The 'Towards a Sugar-Free Future' Challenge

Honey_Bear

I had the sugar-munchies about 20 minutes ago and realised it was 3.30 again.  It doesn't seem to matter what I eat for lunch, come 3.30 I crave sugar.  I settled for goat's cheese and some crackers that both needed finishing up.  I was okay yesterday and realised this morning that I could have sugar again tomorrow, so I've got through this three days (so far) without too much that might resemble a struggle. 

I really, really don't want to have another long weekend of over-indulgence again until at least Christmas because I felt as though I'd undone a lot of the achievements up to that point.  I hope I can be a bit more self-disciplined over the next couple of months than that.

Cookie, there are so many different goat's cheeses that I understand if some of them don't suit you.  I've lost count of the number of people who've told me they loathe goat's cheese.  I like the softer ones more than the hard ones, but I've never found a sheep's cheese I don't like, so I eat a lot of both.  I used a very soft goat's in this, Chavroux, which I think I get at Morrisons, but it may be Sainsburys or even Lidl because I use all three supermarkets.  It was perfect for us and just melted into the hot sweet potato while I was mashing it.  I wouldn't think a blue cheese would go well with it, or a strong cheddar, but it's what works for you that's the test of the recipe.

How are you holding up In Need?

in_need_of_direction

I’m about to take on day 2 this week, thanks for asking. Day 1 had a bit of a slip up as I was meeting a client over a meal.  They came for a drinks order first.  While I’m happy to order water with a meal, not so much in advance.  That said, I truly savoured my Diet Coke.  

Yesterday I picked up some cracker read to have in the evening if the munchies hit.  This should reduce the chances of me reaching for a biscuit.

once again. Thank you for the thread. It prompts me to stop and think.  Who knows, at some point, there may even be some weight loss!

cookie02

I made it through yesterday thanks to the Marmite cheese and spicy seeds.  I have more of the same and hope that will get me through today.  

Honey_Bear, you've reminded me that I really like the Lidl goat's cheese but I haven't seen it here for ages.  I might try Boursin in the meantime as some goat's cheeses make my tongue and palate itch. It's a very mild allergic reaction and goes away in an hour or two but I tend to avoid goat's cheese for that reason.  

In Need, I think eating out is the hardest. Well done for only having one Diet Coke .  Fingers crossed for today, I hope the cracker bread does its job!  I know I'm going to need some luck today as I've got some new biscuits which I really want to try but I'm hoping I can hold out until tomorrow.  

cookie02

I ended up having dessert yesterday .  It was another of those small coconut-based chocolate desserts.  The good news is that I didn't raid the biscuits or anything else.  My goal was three days plus Thursday with sugar for one meal only so I made it but I really struggled yesterday and was so tempted to have biscuits earlier in the day.  November's four sugar-free days will be really tough.  I'm glad there are a couple more weeks before that starts!  Today, I already want sugar.  This isn't a sugar-free day for me but I'm going out later and I'm going to try and avoid sugar until then and just really enjoy whatever we have for dessert. I'm out again tomorrow with friends but I'll try and be more restrained on Sunday.  

I hope you hit your sugar-free goals yesterday and that you have a great day!

cookie02

Hello again!  My weekend was a bit sugary but much more restrained than the weekend before.  I'm counting that as progress  .  Yesterday, I managed to stay sugar-free.  Today has been ok so far but I have a lot of temptation in the house (more mince pies following weekend 'taste tests', as well as some home-made cookies).  My goal is to be sugar-free again today and tomorrow and then to only have one sugary meal on Thursday.  How are all of you doing this week?  

Honey_Bear

I feel very guilty for not posting since last Wednesday, or following up other people's comments.  Well done on getting this far without having a guilt-inducing splurge.

So, last Thursday after lunch I really wanted sugary chocolatey stuff and thought I'd have a couple of those fun-sized treats and see if that was enough.  I had three, two small M!lky W@ys and a three square @er0 thing.  Wow!  I should have stopped after one because my reaction was so strong but I kept thinking they'd taste better if I just kept going, which I can only think must sugar addict thinking.  They made my teeth curl up they were so sickly sweet, and hadn't even a hint of chocolate flavour about them so I can honestly say that despite keeping going eating them I didn't enjoy a single mouthful. 

