The 'Towards a Sugar-Free Future' Challenge

cookie02

I made it through today sugar-free so that is my three days done for this week!  Now, I have to try not to over-indulge for the rest of the week. Ideally, I'd like to have a low-sugar day tomorrow but I'll see how I go.  Work looks busy so that might help me.

Phillw - thank you for sharing your tips.  I am finding cutting sugar difficult and would struggle with cutting wheat and potatoes at the same time - that is amazing .

Honey_Bear

Well done Cookie, you've beaten me to it!  Good luck with 'tomorrow', which because I'm late to the party this week is actually today.  I hope things are busy enough to distract you from thinking about sugary things, but not so busy that you are stressed.

Thank you @phillw for your contribution.  I'm with Cookie on this - just cutting down on processed or added sugar is hard enough for me one, two or three days a week so I absolutely know I couldn't cut out wheat, ie bread, pastry and pasta, or potatoes, so sauté, chips and mash at the same time.  I admire anyone who can, and totally understand that if it worked for you to achieve what you set your mind to do, it's got to be worth doing, but all I can say is "Wow - that's really going some! And well done!"  It's the habit of sugar I want to break and believe that I will lose weight if I do so and therefore cut down substantially on the amount of it that I eat.  28 years ago I went sugar-free completely, and stayed that way for at least 10 years but once I started eating it again slowly but surely it's crept up and up and up to the point where I'd have a bar of chocolate in the afternoon and then dessert after supper.  That's why I'm at least a stone overweight.  I'm not into exercise but I do walk at least a mile most days with the dog so it needs addressing.

Lockdown was tough on everyone and I'm not surprised you found yourself eating things that didn't help with weightloss; I'd like to blame my hefty chocolate consumption on the pandemic but I'd be lying - I was scoffing waaaaaay too much of it well before anyone had heard of Covid-19, and the one thing I've come to recognise about sugar is that the more you eat the more you want.  It's such a shame Aldi have discontinued your Paleo bar, but you never know - they may produce it again at some point in the future.

As for me, I managed to stay completely sugar-free on Tuesday and Wednesday and really surprisingly so far today so that's three days in a row although I need to get to midnight without slipping up for it to count.  I've amazed myself, to be honest.  I've just scoffed a slice of marmite toast to get past the 3.30pm munchies but what's surprised me is that these three days haven't had me chewing table legs with frustration AND I've started to lose the weight I'd put on so dramatically when our friends were staying and I went out to tea.  At least the trend is in the right direction, but I have to admit seeing the scales show 68.8kgs again was a bit of a wake-up call that suddenly made three days in a row essential.   

in_need_of_direction

I’d love to see 70 kg on a scale. Sadly I’ve accepted that it’ll never happen for me. My absolute worst was being weighed at a hospital at hitting 100kg. It has reduced since then but not enough. On a plus, today was my second sugar free day this week. It wasn’t as hard as expected but I think that’s more down to careful selection of the days.

Honey_Bear

Weight's a really personal thing, In Need.  I know I'm overweight for my height and I'm carrying most of it around my waist which means I'm heading for all sorts of problems if I keep putting it on, but I also know that a top I made a couple of years ago is now very tight around the upper arms, so the chunkieness is spreading and I really don't want that.  It's a vanity and a health thing I'm working on.  Apparently a realistic goal is losing 10% of bodyweight but I'm not even that ambitious - I'm aiming for 5kgs, which would be enough to reduce my blood pressure a bit because that's too high.  I've known that for several years and done nothing about it which is really, really naughty. 

'Careful selection of days' - well absolutely!  It was just fortuitous timing that I started this Challenge in August and it means that by December I'm only allowing myself the weekends to eat anything I want, and that's pretty much going to be it for keeps.  The long weekend with friends has shown me what I'll do left to my own devices.  I went straight back to eating a bar of chocolate a day on top of all the cake, cheese, meat and desserts one feeds guests.  As a few High Days it was satisfyingly self-indulgent but I can't go on living like that.  This is the only way I can think of to get myself back into a healthier way of life.  There will always be High Days and Holidays, but apparently my body won't let me live like that without paying a price for it.

