A few years ago I was a several-Coke-a-day gal. I don’t drink coffee, so it was my wake-up drink in the morning. I chugged it throughout the day to stay awake, to quench my thirst, to satisfy my appetite. After a while I switched to caffeine-free Coke, and felt like I had accomplished something.
I had tried Diet Coke a number of times and found it very untasty. After reading that if you tough it out for a week, you get used to Diet Coke, I gave it a try and found that I could subsist on Diet Coke (with an occasional 50/50 with real Coke at a restaurant).
I was feeling pretty good about the switch to Diet Coke and even considering using Splenda in my cooking instead of sugar until I read more about Splenda. Having had cancer, I was concerned to read that Splenda wasn’t as natural as I thought it was (read here, here, and here, for starters). So Splenda is out.
I shared my desire to kick my Diet Coke habit with my friend, Lisa, who is a runner, healthy eater, and breast cancer survivor. She gave me this wonderful info I’m about to share with you.
Stevia
There’s a leaf of the stevia plant that is extremely sweet and can be purchased in powdered or liquid form. Stevia contains no artificial sweeteners, including saccharin, Nutrasweet, aspartame, refined sugar, maltodextrin, or fructose.
What my friend does is take a couple of bags of tea, one regular and one a sweet fruit, and brew them. Add powdered stevia to taste, and keep in your fridge. So this is what I’ve been doing, and it’s been a great replacement for cola. You really have to have a replacement when kicking a habit, or it just won’t stick.
Stevia isn’t cheap (ran me about $10 for 4 ounces), a fact that helps inspire me to try to cut down on the sweetness I need in the tea. I think the best aim is to adjust to desiring less sweetness in food and reduce the use of any added sweeteners since anything (including stevia) in excess is likely to be unsafe, but it’s going to take a while to adjust. A little stevia goes a long way. Also, using a fruity tea as one of the bags really adds some natural sweetness.
The brand I purchased, which can be bought at Kroger and Amazon, is called Stevia Plus by SweetLeaf. Equivalencies: 1/4 teaspoon stevia = 1 teaspoon sugar, 2 tablespoons stevia = 1 cup of sugar. According to the bottle, it has a glycemic index of 0, doesn’t affect blood sugar, has fiber, and nourishes the healthy bacteria in the intestines. Neat stuff!
I also purchased some agave nectar, but haven’t had a chance to try that out yet.
So what to do with all of your white sugar? Here’s how I used up most of my leftovers last night:
Make a sugar scrub: In a container with a lid mix 2 parts sugar with 1 part skin-friendly oil. I used some almond oil that I had on hand, but other good choices would be jojoba or olive. After stirring well, mix in some 100% essential oil to scent as desired. I used rose oil.
Now prepare yourself a bath with warm water, epsom salts, and a few drops of essential oil. In the tub slather on the sugar scrub, massaging it in, working toward your heart.
It felt heavenly. My skin was left very soft, if slightly oily. Afterwards I washed lightly with a castile soap.
One warning—be careful if you do this in the tub. The oil made the tub extremely slippery so much so that I’d rethink how I’d do this in the future. It’s probably a good idea to keep your sugar-scrubbing contained and make sure you have a stable surface. If the tub is oily afterwards, vinegar, lemon, and some hot water should cut through the oil.
This easy sugar scrub recipe would make a great, inexpensive gift for friends. Put it in a glass canning or other jar dressed up with a bow or whatever you have around. Recommend to use a spoon for mixing and dipping out into the hand rather than introducing water into the scrub in order to keep it clean.
Enjoy!
Photo credit: Porcelaingirl
