Day 15, Monday: In Which Our Heroine Actually Reads the Directions

I felt fantastic on this day.

Breakfast: Two hardboiled eggs. Shockeroo.
Lunch: remains of my Parkview Diner salad from the day before.
Dinner: pork chops with Diane's awesome cabbage dish. Can take the girl outta Poland but you can't take the Polish out of the girl. Other Eastern European foods I love: potatoes. Kielbasa. Mustard. Yum! This photo does not do the cabbage dish justice. It is cabbage, onion, and green apple cut up thin and sauteed in bacon fat.

Today I had a serious ruh-roh moment when I actually re-read the 21 Day Sugar Detox manual and discovered that I've been doing a ton of things wrong. Well, four things to be specific. I shall reveal them to you in ascending order of my shock.

1. Turns out sweet potatoes are not on the sugar detox. I had a sneaking suspicion about this, and embarrassingly my husband even checked in with me about it before we ate them. "Are you sure these are on the Detox?" I blew him off. "YES, I'm sure!" I had convinced myself they were on the "occasionally" list. They're not.

2. Turns out CASHEWS are not on the sugar detox. WTF? Are they a legume? Too much sugar? High glycemic index? This is a big blow to my snacking habits, because I am a big fan of cashews. This means that my cashew cheese eggplant rollatini is a big wash, Detox-wise.

3. Now this next revelation blew my hair back, I was so stunned: a half cup of rice IS allowed on the Detox!!! Occasionally. I am shocked by this. I do pretty well with white rice myself but nothing, I mean nothing shows me the danger of simple carbs like what happens when my husband eats white rice. I LITERALLY SEE HIM BLOW UP IN FRONT OF MY EYES. Like we start eating at 6:15 and at 6:20 I look at his face and he has another chin. Seriously--that stuff must be poison. I told Chris, against my better judgement, about the half cup of rice thing, and his eyes started sparkling and he asked me a bunch of questions about it in a pushy voice. "Really? Are you sure? How much? When did you find this out? How often can I have it? Can I have it with condiments? If I don't eat a half cup each day can I save up each day's allotment and have seven cups at once at the end of two weeks?" (Answers: Yes. Yes. Half cup occasionally. Today. Occasionally. Only if they are free of sugar. No.) I strongly advised him not to go down that road.

4. And finally, this sentence from the manual, in response to the question "Can I eat as much as I want of the 'Yes' foods?": "If you find yourself eating 1/4c of almond butter in a sitting, you may be eating too much of it."

WHAT.
THE.
F&*%????

I have been eating easily a THIRD to a HALF cup of almond butter every time I have my "apple and almond butter" snack, and you know, Gentle Reader, that I've been snarfing that up with the precision of a Dyson vacuum! AAAACK! This caused me great tsuris for about five minutes. Then I said to myself, "Self, you are feeling good and looking good with this diet, and following it pretty faithfully with the exception of the night at Nina's and the Sweet Potato Pancakes and the Cashew Cheese fiascos. Don't worry about this. Maybe eat a little less next time."