Sunday March 18 is the end of my 7th week of being sugar-free*
Here’s how it happened ….
Around summer 2008 I started being more conscious about the carbs that I eat …Stopped buying soda. Stopped eating pasta for a lot of meals. Lost about 40 pounds just eating less carbs/soda.
Around late summer/fall 2011 I started being more conscious about the starches/gluten that I eat … I’ve had issues with digestion and food-poisoning symptoms for a few years, and after spending a day in Scotland in bed, I decided to experiment with cutting out gluteny foods completely (cut out bread/pasta basically).***
Then fall of 2011 I started listening to Dishing Up Nutrition – a podcast/radio show done by licensed nutritionists in Minnesota. I started really noticing sugar that I eat. … Trying to get up the guts to completely give up sugar. Especially after having watermelon every day this summer – and then checking to see how much sugar is in watermelon. Especially after noticing how many times someone at work brings in baked goods – one of the downsides of working in an office with 30 other people. Especially after Christmas or Valentine’s Day when people gift us chocolate or other candy. Especially because we have diabetes (type 2) in my family. Especially when I eat so many Good ‘n’ Plentys that I have indigestion.
The more I learned about it – about how much sugar is in everything and all the health problems it causes – I started to realize I am addicted to sugar. Addicted.
(And it is more than likely you are too)
Sugar can affect your brain and biochemistry the same way cocaine can.
If you are addicted to sugar, it’s not your fault ….
I was putting tablespoons of sugar in my morning coffee, eating cookie (or 3) any time there was one in the office, chewing (“sugar-free”) gum throughout the day.
So, mid-January of this year, a blogger that I read went totally sugar-free on the advice of her doctor and ran a challenge to encourage her readers to try eating better too. So the whole quitting-sugar thing had been weighing on me. I didn’t want to do it before the holidays. Then I didn’t want to do it because I didn’t want to give up coffee …. then Danielle blogged about going sugar free and I thought….. “well, obviously I’m just being a baby.”
So I decided to go for it.
Just to see. To be able to say I tried it.
Sugar is in now almost everything – pretzels, soda, BBQ sauce, etc. Not only that, but sugar actually FEEDS cancer cells.
Sugar (fructose, specifically) isn’t processed correctly by your brain. You’re brain gets the signal that you’re starving so you will never feel full if you’re eating sugar and sugar and sugar.
Yes, sugar appears in nature…. but in much smaller amounts than we are currently eating. AND whenever sugar appears in nature (fruit, sugar cane) it appears WITH fiber.
I bought I Quit Sugar – an ebook by Sarah Wilson. It’s only 41 pages, but it includes basic sugar-nutrition research as well as a well-structured 8 week plan to cut sugar out of your diet. Including practical ways to build your diet around good food. Including how to read food labels.
I’ve read through it twice and printed it out for Andrew to read. Even just the product and recipe recommendations are worth the price! Even if you don’t cut out sugar completely, having on hand a list of non-sugar alternatives can exponentially help you eat better.
If you are thinking about cutting out (or even cutting back) sugar, I would definitely recommend I Quit Sugar just for the practical tips, suggestions and steps.
(sidenote: “sugar-free” isn’t necessarily better. The sweet taste stimulates insulin but then isn’t actually fed the sugar to use the insulin on so you’re stuck with high levels of insulin. Plus if you’re trying to break the addiction to the sweet taste eating something “sugar-free” isn’t going to help)
MORE INFORMATION and RESOURCES to learn for yourself:
I’m sure you’re curious as to how I’ve handled being sugar-free ….
I spent the first 2 or 3 weeks with a headache …. minor headache, and it could have been because I was drinking less coffee, but that was really the only withdrawal symptoms I experienced.
We don’t really eat any processed foods so there wasn’t any “hidden” sugars to get rid of. Cutting the sugar out of my coffee and any extra candy/cookies was all the sugar I had been eating.
I *have* lost a few pounds. Maybe 5 or 6 or so. Not a ton. And, honestly, I don’t actually feel all that healthier. Again, because the FOOD we have been eating before giving up sugar is all good whole foods, nothing processed.
