Being Kind to Kim - Lucinda's First Challenge!

The conversation went something like this... "I eat too much sugar. It seems I'm always grabbing chocolate or cookies or candy, especially at night." And Lucinda replied, "It sounds like you need to clean out your cupboards! Throw out all of the food that isn't really food! Put the garbage food where it belongs - in the garbage!" Oh. Yikes! Here's the thing... I'm on maternity leave and so my income is limited. I spent good money on that "food"! I don't know if I can just throw it out! What a waste of money! But, on the other hand, I get what Lucinda is saying. The junk in my cupboards isn't really food, is it? It's garbage. It doesn't fuel my body. It's full of sugar and chemicals and doesn't have much/any nutritional value! So it is garbage.

In my mind I compared it to my husband who used to have a tool-buying-problem. He would walk into Canadian Tire, see a set of wrenches for 1/2 price and come home with them! It wasn't until he REALLY cleaned out his garage that he realized that he had 6 sets of wrenches. Although it was hard for him, he gave away his extra wrench sets because HE DIDN'T NEED THEM. And afterwards, he was much less likely to buy the extra wrench sets that he didn't need.

Well, I don't need the sugar. I don't need the chemicals. I don't need the extra calories! I realized that I need to clean out my cupboards and my fridge, as hard as it may be. I started, slowly. I threw out the obvious things: Nutella, Cheese Whiz, sugary cereals, nasty chemical-filled salad dressings... I was doing pretty good, a little bit at a time! A big part of Being Kind to Kim involves feeding my body with foods that are kind to my body! And that's certainly easier said than done. It's also easier when the garbage foods aren't in my house! I was doing pretty good - or so I thought. Then Lucinda came over for an Epicure party and I asked her to take a look. Here's what else she found:

-processed crackers (glorified chips!) -Craisins!! Who knew they were so sugary?!? -yogurt! Lots of sugar there too! -ketchup -BBQ sauce Oh dear. The crackers and the Craisins (26g of sugar in a 40g serving) were easy enough for me to throw out, but I have to admit, I still have yogurt, ketchup and BBQ sauce in my fridge. My current mission is to come up with healthy alternatives for these terrible 3! The BBQ sauce in my fridge has 13g of sugar per 2 Tbsp! When I'm aiming for 25g or less of sugar per day, that is a lot! I think I'll stick to sprinkling spices on my meats. Ketchup - the second ingredient is "liquid sugar"! Yikes! Epicure has a Chia Ketchup mix I'd like to try. Yogurt? Lucinda says it's "dessert food". For now, I will treat it like that and only have small servings for dessert.