Knowing that is incredibly helpful because there is absolutely no need for me to eat any of them ever again.  It's chocolate I love, not sugar.  I might be addicted to sugar but that's a whole different thing.  I certainly don't want to bother with that kind of self-indulgence again so the fun sized stuff is going to be used if we get any Trick or Treaters and if they don't turn up (they often don't) I'll see if the Foodbank can take them.  (They might not be able to because they're not in their original wrappers which show the ingredients - crucial information about allergies being necessary when you're handing out food.)

So, three days the second time around was a real turning point for me.  I don't know about anyone else, but it's clear that for me the more sugar I eat the more I want, so three days in a row looks like being a real reset of my sugar habit and I'm absolutely thrilled about that.  If I'd stopped after one of those fun sized things I wouldn't have realised that, so it was okay to carry on, especially as I won't be wondering or wanting to try that ever again. 

I haven't been able to break the sugar habit completely and at the moment I can't kick the mint @er0 habit but that's absolutely fine - I'm not intending to go entirely sugar-free ever, just digging myself out of the sugartrap I'd dug myself into over the years.

When I started this Challenge I knew that with a lot of determination I could, at most, manage a week sugar free, but I hadn't managed that for a couple of years and even then after that I'd go back to bulk consumption so nothing had changed.  That second set of three days in a row reset my taste buds completely, but I absolutely did not think I would be able to do three days in one hit until I tried it after building up to it in August and September.  It's now Tuesday lunchtime so I'm halfway through my third set of three days and it's not hurting.  I wanted sugar at 3.30 yesterday afternoon and had a slice of cold leftover pizza instead and that did the trick, so I'm finding ways around that dangerous time of day, and all that information helps. 

I'm sort of dreading November as well Cookie, and I may split it as Monday/Tuesday and then Thursday/Friday but I'm not going to think about it too much or make myself decide just yet because there's no need.  Besides which, I'm enjoying the feeling of success that I'm getting this month!

Regarding weight-loss, there's no doubt at all that I lose it on days I don't eat sugar and then put some of it back on the days I do.  I'm obviously hoping that as the number of days increase the days of indulgence will decrease and overall I'll start shedding this wobbly lump around my middle.  That would be very gratifying.

in_need_of_direction

That was a really insightful post honey bear. Thank you for that.  I did my two days last week and am just completing day one this week.  I’m afraid of tempting fate but I’m finding it easier than I expected. 

Honey_Bear

Thanks for that In Need.  I hope you got through the day without giving in to any temptation that may have arisen.

I've just weighed myself and am disappointed to find that two days of no sugar hasn't cumulatively resulted in much of a loss and I was quite circumspect about what I ate.  Hey ho, today's another sugar free day so I'll see what that yields. 

cookie02

I ended up being sugar-free yesterday as well and it happened 'by accident'.  It seems like four days in a row is ok for me, if I'm distracted.  Where possible, I'm experimenting with changing the times of activities so they coincide with that lull in the afternoon.  The other time when I'm really tempted is in the evening, especially with family and friends.  I'm focusing on fixing my afternoon sugar dip.  When I'm successful in the afternoon, I tend to say no to sugar in the evening as I know that it's the last hurdle before I achieve my sugar-free day .  

In Need, how did it go this week?  I hope things are continuing to get easier and that you met your goals for this week.    

Honey_Bear, I hope you achieved your sugar-free target as well.  I found your comments about resetting your taste buds very interesting. Mine haven't reached that point yet.  With fizzy drinks, if I touch one now, I notice how syrupy it is so I know my taste buds will change at some point but I'm definitely not there yet.  You're right that your sugar-free days will add up and the weightloss will happen.  I don't have your discipline to weigh myself so frequently.  I weighed myself in July and I'll be weighing myself again at the end of January... I timed this to avoid Christmas.  

