Failure of the Day: The View from Day 8

The South Beach diet is an interesting metabolic experience, in case you were wondering. Losing 6 pounds in a week is motivational to be sure; barely having the energy to walk from my office to the bus stop is less so. There’s the emotional, uh…“frailty,” as well. Chris is in full on Nancy’s Delicate Condition mode. Again. Because “carbs” it turns out, means sugar (who knew?), and during the first two weeks of this diet, you go cold turkey off all of them, in all their forms.

Now, I am enjoying my steaks and artichokes dipped in butter dinners. I am enjoying my cheese omelet breakfasts, my dry roasted almond snacks, and all the other things I am eating. I’ve not broken one single rule yet, mostly because I’m allowed to have no sugar added fudgesicles after dinner.

But there are ways that detoxing from sugar feels similar to the condition I was in a year ago today, which is to say, a gnawing, spitting, growling mammal who would have disemboweled her beloved husband if someone told her that there was a cigarette in his small intestine.

This is not that bad, not nearly. It is yet another humbling experience in that I Am A Chemical Robot kind of way, but so far, I am coasting on two qualities that I have in abundance and that were successful in keeping me tobacco free for over a year now. Those would be stubbornness and vanity.