It's all about cold turkey!

While I would love to write a blog about how delicious cold turkey sandwiches are. . . because they are. . . that's not the kind of cold turkey I'm talking about here. I'm talking about the kicking a bad habit, undying conviction, going for the gold kind of cold turkey. It's mildly painful, but over the last month I've decided that it's the only way to go.

Just for kicks, I thought I would look up the origin of this tasty little phrase to see what implications it had on me completing my goals. Yahoo! had an interesting article about the origin of the idiom (did that sound like a really intelligent sentence or was it me?) and actually a fairly sick description of how it came to be (blood draining away from the skin. . . sick!). BUT, I was not yet satisfied. SO, I turned to the ever helpful, always accurate (wink, wink) Wikipedia to see what they had to say on the subject. After reading their description of 'Cold Turkey' and how more times than not, it's not an effective form of de-addition and could, in fact, lead to death, I decided to give up and write my own harrowing, positive experience with the phrase! What do industry experts know anyway. This is the world according to Carlee!

A couple of months ago, my friend Melissa and I decided to go on a 'No Sugar' bet for the next few months in order to help shed some baby fat (at least that's what I like to call it) before our trip to Hawaii. We said that we could only expose ourselves to the sugary world of Treat Land twice a month until our trip. If we fell off the wagon, the bill for one of our many Hawaii activities was the loser's to own. So, I stopped eating sweets. Cold turkey quit. One day it was ice cream and M&Ms and the next it was nothing. Not even a little. Results of the little experiment: haven't screwed up yet. Here we are almost three months later and I am still 98% sugar free! (That 2% is saved for my sweet personality of course. . .psych! It's really for the two treats I am allotted each month.) I call that success.

Second cold turkey trial. About 3 weeks ago I realized that even though the sugar free game was fun and all, my diet still sucked. What was the source of my heartache? Oddly enough, it was the source of my joy - pizza and french fries. I came to the realization that even though the sugarless endeavor was probably good for me, replacing the cake with the pizza wasn't exactly helping the baby fat wave bye bye. So, I did it. I resolved to cut out my two absolute favorite bad-for-you foods for the next couple of months. Again, cold turkey. One day it was Red Robin and Papa John's. The next day, nothing. Not even a little.

While I am not going to lie and say that I don't miss my favorite things (I want pizza pretty much every day), I will say that it's been less painful than I thought it would be. Would eating one piece of pizza kill me? Probably not. It probably wouldn't even make me gain extra baby fat. BUT, staying completely away from the temptation has done wonders for the self control. I'm an advocate. if you want to ditch something in your life, cold turkey is the way to do it. Just get rid of it. . . completely. No farting around with weaning things out. Rip the band aid. I promise you'll feel much better once you do. Maybe more hungry, but better nonetheless!

Now that I think about it, it IS pretty ironic that it's literally cold turkey that's ended up replacing the pizza and fries addiction! I do love those sandwiches.