One Sweet Week

Tomorrow is Mothers Day, and I’m kind of in a bind. I’m not hung up on how much I love my mom or even how much I want to celebrate her. It’s the fact that I have to break a family tradition. Since I was little, every year on Mothers Day, we would pile into the fam van and head down to DQ. My mom would get a banana split, and the four of us kids could get anything on a stick. This is more than just something fun. Getting my mom a banana split would be her gift from me. I would make a card and then “buy” her the sweet treat from DQ. We celebrated every “important” holiday with ice cream: first day of school, bad day at school, summer time heat, winter blues, and every other day, I solved and celebrated with ice cream. This year I’m strapped for a gift. You see I gave up sugar last weekend. For the next 19 weeks I am going to instate self control and restrain from any kind of sugar filled goodness. Also, my mom is so amazing and encouraging; she too is steering clear from sugar. The option isn’t even there for me to get her a gift card for banana splits. So, on a holiday that is traditionally all about food and eating, I am struggling to overcome tomorrow with a different alternative.

Today marks one week on this journey of “Summer Slim Down with Serene”. One week ago I waltzed into the Ridge Athletic Club with absolutely no idea of the changes that were ahead of me. After that first day I did not waltz out, in fact I could barely walk out of the gym. Now it’s been seven days, and I’m still pretty sore, but something in me has started to change. The fact that I have not had any sweets this week is something of which to be proud. Celebrating mile markers along the way will be important for me, and today is one of them. Sweet free for 7 days!

I would like to extend a little invite to each one of you to also go a week without sweets. See what it does for your body and how it feels to be “cleansed of the devil”. Sugar is still hard for me to deny. Even tonight I found peanut butter M&M’s in my co-workers desk and drooled a little bit. To see the effect of whatever I did different for the week, on Saturdays I’ll be marking my progress in pounds. I totally understand that losing weight is ideal, but it’s not the only way to measure progress. So with confidence and gratefulness I say to you, this week I lost 3 pounds!

One Less Day