Day 23 – I Cheated!

Well… sort of, I’m not sure, possibly, probably, fully or maybe partially.  My wife and I have—for about one year—been trying to get use to drinking almond milk and have been trying to stay away from dairy milk.  When we first started doing this I had to have the milk that was more sweetened (90 calorie and 15 grams of sugar per serving).   I have been a HUGE milk drinker in the past—which by the way does nothing for growth, I should know I am living proof—so wanted something that tasted better.

I actually like the taste of the 40 calorie (0 grams of sugar) almond milk now and drink it by the glass if I am in the mood.  Recently we have been trying to get our children acclimated to the almond milk and so have started them out on the added sugar variety (good ole 90 calorie variety).  The problem is the cartons they come in look very similar—ok maybe not that similar, but when you are in a hurry they look similar enough that today I may have grabbed their milk my mistake.

Normally this wouldn’t be an issue if I were just drinking a glass of milk—I would have just tasted the milk (perhaps a swallow) and known right away.  But, today I was using the milk to make a chocolate drink—16 ounces of the milk actually—and since I added stevia to the drink it made it sweet already.  Thinking of it now I did think the drink was sweet (perhaps too sweet), but in a hurry I just chugged the drink and went.

It wasn’t until after I was already on the road and almost done with the drink that it occurred to me what happened.  I got home hoping to see that their carton of milk was pretty full, but—in fact—it was almost empty, which bolstered my suspicion about drinking it.  This seems especially likely since we almost have to force this stuff on our kids so far so they are very unlikely to go looking for it themselves.

I wonder what 30 grams of sugar will do to the way I feel—it may be in my head, but it does seem that my ears feel more clogged than they have in a few days and my throat also seems more inflamed, but we’ll have to wait and see.  If I had to pick my cheat today it would not have been with a bunch of almond milk—I looked at some Chocolate Moose Tracks Ice Cream (my favorite ice cream in the world) and I could have had a whole cup and still only had 30 grams of sugar.  What a waste!

Despite the little hiccup the day was pretty good, no AMAZING happenings, but no major—unless the sugar turns out to be—setbacks.  The real question may come when I sleep, or try to, will I be able to get to sleep?

My wife is finally feeling quite a bit better today, but with her schedule at work (Parent Teacher Conferences) she is famished tonight and hit bed by 9:30pm.  She has yet to have an amazing day, she feels real good at times, but it doesn’t seem to last and she does still have almost as many hard times as good times.  Stark contrast to my last week where feeling bad has been the exception and not the rule.

Today is the day we are allowed to introduce “legal dairy” into our diets (yogurt, butter and cottage cheese)—don’t ask me why they are “legal” I don’t  make all the rules I just follow them.  I’m sure—at least for the yogurt and cottage cheese—it has something to do with the live cultures.  We also introduced almond milk today, which obviously has caused some problems—at least potentially.

Steel cut oats with almond milk and cinnamon.  We have been missing our green morning drink so we brought that back again too: spinach, romaine, ginger, celery, cucumber, lemon juice (we have to pick up some limes) mixed with distilled water.  I had two snack drinks through the day, one with the mistake and then one to see if I could verify whether I had actually drank sugar (hopeing that I would be able to tell if the drink I cheated with was sweeter—not conclusive).

Lunch was leftover spaghetti sauce mixed with quinoa, fresh spinach and some avocado—which are getting really old really fast.  I like avocado as well as the next person, but it is getting to be too much.  Dinner was a concoction of mine.  We used our blend tec to make some rice flour and then mixed some spices with it, dipped chicken in it and fried it.  We then baked all his with green onions, lemon juice, spinach, regular onion as well as green, red and yellow bell peppers.  This was all cooked in an oven with butter mixed in, sprinkled with sea salt.  Interesting, but pretty good—not for my 8 year old though who gagged a few times trying to get it down.  He is such a good trooper with trying to eat his food.

I threw my back out again tonight, or rather made it worse.  Since it didn’t snow last night I decided not to solicit help and worked on the remaining areas of the church myself.  Since my back was still a little soar I was taking it very easy and was doing fine.  However; I picked up one shovel load that was a bit larger than it should have been and than expected.  Pop, it felt like something snapped in my back (lower back).  I don’t think it is more than a strain, but it did hurt.  I’ve heard of people rupturing their disks and how bad it hurts when that happened—mine, while it really hurt, didn’t start to really bother me until later (after I sat down for a while).

We experimented with cottage cheese in our chocolate drink—let’s just say it won’t be something we try again any time soon, I just hope cottage cheese is not permanently ruined for me—I need it to gain some weight back before the next juice cleanse.   By the way—when I weighed myself tonight I weigh 8 pounds more than my low weight taken yesterday morning, I just need to see what that translates into tomorrow morning!