Getting off sugar a month in review
My month without sugar started on April 25th, a Sunday. I determined to stop eating things that were blantantly sugary for the purpose of
- seeing if I could do it
- seeing if what happened
- trying to change a habit that is generally acknowledged to be destructive
What happened?
The biggest problem was that after work and after dinner, times I regularly chow down on sweet things, there were some cravings. A little like I imagine a smoker without cigarettes there were some moments of wondering what I should be doing now that I wasn't making 5-minutely trips to the ju-jube bag. I filled the after work void with crackers (and cheese if I was feeling energetic). That worked pretty well, I have no idea if it added up to more or less calories but it avoided the sugar. For post dinner cravings I was reduced to eating fruit, which in general was fine (I like fruit) but having an apple after dinner was a bit anti-climactic. All those years of training that if I ate my dinner I would get some tasty dessert were being turned on their heads.
Physio-logical Difference?
Disclaimer: This is completely unscientific.Interestingly, I didn't get a cold AND there was one slowly picking people off in my office. This is notable because I usually DO get a cold if there is anything going around. When I started, I felt a little sick but it didn't end up turning into a full blown sickness. Thinking about this I can't help but wonder if not eating sugar was doing something to help my immune system. While I'm not sure I may keep this technique in my pocket for the next time I feel a little tickle in my throat.
Other than that I felt a little more alert. Which I could easily pass off on the placebo effect. (Is there still a placebo affect if the action you are taking is avoiding something? Hmmm..)
Lasting Changes
My time without sugar has easily shown me that yes, I have been leaning on sugar for snacks when I'm feeling lazy, living without that has led me to eat some better (and better for me) snacks. I'm hoping to keep that up. When I'm sick expect me to lay off the sugar. My experience leads me to believe that my immune system functions better when it isn't being fed sugar.
Moving forward, I'm going to aim to keep sweets for social occasions and after dinner. If you're considering going off sugar for a little while I would encourage you to go for it! It was a good and reasonably enlightening experience for me!
Confessions:
- I ate lots of sauces, ketchup, hoi sin, teriyaki. I didn't even really look to see how much sugar was in there per serving, so before the non-sugar zealots point it out, let me acknowledge the weakness of my method.
- There was some jello+ that went down the hatch on May 23rd, but to make ammends I extended my experiment to the end of May 26th.
- I'm eating ice cream again, and just enjoying the heck out of it.