I made it to three days in a row!  I'm totally delighted and very surprised because it wasn't as tough as it would have been in August so this may be working in the way I wanted it to.  As I've never heard of anyone else doing it I'm a bit surprised because combining healthy eating and weightloss isn't an area I know anything about.  I also weighed myself this morning and I've lost 500g over the three days so I'm on the right track again.     

cookie02

In Need, I'm also well over 70kg and it is health, rather than MSE reasons. that has been driving me to cut down on things over the last couple of years.  The sugar has been my hardest challenge and I find this thread really helpful (thank you Honey_Bear).  I keep this quote, maybe it will help you too: 

The man who moves a mountain starts by carrying away small stones (Confucius).  

For years, I used to have fizzy drinks (a famous big-brand cola) for breakfast and throughout the day. I could easily drink one of those family size bottles by myself in a day, sometimes more than one.  I couldn't face cutting it out altogether so I just cut out fizzy drinks for breakfast on one day of the week and gradually got to a point where I'd cut them from my diet all day, every day.  Today, I don't drink fizzy drinks, except if I'm out and driving.  I don't buy any or keep them at home so it must have saved me a ton too but I never tracked it.  Before this challenge appeared, I tried cutting sugar from just one meal (breakfast again!) on one day of the week and now I don't have sugar at breakfast, except at the weekend.  When I do my sugar-free days, I actually track them by meal (including snack times). If I can string enough meals together, I get a sugar-free day.  For me, breaking it up into those 'small stones' has really helped. Doing whole sugar-free days wouldn't have worked for me before.  I cut jam / honey etc from breakfast and then started cutting other specific foods from specific meals. Some of it has been more difficult, especially when it involved the family but I'm lucky that they have been supportive and it is helping them too, even if they are more normal weights.  Good luck . Opportunistic sugar-free days all count and that 70kg is getting closer even if it feels impossible🍀.  

Honey_Bear, great news re: the three days in a row!  I've also read that a 5-10% loss can have a big impact on cholesterol and that some people can come off diabetes medication altogether at that point.  I'm not familiar with anything like this related to eating but I'm not an expert.  Eiither way, it is a great idea, thank you.  I saw something about Jerry Seinfeld's 'don't break the chain' idea and this reminds me of that (and that's the same thing I used for cutting cola etc).  I like seeing my spreadsheet looking green.  If I get through 5 days/week in December, I might get myself a sticker chart for 2022 to keep me motivated .  

Last week, I made it through four days sugar-free.  Thursday was a bonus day and mainly due to work keeping me distracted. I have been indulging since Friday though and yesterday I indulged even more with mince pies and an amazing chocolate cake baked by my friend.  It was delicious but I think my tolerance might be changing as I felt like I had lead in my stomach afterwards. I don't think it's psychological as I absolutely loved the cake at the time.  In the interests of science, I will be testing the leftover cake later.  I won't be having the mince pie again as it was a disappointment and definitely failed the Christmas test.  This week, I'm aiming to be sugar-free on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.  For Thursday, I'm going to try and have sugar for one meal only so I can work my way up to the four days in November.  

Hope everyone is having a good weekend and good luck with your goals for the week. 

Honey_Bear

Thanks for all of that, Cookie.  It's helpful knowing that someone else has tried a similar but slightly different way of tackling over-indulgence on the sugar front and that it's been working for you.  It gives me a lot of hope.  I think I've been doing something similar without even being a conscious of it as you, in that I cut out sugar at breakfast and lunch years ago because I'd noticed that the earlier I ate sugar in the day the more I wanted it later and having done without it for years I saw no need to go back to eating a huge amount at any time.  I've never had a fizzy drink thing, although as a child when we lived in the tropics and the tapwater wasn't drinkable I used to have a seven up at tea time when we went swimming after school, with a plate of chips.  Now that I think about it that wasn't the healthiest diet at all but both my brother and I were skinny little things. 

What was really sad was that when we left the UK my favourite drink was water and when we came back two years later I no longer liked it much because I'd been drinking either fresh lime juice (lots of sugar) or those seven ups in the afternoons, and not much else. I've never been able to get back the love of water and I really did love it.  There's something that I need to think about there.

