Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

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Lord, I hope so.

I've made a few changes starting last week.  Nothing huge but they're huge to me because it's different than what I've been doing for, well, ever.  I grew up on artificial sweeteners.  The pink stuff to be exact.  Mom always had it around and honestly I didn't really start using it too much until we started on our first go round of weight loss back in 1998.  I grew up on a crap ton of sugar.  I was addicted to my aunt's sweet tea which, if I remember correctly, was this pitcher:

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a scoop of Nestea instant tea and a cup of sugar.  When my dad was still around, I remember excitedly making a cup of coffee for him- two creams, two sugars.  So my tastebuds were being trained from a young age.  I know we had the sweet tea in the house too and my mama was a sweet tea addict until she left this Earth, but I think at some point she switched over to the pink stuff.  I think I stuck to sugar when I lived at home but once we went on our diet in the 90's, I welcomed the pink stuff into our home.  It was the lesser of all of the evils available at that time and it took a long time to adjust to the taste for me but I did.  It wasn't until this decade that they began to discover it screws with your microbiome.  (This study breaks down which sweetener you might be using.  Mine changed microbiome as well as liver inflammation -  Aces.)  Because I cannot go from something 200-700x sweeter than sugar to nothing, I switched to Stevia in the Raw.  No need to tell me that's not safe either, I know but it's more safe than the other stuff and I'm using it to transition.  I chose that because the other popular Stevia product contains erythritol which has been shown to cause strokes and heart attacks as well as impair brain function.  (Remember like about 5ish years ago they touted it as the new miracle sweetener and everyone rushed out to buy it because they even said it was healthy?)  

I'm not gonna lie, it tastes like ass to me.  Some people can't taste stevia's aftertaste but many can.  I guess I should be grateful I don't care for it much.  I think stevia on it's own is fine but unfortunately anything you're going to need in powder form for coffee or tea is going to need a food additive so it doesn't cake up.  Who knows, maybe I'll try to grow my own stevia plant and see if I can steep the leaves or something at some point.  But I need to tell myself once these bags run out, that's it.  It's a tough transition and has taken what was always a pleasant ritual of drinking tea/coffee to something that I have to force down a bit more now.  It's still new so I know my tastebuds are still being trained.  I saw it typically takes a month for tastebuds to fully get used to something like that so I'll see how I do at that time and then half my amount for the following month and see how that tastes compared to nothing.  The goal is by month three to have no sweeteners in my drinks.  You have no idea how foreign that is to me.  Never in my life has that been a thing or a goal.  But I've had a slow metabolism (diagnosed from Bod Pod session) for over 10 years and that's only going to get worse as I age.  Our immune system is directly tied with our gut microbiome so there's even more reason for me to get it together on that front.  

I also have cut my daily peanut butter in half.  Pretty much every day I have a bowl of oatmeal with two tablespoons of peanut butter that is made from nothing more than peanuts and salt.  Peanut butter is high in good fats and low in bad ones and it keeps me full all morning.  In checking my Cronometer, I saw my fat was chronically over which isn't the greatest for someone who wants to eventually get off of statins.  I wanted to see how I'd do if I only did a tablespoon and a half but it didn't make much difference to the fat amount so I cut back to one tablespoon in the oatmeal and was hoping I could still taste it.  It's definitely not as good as two tablespoons but I can taste it and that's going to have to be good enough.  It's taking off 100 calories and removing 7 grams of fat so while it's not sink back in my chair good anymore, I guess I'm at the age where pleasure with food is going to have to fly out the window, or that's how it feels right now.

I know I'll adjust.  It won't always feel this hard or prison like.  Right? 😬

Have you made any changes lately or any changes you need to make?

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