Temptation and Sabotage

Well, we survived a week of detox, kind of.  And when I mean "we" I mean "me and the kids." Sweet Papa was not about to play along with my silly ideas. That's probably why he's been able to keep up his sweet personality after being married for over 12 years to a tyrant.
Fifi: Hey mom, is today the last day of the thing?
Sweet Papa: Oh, you mean the Torture?
I must say that the one thing that became increasingly clear to me was that Sweet Papa shows every sign of being addicted to sugar. The first day of the "Cleanse" Sweet P starts the day off with his usual cup of coffee and 2-3 cubes of sugar. As soon as he was out of the kitchen I proceeded to hide all the refined sugar, candy, cookies, and other foods with processed sugars or high fructose corn syrup - you know, by putting them BEHIND other things in the cabinet. I can't believe he couldn't find them for a week.
The first day was pretty smooth. The kids and I rode our bikes down to a local farmer who sells produce on Saturday mornings. It was so awesome. Never knew cauliflower was sweet before. Finally had some decent sweet corn in the country. One thing I realized was that I spent the entire day cooking or doing some kind of physical exercise with the kids, because they don't move unless you move with them. It was exhausting.
The second day we had to defrost our freezer. Which meant we had to end up eating whatever was inside, including shrimp, ground beef, and the frozen cheesecake that I thought I could hide for another week.  Luckily it had apples in it, so when S.P. starts to dish it out, Fifi says she doesn't want any. S.P. can't believe this, and insists she tries it. I'm like, hello, this is sabotage, don't MAKE her eat the cake. It's bad enough he slipped Kiki an extra slice when I went to the bathroom, and who knows how many Bugsy got. 
Thursday was rough. I was exhausted. I'd been baking bread (which is so easy and really fun if you have all the time in the world and no deadlines to face) and trying to find things too cook beside spaghetti and meat sauce, and trying to keep Bugsy active. But I came down with a cold, and everyone was on my nerves. So Sweet Papa did the sweet thing, and took the girls to the hardware store with him to get them out of my hair. But first they had to stop to get ice cream to sabotage things even further.
We'd been pretty good about not going overboard. I substituted banana milkshakes for ice cream shakes (one banana, a cup of milk, and if you want, any assortment of other fruits - the frozen kind work really well, and I added a teaspoon of malted milk because I love strawberry malts). Used Agave instead of sugar, and made their chocolate milk with cocoa powder and agave juice. Bugsy was not about to try to substitute anything for his beloved strawberry flavored milk, so he drank it plain. We really don't eat a lot of crappy foods, so it really wasn't that big of a change.
But for some reason it was just too much for Sweet Papa. Here's the proof: he sent me this link yesterday: 

Where does he find this stuff? Oh, and the remix video is pretty funny too:

Watch out! Mama's taking over!

Nothin' like a good ole body cleanse to get your summer vacation going. 

For the first time in a long time, I will have total control of everything my family eats and every physical activity they do for 2 full weeks (2 1/2 for the kids). So I'm taking charge. We are cutting out white sugar and all processed foods and synthetic ingredients, and whatever else I feel like cutting out (including my morning Latte Machiatto) for as long as we can take it. We're going substitute things like (gasp!) running around outside, and playing games that involve more than just your retinas and fingertips to move, for the TV and computer. I'm drinking my last beer as I write this, I may need another.

Sound outrageous? Sound inhumane? I have 2 obese people in my immediate family (not me) and coming from a long line of people teased for their skinniness, I refuse to allow this behavior to continue under my watch. Besides, they spent their first week off of school with Sweet Papa and Oma, so you know a detox is in order.

our Saviour?

First stop: grocery store to get a healthier replacement for white cane sugar Picked up an extra large bottle of Agave: Bio (hell) Agaven Dicksaft. Roughly translated: you will be going through hell on this diet and this juice (saft) will make you fat (dick).  I don't know if this is really a better alternative than sugar, but I'm not going the artificial sweetener route, and the other alternative  - sepia? stevia? stevejobsia? is banned in some countries, and well, when I went to the local store, this was staring me in the face like a gift from God.  Bugsy, of course wanted to get 2 bottles, just to make sure we had enough.


So far the kids have been fine with the idea, even curious, asking questions like "Can we watch TV? It doesn't have sugar in it." And "Can we have our last Nutella bread?" (on their last day without sugar), but since there was no bread, they settled for a Nutella banana, which turned into raiding the Nutella jar with their fingers and eventually spreading it all over my dining table. At least that'll hopefully keep anyone else from wanting to eat the rest.

Sweet Papa's reaction was a bit different. His last week long cleanse lasted until he got home from work the first day.  His first reaction was total shock that I would even consider doing something like this. Since he's generally too lazy to prepare meals or get groceries, he knows he's dependent on me for food. His second thought - I'm going on vacation! Third thought - two weeks is just too long. We'll see. We may not make it through the first day. But at least the kids are going to realize that maybe going to day care and letting mommy go to work, may not just be such a bad thing after all.