Sarah recommends completely cutting out fruit (because the actual problem is fructose) but keeping carbs (breads/pastas) in your diet for now. As I had already basically given up breads/pastas, and I found after 4 days I was going CRAZY so I decided to continue to eat a little bit of fruit. Approximately 1 small piece every other day or so. But AS fruit to get the fiber. Not as juice.
There was one Sunday night, maybe the 2nd weekend, that I literally had to get off the computer because I saw baked goods EVERYWHERE. I’m sure it was just that I was noticing all the mentions of food and cakes and sugar, but I couldn’t escape it and it was really kicking up the sugar cravings….
Turns out everything people told me is true:
About the 4th or 5th weekend I got to the point that I actually had blueberries FOR DESSERT. I know. It sounds ridiculous. But a handful of blueberries was just the amount of sweetness I needed. In fact, last week I cut up a bunch of strawberries and it was actually TOO MUCH sweetness for me. Weird.
I DID get used to coffee without sugar. I still prefer it WITH sugar. But the first couple weeks I was sugar-less I was only drinking about half a cup of coffee. Now I’m up to about one and a half cups of (sugar-less) coffee.
I *miss* sugar a lot less than I did the first couple weeks. I spent a lot of time the first couple weeks just THINKING about cupcakes and cheesecake and candy….. Now I still get hit with a sugar craving every once in awhile but much much less often.
And now, I’ve noticed, sugar makes me ill …. I had a cake pop last weekend (a housewarming gift from a friend, so of course I couldn’t say no). It was *delicious* … but immediately afterward I had a slight headache and some nausea. Because my body wasn’t used to that much sugar at once. I’ve gone through the detoxing….
Going forward ….
My original plan was just to start, go for a week, and see how long I could stand it.
Sarah Wilson recommends approaching your 8-week program as an experiment. See how you feel. See how your body responds. See if it’s really as difficult as you think it is.
So, I started Jan 30 …. started for awhile… and gave myself an end-point of April 2. My 30th birthday and 9 weeks after starting sugar free (although, depending on birthday events I will probably have something sweet and birthday-ish on April 1).
So we’ll see what happens after April 2.
I will probably not put sugar in my coffee – even though I love it. At this point I am totally used to coffee with just half-and-half, and then breakfasts out I can get myself a vanilla latte as a REAL treat….. . I will probably continue to not eat the baked goods and candy brought into work.
I won’t deny myself cake or treats for celebrations …. but I will make sure that if I’m going to eat something with sugar in it I will eat something GOOD (and not just Chips Ahoy cookies or Mike ‘n’ Ikes).
I genuinely feel like I am no longer addicted to sugar and will have a lot more control over my cravings in the future …..
What about you? Have you ever tried going sugar-free? Let me know if you start!
P.S. Andrew is still as sugary sweet as he always was …. But since I make most of our food from good whole ingredients he is still doing a lot better than most of America.
*Some SMALL exceptions to my sugar-free eating: I did continue to eat fruit (small piece every other day or so),
I ate chewy vitamins (that I’m sure had some kind of fake sweetener) because I wanted them to be gone before we moved,
I had 2 or 3 nights of really terrible sleep so allowed myself to have sugar in my coffee the next morning,
when we went to Lucques our meal included a little macadamia-pineapple-tort with a small scoop of vanilla ice cream,
when we moved in to the house a friend brought us house-warming homemade cake-pops – and of course I needed to have one to celebrate (and be polite) since they wouldn’t last through April 2,
I *may* decided to have a small piece of cake or similar at Kaitlin’s baby shower coming up
**please note: I am not a nutritionist (although I think it would be fascinating to study that). I am not a doctor and I am in no way trying to give medical advice. However, I will say that I think almost everything in this post is common-sense-healthy-eating.
***I’m not saying that food with gluten is bad in-and-of-itself, but personally I’ve noticed I feel sick-symptoms-like-food-poisoning about 18 hours after I eat a carb-heavy meal (like lasagna, sandwiches, etc). Staying away from gluteny-foods just helps me feel better*
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), but she made tacos for dinner and invited us over….
