It’s the very first day in the New Year and the first thing I need to do is to devour my little French lemon tart. This year I’m going to reduce my sugar intake by more than half (not that it’s something I can measure). But this little beauty is staring me right in the mouth, moistening up my salivary glands and making my culinary psyche eager.

Last year my sugar intake got out of control. I love to bake and eat, I devoured too much candy at every and any opportunity, Saturday morning coffee with my husband turned into pastry binges and I don’t know when my rationed one piece of chocolate a day turned into an entire chocolate bar a day. I think my excuse was that I only eat good chocolate so therefore a splurge here or there was not detrimental to my program. In fact, good chocolate is not detrimental to any diet program I know of. Then again, I’ve never looked into it very eagerly.

I don’t like what lots of sugar does to me. I feel physically sluggish, mentally lethargic and moody. I often feel like sugar robs me of precious time I could use to do other things, like working productively so I have more family time. Sugars a real time waster.

Sugar sits on my hips, it bulges my belly and causes my weight to go up and down. More to the point, sugar makes my weight go up and I fight with all and any tool I have at my disposal to bring it down. It’s not always pretty, never very healthy and it’s a teeter-totter I’d love to jump off of. Sugar is just not a healthy ingredient you want in excess in your body.

So for all of those reasons and probably more, 2015 will be as close to a sugarless year as I can muster. First things first; one sexy, delicious, little lemon tart. It goes down so sensuously (there is no picture because, you guessed it – I age it before I shot it).

Early the next morning, the second day of the year, I wake up feeling rather accomplished and not at all as I should feel – resentful for eating the tart. I think this is probably how diets fail. Instead of feeling distraught for eating a tart that undermined the first day of a new commitment, I’m feeling incredibly satisfied, happy and proud of my accomplishment of eliminating the lemon tart from my goals. Wow, how twisted can my psyche get?

The next day I jump into a taxi and head for the airport. I’m going to Jamaica, but first I have to buy some gum or hard candy for the take off and landing. After all, I need to protect my ear drums. Yes they have sugar, but all in the name of caring for myself, I’m 6 hard candies down.

Did you know when you land at the Jamaican airport they have a duty free alcohol store for arrivals? Yes they do, and their specialty is Sangsters Jamaican Creamed Rum. Now we both know rum is made from sugar cane. But some colleagues are raving about it, buying multiple bottles of it and planning to sip on it poolside. I can’t resist being part of such a fun bonding ritual but because of my sugar reduction commitment, I buy only one bottle. I’m feeling pretty good.

On the cab ride to the hotel in downtown Kingston, I’m rationalizing my commitment. Sugar isn’t all that bad in small doses, but an excess like I consume is worth the effort to strive for balance.

After all, I do have incredibly strong and admirable willpower throughout the day. At least that’s what I believe about myself and I’m not giving up on my own positive support. My weakness is late afternoon. Around four in the afternoon something happens. I loose total control of my sane Gemini twin and the dark, self-destructive twin takes over. It’s very true what they say about Gemini’s being like Jekyll and Hyde.

The good me is totally lost, completely overtaken by my dark, sinister twin who believes it’s ok to eat as much sugar as I want. As the dark twin grows stronger and stronger it begins to throw suggestions into my mind like – chocolate cookies dripping in chocolate sauce, rum marinated cherries mixed with Chantilly cream and broken meringues, caramelized butter tarts, even a little French lemon tart. Now I’m fully seduced into sugar and I find myself following these thoughts so eagerly, like a naive little puppy. Without any visual aids, my mouth begins to water, my stomach begins to ache and my entire body springs into action to forage for something sweet.

For those of you who are wondering about this internal fight, I should explain that there is none. No it’s 100% dark side (not as good as dark chocolate) and when it takes over, one would never know (especially me) that I have a good side.

My dark twin successfully blocks out all the reasons I don’t want to eat sugar, why I vowed to be good to myself, why I need to ration chocolate or how sugar makes me feel miserable, sluggish and moody when I eat too much. No, my darker Gemini twin just turns me into a raving lunatic in search of anything sweet – I mean anything, red licorice, baking chocolate, spoonful’s of honey or a finger dipped all the way into a jar of Nutella.

The longer it takes me to satisfy (and I do try to resist in the beginning) my sweet obsession the more sweets I eat, compounding the sugar seduction. Within minutes of quenching my sweet sugar lust, my sane Gemini twin returns just in time to blanket me with feelings of disgust, shame and anger (maybe she’s not so good after all).

The late afternoon binges happen any and every day I’m working alone in my office. If there are others around or I’m out of the office it rarely happens. Family doesn’t count, I can be pretty persuasive and talk everyone into something sweet. Even they are no match for the dark Gemini within us all.

I’m still in day two, sitting poolside sipping on the most delicious Sangsters creamed rum. I’m a Bailey’s fan but it’s such a girls drink – all texture and no complexity. Sangsters Jamaican creamed rum is different, it has the thick, sweet texture of the cream but running through it are layers of butterscotch, burnt toffee and toasted pecans. To contrast the thick cream is a spike of heat from the alcohol. Sangsters is a gutsy, more interesting version of Baileys and I can’t stop sipping. Of course, it has sugar and that’s another reason why I’m immediately addicted.

I’m finishing off this blog and going to bed. Tomorrow, day three, will probably be better. In fact things are already looking up. In spite of the little tart, the six candies and the three glasses of creamed rum, it is ultimately less sugar than I would have normally consumed if I had not committed to eliminating sugar. So I guess it’s going to be a good year after all.