Giving Up Sugar and Refined Flour, Progress Report

I've been on my new "diet" for two weeks now and I've lost two pounds. My reasons for eliminating sugar and refined flour have nothing to do with losing weight, it's just happening. However, I always lose weight in the summer so it may have nothing to do with the diet.

But at this rate--a pound per week--I would quickly lose too much weight. Normally I lose ten pounds every summer and gain it back every winter. It's a good little system for my body. Every summer I get down to what I weighed back in high school and every winter I put on a thin layer of padding for insulation. But losing a pound per week is crazy. That would make me underweight for my height in just another four weeks--not good!

Hopefully this will slow down.

I haven't totally given up flour and sugar and it was not my intention to be really militant about it, but I have cut way back. I haven't baked any sweets since Collin left and that's huge. You have to understand, there's always something sweet here to snack on--banana chocolate chip muffins, chocolate chip cookies, oatmeal cookies, anise cookies, berry muffins, chocolate-dipped almond biscotti, granola bars, occasional doughnuts and puff pastries...etc., etc. I'm always baking sweets. To go two weeks without baking is an accomplishment, to put it mildly.

I did bake one loaf of bread, made of all refined flour--I wasn't supposed to do that--but that's the only doughy food I've eaten so far. I'll probably bake more bread in the next day or two, but I think I'll make it at least partially whole-grain. I'm thinking about making a batch of pasta, too. I want to try to make a spinach pasta with some of the spinach from the garden. I've never tried to do that before. And I just recently got into making homemade pierogies and I'm itching to try some different types of fillings for those, so I may make up a new batch soon. At least those freeze well, so I'm not committed to eating them all at once.

All in all I think I'm doing okay. I'm trying to think of refined flour products as occasional side dishes and I'm trying to keep my added sugar under eight teaspoons per day. I also want to add more whole grains into my diet. I don't think grains are bad, I just think refined grains need to be kept to a minimum.