I over-indulged on the sugar front on Friday evening and realised afterwards that I hadn't really enjoyed any of it but just needed to satisfy a craving.  I haven't craved sugar since which feels like a win, but I haven't been sugar-free because a neighbour made an almond cake, and the filling was apricot and marscapone, and gave us a chunk.  We split it between us over two days and it was enough to satisfy me completely, rather than reaching for a bar of chocolate at 3.30.  There's something to be learned there, but if I make a cake I'll eat waaaaay more than the 1" slice we both had both days so I'm not going there.  I might try the recipe myself around Christmas as a treat because Belovéd loves fruit cake and I really don't like it and Christmas is defintely both a High Day and a Holiday.  Or mince pies come to that, which is helpful for me.

The three days in a row, which would have been completely impossible in August seems to have reset my sugar habit, and that's a brilliant outcome.  Having over-indulged on Friday evening I haven't been bothered about either chocolate or sugar since.  Whereas I was intending to split the days across the week, because it worked so well on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday last week I think I'm going to have a stab at Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.  If I slip up I've got Thursday as a spare, so to speak.

cookie02

I love water, Honey_Bear. I hope you rediscover your love of it.  Sounds like you had quite a restrained weekend sugar-wise . 

In contrast, I've had far too much sugar this weekend - mince pies, cake, cake and more .  I'm almost looking forward to being sugar-free tomorrow although I might feel differently by morning!  

Honey_Bear

cookie02 said:

The sugar has been my hardest challenge and I find this thread really helpful (thank you Honey_Bear). 

Thanks for that, but I should have said earlier that you have no idea how much everyone else's contributions help me, so thank you all for joining me on the Challenge.

I made it through yesterday without any trouble at all.  I remember thinking about pre-empting the 3.30pm teatime munchies and wondering what to snack on, looking at the clock and realised it was gone 5.00pm!  I've got some rather strange homemade veggie burgers in the fridge at the moment that need finishing up so I had a couple of them with a bit of quark - a tiny bit more of a faff than grabbing a bar of chocolate because it involved flashing up a frying pan but it worked and didn't ruin my appetite for supper, so a win:win all round.

For supper I made something that had a surprising amount of sugar in it but it was so, so worth it - baked sweet potato with goat's cheese and roasted grapes.  What with the sweet potato, grapes and a dollop of honey I can't say it's the healthiest sugar-free main course I've ever made but I'm definitely adding it to our repetoire because I'm always looking for veggie recipes that Belovéd really enjoys, and this was an amazing hit.  Clearly I shouldn't have had it on a sugar-free day but it wasn't dessert so I'm not being a sugar-nazi about it.  Weighing myself this morning I'm 300g down on yesterday morning, so it apparently didn't do me any harm, either.  We happened to have everything I needed to make it already, so in an effort to finish up some of the food left over from when we had our friends to stay for a very long weekend this was what I chose to cook.  The recipe is here. 

One of the reasons I'll do it again is that it didn't involve hours of prepartion, either.  I did a week's lunches for a group a couple of months ago and also had some frozen asparagus in the freezer left over from that so steamed a pack of those to go with it, and chopped up two of our own apples and some leftover celery from the blowout weekend's cheeseboard to make a Waldorf salad, and a small handful of homegrown cherry tomatoes.  All in all a meal I would happily scarf down very regularly, super healthy in terms of low cholesterol and it was four or five fruit and veg - what's not to like!

in_need_of_direction

I would never have thought of using grapes in a savoury dish. Thanks for that.  Today and Thursday are my two days this week and I’m eating out today so fingers crossed that I resist the lure of the desserts. I’m actually contemplating a starter.  The meal will be mid afternoon as I’ll be lucky to make it home by 9.  I need to pick up some of my favourite apples on the way in as at least they are portion controlled whereas I can easily over indulge on grapes

cookie02

My over-indulgence from the weekend made yesterday an easy sugar-free day.  Today, I'm already thinking about chocolate though!  I have marmite cheddar and some toasted seeds so I'm hoping that will keep me from grabbing any chocolate later. 

Thanks for the sweet potato recipe, Honey_Bear.  I've saved that one to try later.  I might try a different cheese though as I don't always like goat's cheese in recipes.  

Enjoy your meal out, In Need .