Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk

Ok, so I'm not craving any cigarettes. I just don't know of any other song titles about craving things that aren't good for you. What is it about our brains that clicks into deprivation mentality as soon as we really dig in our heels to make positive changes for our bodies? Swap crap"food" for real food? Why do I crave the things that just two weeks ago, I decided I really didn't enjoy that much to begin with?

Some things are easy swaps. After years of whining to my mother that her DARK chocolate stash was bitter and gross, I'm learning to savor a square or two of anti-oxidant rich and much lower sugar superdark chocolate. I also lately realized that her preference for dark chocolate was likely stoked by the fact that her children hated it, and she could enjoy it in peace without our greedy hands pillaging the bag. Hindsight.

I'm slowing learning to enjoy Hubs' regular coffee machine coffee with a little almond milk and a drizzle of sugar or brown sugar as a swap for my urges to run to Starbucks for a skinny vanilla latte. And unsweetened Greek yogurt with a bit of low sugar cereal on top is surprisingly satisfying. (Greek yogurt has more protein and less sugar than regular yogurt or milk, so I'm trying to sneak in more protein and active yogurt cultures without all of the regular yogurt junk).

But.

Diet coke! Diet Coke! My kingdom for a diet coke.

I wonder if smokers feel this way when they are trying to quit, and they see someone else smoking? When I go into the lunch room and I see someone drinking a Diet Coke or a Diet Dr. Pepper, I have to actually tell myself to look away. I look at their faces, a magazine, my own lunch, or out the window. I want to run down the hall to the vending machine and buy a Diet Coke and slurp it down greedily. But so far, I have not. That day I wrote on my blog that I am a former soda drinker was the last day I had a pop.

There must be some more sustainable pop-swap than cans of sparkling water. Giving up pop was not just for my health, even though the decision did strangely coincide with the news that recent medical studies link diet soda to increased risk of heart attack and stroke. It was also a "green" decision, since no matter how you slice it, it's still better to reduce the number of cans and bottles you produce than just to pray that they actually get recycled. So cans of LaCroix are not really meeting the whole point of the decision. The best I've come up with so far is a packet of Emergen-C dissolved into a reusable glass bottle every day. It's slightly fizzy, and the little packets produce a lot less waste even though they are not recyclable. AND it has vitamin C. Which I need.

Anyway, that's just a little rambling update about the G3 experiment's early trials. Thank you all for your encouraging notes and emails about the new blog! I'm really excited to launch it on my birthday, and I have been madly scribbling ideas and saving websites, articles, and book reviews to start rolling with the content. I think about it pretty much all day at work, and I'm really looking forward to launching it for real.

Happy Saturday!