overwhelmed! in crawling into 2014.

Not by anything extreme, mind you, just the quantity of entries that people are writing!!! My bookmarks list gets longer and for every two or three I read, another six appear!! I love the enthusiasm that everyone has for writing again, I'm just sorry that I'm not managing to read you all!

Now, news. Nothing major just an interesting twist of things.

As a few of you know, I was hit up side the head by a particularly viscious case of tonsilitis (which I think is the same thing as strep throat) just after Christmas. I had one and a half weeks of feeling C. R. A. P. and then a week at work while still feeling fairly shite. My energy levels and my body has ached to extremes since then. And I made a radical decision, although it crept up on me gradually, the reality was a decision at approximately 4pm on Monday which I've worked with since.

A couple of weeks ago I started to think about lent. I do have mixed feelings about the whole concept of lent. As someone who was brought up in the Quaker faith I have to question how giving something up for lent makes any difference to anyone else. How does it help others? On the other hand, I have always liked the personal challenge of lent. I have given up chocolate many times, with great success, and so... I was thinking that I should contemplate giving up chocolate again. But my thoughts took me to a scary place.

Perhaps...

Perhaps..?

Perhaps I could go to a whole new level and give up the white powder, although sometimes it's brown. Maybe I could give up refined sugar for lent. And since I was nearly February I could prepare myself. Lent always starts in February... right?

I left it a couple of days before checking my calendar.

4th MARCH! Strove Tuesday is the 4th MARCH! Yeesh! Well, I'm too spontaneous to let a thought like that hover on the periphery for five weeks and this past Monday, at about 4pm, I decided that it was time for sugar to take a hike.

I did some research and discovered that I may suffer from withdrawal symptoms.

aside: scientists are divided over whether sugar is actually addictive or not and whether withdrawal symptoms are suggestive

I had a low level headache for over 24 hours although it seems to have eased off now which hit at about the right time and lasted about as long as was suggested. After the first full day I was exhausted and was asleep by 10, slept until 7am and then only woke because Rich was moving around! Wednesday I was pretty tired but not as much and today I feel the same. As, apparently, a dip in energy levels is normal at the start before they begin to lift up.

I've decided to trial it for three months and am writing a blog to follow that way I feel.

A lot of the research that I have read has suggested that our bodies do not need sugar nearly as much as they need fat. Fat contains more calories by weight than sugar so it has been pounced on as the easy way to lose weight. Most low fat products are filled with sugar and artificial sweetners otherwise they'd taste like cardboard!

And I really like fat! I can snack on nuts and avocado and peanut butter... Mmmm... And I enjoy them (in the long term) more than a handful of sweets or a biscuit. Today I had banana slices with peanut butter on them... drools

Now I'm wittering without direction and so I shall stop! in the name of keepingmyfriends

;-) Ttfn!