Of Sweets and Dogs

#1

Today is Tuesday, therefore (for me) a Keto/OMAD day.

It being Christmas time, there are more sweets than usual going around (we have people visiting us and leaving them all the time, but now the colleagues buy sweets because “it’s Christmas”).

The sweets of the people who visit us are normally left on a desk. He who wants goes there and serves himself. It requires a certain discipline to resist the temptation as you walk past them repeatedly during the day. I normally use the “dog’s trick”, which I read in a book years ago: I look at the sweets (say: the donuts. I love cream donuts!) and vividly imagine a dog vomiting just over them and the donuts covered in dog’s vomit. It normally is enough to take care of the donuts even if I walk past them fifteen time in a day.

Today, a new challenge :wink: A nice (but amply overweight) colleague came to my desk right now and offered some sweets. I gave her my most winning, captivating Italian smile and said: “oh, how kind of you to offer me some diabetes! That’s soooo sweet! I will pass, but thank you anyway!”

We chatted a bit and I told her about my OMAD.

When she went away, I realised that there was no hesitation, no internal struggle or uncertainty at all. I did not even have to do the “dog’s trick”! It just came natural not to eat sweets.

Had I said “yes” to the little sweet, I would have felt dumb later for interrupting my fast. Plus, it would probably have left me with the desire for more sweets. Now I feel just a little bit proud, and a little bit healthier.

(Geoffrey) #2

That’s funny.
One of the wonderful benefits that I’ve experienced with going carnivore is that I’ve lost all desire and cravings for sweets or anything with carbs. Zilch, zero, none.
At thanksgiving my daughter who is an excellent cook and dessert maker made three pies and a cheesecake and as much as those used to be among my favorites they had no affect on me. They might as well been dirt in pie pans as I just didn’t see them as food anymore.

#3

You did well! :+1:

Never heard about it, thanks for sharing! :smiley:
I can’t imagine it could work for me.

Thankfully we only get sweets for Saint Nicholas day. I moderately quickly ate up my share (it wasn’t much and we mostly got tropical fruits), my SO took his sweet time but I don’t eat up someone else’s sweets and anyway, the last thing I want is something sugary now. Unless it’s honey, honey is nice and I can’t resist…

So no one gives us sweets until Christmas. And then nothing until Easter.

Fasting helps though. It takes some super tempting stuff to break a fast when I am not hungry yet. I always felt that keto (especially carnivore) and IF are a double strength safety measure for me. Unless I has given up already, even I think twice before breaking BOTH… :wink: So it’s easier to behave. I don’t have a very big supply of self restraint if it comes to food. I do have problems with sugary things especially if they are store-bought. Most items simply have no chance with me. (13 years on low-carb, a few years on/off carnivore and I reached this level… Sigh.)

Yeah, that’s neat but I still inevitably go off. And then I don’t have this protection. I still have my taste and that’s not very bad but if I start to eat, like, honey… I don’t necessarily know how to stop… I never crave it. I am very fine without any for 11 months and could make it into years. But if I eat it, I eat a lot. Unless I buy a tiny jar.

(KM) #4

Well, at least you didn’t have to imagine the dog vomiting on her. :rofl:

I’m going through weird phase with people, where they are kindly trying to ply me with artificially sweetened foods, which I find so objectionable I wish they’d just stick with sugar. Makes me feel like a hot house flower, all the special effort I’m turning my nose up at

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #5

Any way to accept it, and then quietly not eat it? Like, an “Oh, not just yet, thanks. I’ll enjoy it later,” sort of deal?

#6

Why to lie or waste food? I would rather eat pure sugar candy than that… And I never liked pure sugar candy, I was into the fatty kind… (With exceptions. Some flavorings are just too good.)

But I kind of like food confrontations (as I never get them :D) and I find it important to teach people the importance of letting people be.

(KM) #7

Sometimes. Or I’ll take it and say oh, this looks delicious! And then wander away with it in my hand. But I wish they wouldn’t bother. I feel like thanking someone for the effort is such a self important, left handed compliment. Like, “nice try but not good enough for me.”.

