No Sugar for 30 Days
In a fit of healthy inspiration, I’ve sworn off sugar for a month. I simply love sugar just a little more than I’m comfortable with, so for the sake of trying to loosen my addiction to it. No white death for a month, starting April 25th, 2010. The recent January/February Nutrition Action issue was pointing out the possible downsides of eating too much sugar, namely getting fat, increasing blood pressure, etc which I’ll admit was a factor as well.
Parameters: Avoid Most of the Added Sugar
Cutting sugar out of my life entirely is going to be pretty much impossible as sugar is in everything. I’m aiming to limit myself to things that have 5g of sugar per serving. I’m not generally a label looker so I’m sure that I’ll be making a lot judgement calls on the fly at time, but hey this is just an excercise and I’m pretty sure that I can see the sugar coming in at least 70% of the food that I eat and avoid it. Of course anything with natural sugar (hello fruit) is going to be fair game for eating.
Apparently, I’m not even close to the being the first person to give this a try. But this is this first time that I’ve ever tried to cut back my sugar intake.
Sweet Results
What am I expecting? If I felt significantly different I’d be a bit surprised. Mostly, I’m hoping to break the cravings that I have for sugar each morning, noon and night. It would be nice if I built up the self control to not eat the three jujubes left on the counter from the night before at 7:30 in the morning after I just finished breakfast. I would call that progress.
I’m also interested to see what happens when I’m forced by social situations to refrain from eating dessert or some other treat.
I’ll keep you posted if I find anything else that is interesting in this experiment.
April 30th, 2010 at 12:17 am
Good on ya. I am also trying to limit my sugar, but not to such an extreme. Just trying to be aware of it, and avoid it as much as possible.
Good luck escaping the white goodness!
S
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April 30th, 2010 at 12:53 am
Holy crap, we come from the same cookie cutter, for some reason candy just tastes better in the morning….. maybe I should join your experiement, sisterly support… I dunno.. pretty big sacrifice.. I LOVE SUGAR even though it is the white death you speak of…. I’ll think about it.
Love you!
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April 30th, 2010 at 12:55 am
Yeah I love sugar, and I’m pretty sure that this isn’t the end of ice cream cakes for me. Just a little break
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April 30th, 2010 at 1:19 am
Nice one Jeff!
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May 21st, 2010 at 3:22 pm
I’ve got another 4 days to go until I’ve been off sugar and I reckon I’ll do another blog post about the experiment then, but with 4 days left to go, I’m doing an overdue check in.
So far, it’s been interesting I find myself still being hungry particularly after work and having no sugary option available I’m becoming more of a crackers and cheese or fruit man. I’ve also taken to air popped pop corn. Consequently, I think my caloric intake is roughly the same but I’m getting better food out of the deal. I hope to continue that once the 30 days is over. I would say I do feel slightly more alert, but certainly nothing significantly noticeable. I don’t think I’ve lost any weight, but what with the time between checking the scale being > 30 days for me I really have no records. The up side for me has been just expanding my eating horizons to put sugar not at the top of my go to list when feeling peckish but supplant it with some slightly more substantial and where possible healthy food. One thing that I have found is that without eating sugar it is VERY easy for me to get my full dose of fruits and vegetables each day. Sweet fruits are very enjoyable when sugary candies and the like are not part of the food mix.
Interestingly one of the fellows at work is going for 90 days without sugar, completely putting me to shame. However, I think I’ll enjoy my first bowl of ice cream on Wednesday when my time is up all the same.
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May 30th, 2010 at 4:48 am
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