Day 26 No Advent Calendar, and due to awesome weather, no gym

Today was an exceptionally nice day in Raleigh. The high was 64 degrees and it was sunny with a very light breeze. Decided to skip the gym after having lunch with a friend of mine who was visiting from Colorado. I took a rather medium intensity greenway trail for 2 miles instead of heading to the gym, and think that was the right choice. It was nice to be outside doing something other than strength machines for the last 24 days. I'll head back to the gym tomorrow.

It was great visiting one of my friends for lunch. Wonderful hearing what she's been doing over on that side of the country and I got to tell her about my ridiculous adventures since we'd seen each other last. We talked about our current jobs, winter sports (snowshoeing), summer sports (running), end of life care, and finances.

I reconsidered my January challenge and don't believe I'll be doing a Dry challenge. I don't have a problem with alcohol, and was reacting to the requirement of drinking a glass of wine every day. I don't mind having one or multiple drinks, but I looked forward to having none sometimes. My drinking is very variable. I might drink two or three drinks a night, and might have no alcohol for three weeks and not care a whit.

I'm really interested in this Food Lab book, and while I don't want to make it part of a challenge, I'd like to use it to learn more about cooking while I do the No (obviously) Sugar Added challenge. Since I already ate the chocolate truffles and Christmas Tree cakes in my home, I think my kitchen is pretty free from obvious sugars (except for the sack of sugar next to the flour, which I can just ignore). The oatmilk that I use for my coffee has 4 grams of added sugar, but since I only use about less than an 1/8th of a cup, I can't imagine it being detrimental. I also cannot figure out where the added sugar is in my oatmilk. The ingredients are:

INGREDIENTS:
OATMILK (FILTERED WATER, OATS), CALCIUM CARBONATE, DIPOTASSIUM PHOSPHATE (STABILIZER), SEA SALT, GELLAN GUM, VITAMIN A PALMITATE, VITAMIN D2, RIBOFLAVIN (VITAMIN B2) AND VITAMIN B12.

So, do I misunderstand what Added Sugars means? I don't see any sugar or sugar substitutes in this list. Maybe, or maybe not. I looked up what each chemical was, and found that Gellan Gum, while produced from certain lilies, can be chemically produced by fermenting sugar with a particular strain of bacteria. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC91366/) I'm going to guess that's the added sugar, and enjoy my coffee with oats and water and a pinch of fermented sugar with bacteria.

Other than that, I don't believe I often run into added sugars that I can't just look up and avoid, but I certainly won't flog myself if I mess one meal up if I used my best judgement with the information I had at the time. So, that's settled. In a little less than a week, I'll be avoiding added sugars!

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