#8

For me is the same. Keto is what made it so easy, almost effortless to go OMAD on the appointed days. When I ate carbs, the hours to dinner time were much longer…

By the by: it never ends! Now we have donuts near the phocopier. I am particularly vulnerable to donuts.

Time for… Super Dog!!

#9

Sadly, the lack of carbs very seriously diminished my fasting abilities :frowning: OMAD was only easy on high-carb and almost impossible on carnivore for me :frowning:
It’s another matter that carbs make me want to eat more and in a bigger eating window… So I rarely did OMAD on high-carb, it merely was trivial when I made my mind. I merely had to avoid eating unnecessarily early and then stuff myself and I was perfectly satiated and basically unable to eat for a day. So I didn’t need to keep myself from eating late too, I am weak there.
But the less carbs I eat, the less chances I have for an OMAD sized meal. I can eat A TON at once if enough carbs are involved. Or if not a ton, I do have my limits per meal and per day but more than my daily energy need. Only in the beginning, my mealsize quickly diminishes on OMAD so I inevitably quit as I need my food. And it’s the good case when I am able to eat only once a day. I do love eating more often, for various reasons.

But I am usually not hungry until 3pm, no matter my woe. That helps, I don’t want to know what my life would be if I got hungry early… I have enough problems like this. My eating window is way too huge on most days. But I am working on it. And my macros aren’t bad if I eat right anyway.

I never liked donuts. Well the store-bought ones. Homemade donuts are tradition and cute and nice I guess. With homemade apricot jam, it’s the traditional way to eat them. I can’t make apricot jam, I suppose the lack of sugar affects the texture, oh well. I never made donuts, I am quite fine without them :smiley:
Of course when things are AROUND, that is different. I may not crave anything carby but certain items wear me down. They appear, no problem. Or the next day. Or the next. But eventually, if they are not too bad (I don’t like most carby stuff)…
I saw that many times. If I had them around ALL the time, I would get desensitized to a great extent, probably, it happened with many items. I live and cook for a high-carber so I am surrounded by carby food. And I never resist temptation. So the temptation had to go away. Usually. It’s not perfect but I typically need an off day to feel tempted. If it’s carnivore day #5 and I am not bored of my meat yet, I am pretty safe :wink:

Thinking it over may help. I am a health-conscious hedonist so I don’t really want to eat some bad food. Store-bought treats usually were easy to ignore since the beginning.

(Bob) #10

The dog trick. That’s a new one for me, lol :laughing:

I read in one of these low carb books one time that some of these man-made confections “even the rats won’t even touch” and I thought that was an eye-opening statement. If vermin wouldn’t eat it, why on earth would I? :wink:

#11

There are videos with mealworms. Those things eat close to everything even remotely edible. Cactus, Carolina Reaper, whole banana with a small part of the sticker…
They don’t touch parts of a cake that is mostly sugar (even ants don’t and they consume sugary water… but left the fondant part in a video I saw) and whenever they eat sugary things like a cake, much more than the usual percentage die.
Sugar is wonderful food for some animals (some consumes almost exclusively sugar as they need the energy) but not most of us. Some sugar content is fine, of course, it’s good energy but it’s tricky in huge concentration, apparently.

Some processed things aren’t eaten by not very desperate cats either and I talk about Vienna sausages here… We had such a cat. She ate (very eggy) cake and drank dirty water but low-quality Vienna sausages? Nope.
Our current cats love everything carnivore. Even carbs mixed with a little bit of animal product, I learned that when they chew the bread because it always has an egg wash… (We never buy bread, I bake them all.)

I suppose rats may eat very closely anything… Maybe wild rats who aren’t used to certain things don’t eat certain popular items but some probably would eat it… Not like I know what I am talking about, I just suppose it is so. And extrapolate from cats who may eat nearly anything too, it depends on the individual…

(KM) #12

:face_vomiting::dog::doughnut::dog::face_vomiting:

Your donut is safe with us.