds in as little as three weeks. That they find fruit to be sweet after this short period of time. I can confirm from my personal experience that this is true. I enjoy eating strawberries plain, something I did not enjoy before, I always had to have some kind of ice cream or pudding with it.

Overall, I plan to embrace this change. I don’t plan to go back to my sugar-laden ways and I am glad I am more sensitive to it. Combine this with my inability to eat out right now, and I should see more changes in my body and hopefully a permanent change in my diet.