Sugar Detax

I am a Halloween grinch.  I hate it.  I hate dressing up, I hate the scary ghoulish crap everywhere, and I hate the constant sugar gorge.  My kids think I am super lame, and it's true.  But if being lame means never having to look at bloody ghouls on my front yard, I'm fine with it.  I just find it all so bizarre and icky.

And then there's the candy.

My sister Julie and I both have three kids, but, despite being only a year older, she got a six-year head start on parenthood.  So she, and my sister-in-law Sue, have always been my mom harbingers, my Dr Spock sit-ins, my go-to girls in parental panic moments.

Many, many years ago, when our kids were still wee ones, I remember a conversation with Julie around Halloween.  Both of us were dreading the sugar gorge yet remembering, due to the limited sweets available in the Corey house growing up, how epic that one night of excess was.  And we were both determined to let our kids enjoy that same overindulgence on Halloween.   Julie said she'd been telling her kids they could eat all they want that night, and even that week, but after that?  Sugar detox. Which Joey, who was probably 4,  kept calling "Sugar DeTax."

So here I am, grown up kids. This might be the first Halloween I have no trick-or-treaters heading out (side note:  I told Dylan that when you get to high school it is no longer called Trick-or-Treating, it's called Begging.  Jacquie called bullshit and said if they dress up, they can go as long as they want.  Thoughts?).  At minimum, this is the first Halloween for which there was no school party, no SJA parade, no crap to send to school.  So now all the crap is at home. 

See, the problem is that I love candy.  I do!  I love sweets of all sorts.  It's ridiculous. It's embarrassing!  None of my sisters seem to have this Achilles heel.  Weirdos.  But I love and adore all manner of cookie and chocolate and I feed that beast regularly.

Because I am an obsessive diligent exerciser, I don't think of it as that big a problem, but I do feel sort of generally bad about it. And occasionally, I feel badly enough to do something about it.   Concurrently, CrossFit people, as you know, are often extremists and tend to be sort of weirdos conscientious about carbs and sugar and food in general, and my box has undertaken a "No Sugar November" challenge.
AKA - SUGAR DETAX.

The challenge actually started on October 24th. I didn't officially sign up, mind you, because that involved committing to a 100,000 meter row, which was never on God's green earth gonna happen, but also because I have a teensy problem with these sorts of exercises in denial, no pun intended. So on Monday morning I simply set out to not eat any sugar.  (The challenge officially includes any sort of carbs/simple sugars, but I thought I'd ease in and just focus on no actual sweets.)  And I lasted approximately 7 hours, until that lunch meeting, which included Jimmy John's and chocolate chip cookies.  Boom.

I maintain that the reason I usually don't do this sort of thing is I have a weird, food version of an anti-authority streak. With myself.  I go from, wow that looks good, too bad I can't eat it to, well at least I shouldn't eat it to, why the hell shouldn't I?  I did 35 handstand pushups this morning? to - DON'T TELL ME I CAN'T EAT THAT I AM A GROWN WOMAN AND CAN EAT WHATEVER THE HELL I WANT.

Do you see my problem?  It's crowded in this crazy head of mine. 
 
And so I'm back to the drawing board.  Maybe sugar detax isn't in the cards for me this year.  Or maybe I simply try to cut out those candy bars that are soon to erupt from their lovely, benign packaging in a couple days.  Or maybe not.  Moderation, that's the key!  Everything in moderation, right?

Including moderation.

Happy Halloween.  Eat your heart out.  It's not even November yet! 

And lest you think I have no heart, what I do love?  And miss?  This: