Giving up sugar - it didn’t go well!
I tried to give up sugar in my coffee and ended up eating a whole ton of chocolate!
No one I know takes sugar anymore. Not in the strongest coffee nor in tea. I’m not extrapolating from this that no one in the world takes sugar. Just saying I don’t know anyone who does. This goes beyond my immediate circle of friends, family and neighbours who long ago stopped popping in for a cup of sugar.
Places I’ve worked. Events I’ve been to. Wherever tea and coffee is on offer the sugar bowl is swerved. In fact I’d be so bold as to say there may well be more smokers now than people who take sugar in their hot beverages.
Often people don’t even bother to ask if you take sugar. It’s assumed you don’t because who does? You may be asked if you want a sweetener but not sugar. So I’m a bit odd in still taking sugar in my tea and coffee. I don’t have a great deal - just the tip of a teaspoon. About a quarter to a half of a teaspoon measure. But with drinking five or six cups a day - actually, mugs! - it all adds up and I did the sums. A teaspoon of sugar is 16 calories so half a teaspoon is eight. Six cups a day is therefore at least 48 calories. Call it 50 for ease of adding up. Seven days makes it 350 calories a week; 3,500 in ten weeks. A deficit of 3,500 calories is supposed to equal a pound off in weight. So in a year I could lose five pounds without really noticing. Makes sense right?
It didn’t! I tried weaning myself off it gradually but the less sweet my coffee was the more I craved a hit of sugar elsewhere. I couldn’t take it any longer and ended up eating a whole load of chocolate. Actually it wasn’t that much but it was more than the two squares or two small chocolates I usually allow myself when the craving gets too much.
I conclude from this that it’s probably best I continue to have sugar in my coffee. There’s a reason I like it. The taste. For me strong coffee is not just made more palatable by the addition of a tiny amount of sugar; it enhances the flavour and makes it a much more pleasurable drink. I buy the strongest coffee I can get and I have it with a splash of whole milk in it. I can’t stand it black - something else that marks me out as a bit odd among many people I know, most of whom have it black and unsweetened even if they’re not on a diet.
I like my coffee slightly sweetened and with a splash of full-fat milk because then the taste is close to chocolate. So I feel less deprived. Better a cup of coffee coming in at 25 calories - I worked this out, not guessing! - than a chocolate bar “costing” 250!
I tried. I really did. But I can’t do it. And it’s not the first time I’ve tried. It just doesn’t work for me. I reckon I have less sugar in my diet taking sugar in coffee than if I had it unsweetened.
If I get a craving for chocolate and I have a slightly-sweetened strong coffee instead, it sates me. I can kid my tastes buds I’ve actually eaten chocolate. And of course some coffee is actually sold as having “chocolate notes”.
Could it ever get to the stage where so few people now have sugar in their coffee that I’ll have to secretly carry sachets of sugar around with me? And check no one is looking when I pour a bit of contraband into my coffee? Maybe I’ll join the smokers outside.
Till next week...