31 Days of Self Care: Day 13 (no diet products)

 

Last year, I would have these moments when I would find myself standing in front of the fridge, eating something (what didn't matter), and I quite literally couldn't figure out how I got there. It was frightening. I was completely out of control.

So I started to look for an answer. Countless Google searches phrases that seemed to describe what I was experiencing later, and finally I landed on a possibility in a word I'd never heard before: phenylalanine. For you and me? That's aspartame. And it was in so very much of what I was eating and drinking.

As an experiment, I cut out all diet products--diet coke, sugar-free gum and candy, Equal, most non-fat yogurt--everything. If it mentioned phenylalanine on the label I avoided it like the plague. And the out-of-controlness stopped.

My doctor was skeptical. Blood work didn't show that I had phenylketonuria. Or anything else. I also didn't have any symptoms ever "officially" reported or documents about phenylalanine sensitivity. She was perplexed. 

Ok -- so if it wasn't that, I was going back to to my Diet Coke with lime. And yeah...you know what happened.

So I stopped again. And the problem stopped. 

All in my head? Was hanging it on phenylalanine sensitivity enough to make whatever it actually was stop? Maybe I'm powerful beyond measure. All I know for sure is that when I avoid it, I'm fine. How that happens doesn't matter much to me.

I decided to write about this because I was just realizing that it's been just over a year since I had my very last Diet Coke--also the last phenylalanine I've had. Yay me!!! And while being diabetic without diet stuff is really limiting, I've done it. And I've survived. Quite nicely, I must say.

Today, I'm recommitting to taking care of myself in this particular way--even when it's hard, and even when I think that the best-tasting thing on the planet would be a Diet Coke with lime (which is actually fairly often).

Comments

[Laurel]

Diet Coke (and all sodas, really) are awful for your body...so glad you're taking care of it and not indulging!

[Laura Jo Richins]

Good for you, Stacy. Congrats on listening to *your* body. I've been Diet Coke free for more than 3 years now. Since that time, I've also avoided anything "diet." If I have a soda now, I have a full sugared soda, but I just don't do that very often.

You have to wonder about the increased obesity since phenylalanine was introduced. I think it totally messes with our bodies, and probably our minds. I used to have out of control sugar cravings, but I don't any more. I avoid Diet Coke like an alcoholic avoids alcohol. I don't ever want to be sucked back into that again.

[Linda Melcher]

I've been trying to tell people about that stuff for years. I found out that I was allergic to aspertame not from diet coke, but from Crystal Light. I would get headaches and nausea. No doctor told me I'm allergic to it. I just knew that it was the Crystal Light that was doing it. (Thing is, I loved the stuff, but since have gone to fresh squeezed lemonade - yum! - or even better yet cold water with a lemon dropped in it.) So, like you, I started paying attention to other things. What I have found is that if it has Aspertame in it, I stay away from it. Did not know the word phenylalanine until today. Now I'll be watching for it. :) I'm not diabetic, but I do try to limit sugar -- and I still stay far away from Aspertame.

The thing is, I've told people about this and they just think it is my problem. But when someone is complaining about chronic headaches and I see they are drinking a diet pop, I tell them. More times than not they dismiss it, as I said before, as my problem. Their choice.

I try to listen to what my body is telling me, and in the case of Aspertame, it says "YUCK!"

Good for you.