Today and the weekend will be sugary for me but I'm going to try and limit myself to one meal today.  I don't have any targets for myself for Saturday or Sunday but the memory of my excessively sugary weekend is still fresh in my mind and I think that will stop me from going too crazy.  Even now, just thinking about that Sunday night/Monday makes me feel awful.  

Honey_Bear said:

[..] Besides which, I'm enjoying the feeling of success that I'm getting this month!

This is the great news, Honey_Bear, and I hope it continues.  I'm also enjoying every meal that I can tick off as sugar-free.  I think the success may end up being more addictive than the sugar (that's my hope, anyway!).  

Cheering everyone on - I hope all of you are doing well and meeting your goals .  

Honey_Bear

cookie02 said:

I'm also enjoying every meal that I can tick off as sugar-free.  I think the success may end up being more addictive than the sugar (that's my hope, anyway!). 

That's exactly where I am at the moment, so well done for putting it into words.  Well done on working out what else you need to do to make this journey easier.  I'm convinced that just denying oneself treats we're used to isn't particularly successful, whereas putting other behaviours in place that make going without less onerous generally work better.  One meal at a time is great strategy!

I made it through Wednesday without too much bother, and realised that because I was disappointed by the lack of progress on the weightloss front that I'm at an age where it's going to be tougher to shift my blubber.  If I keep having hugely self-indulgent binges that won't change anything so I made the decision to be a lot more self-disciplined about it, and decided I wasn't going to allow myself to eat sugar at 3.30 pm on Thursday because once I start I can't seem to stop myself.  I'm a bit secretive about the excessive consumption and Belovéd has never seen me scoff a whole sharing* bar of chocolate in one hit, which absolutely is the behaviour of an addict so that's what I need to address to change things up.

So, Thursday, having completed my sugar free days Monday to Wednesday I didn't allow myself sugar in the afternoon and did allow myself a handful of M@alteEer$ in the evening plus just less than a third of the chocolate bar after dinner.  What I noticed was that while M@lte$ers have always been an absolute favourite of mine they are now another victim of the the 'too sweet without being chocolatey enough' syndrome.  So they're out of the Treats category and into the 'eating for the sake of eating' category and therefore won't be part of the stash any more.  The more stuff I'm finding like that the better because I don't have to deal with as much temptation.  I like this gentle approach to dealing with sugar addiction. 

If I have to go through days of headaches because of suffering withdrawal there's a real risk I won't see it through.  Admittedly I realise that the withdrawal symptoms are indicative of addiction but really, do I need to be told I'm addicted to sugar?  I weaned myself off rocketfuel strength coffee by switching to decaff over the course of about 10 days and I've never even been tempted to go back to the full strength stuff, so nothing is gained in my case by going cold turkey, although I did with booze and fags but that's because cutting down didn't work and goodness knows I'd tried for years with both.

So, from here on in, because I'm now pretty sure I've passed a point I thought would take a lot longer to reach, I'm aiming for 3.5 days a week sugar free, and then in November I'll go four days a week as planned and see how much of the fifth week day I can resist temptation but I'm not going to beat myself up if I don't gain any more traction than four days in November.  I'm not pushing myself too hard too fast, but I am pushing myself because I'm impatient to see more progress now that I'm tasting the difference.

The other thing I need to come clean about is that my 'sugar free days' aren't 100% completely sugar free, although they are added sugar free.  I mentioned earlier in the thread that I have high cholesterol and I'm kind of tackling that at the same time, but not 100% focusing on it, so I'm still eating cheese and some meat occasionally.  One of the things I am doing is having a Ben3c01 yogurt in my morning porridge made with water because otherwise I just wouldn't be able to enjoy it, and one of their bottles of yoghurty drink after dinner.  I'll know by Christmas if that's making any difference because we're both going to get our cholesterol levels measured again, but I'd like to give it a fair chance before I knock that on the head. 

This weekend we're having Sunday lunch with friends which will be a very heavy meal, given past history.  I'm looking forward to getting together with them after 20 months of not sitting round a dining table with them but I am actually not looking forward to the feeling bloated after eating.  I think I've already got to the point of not wanting to wallow about after a massive meal, and then live with the consequences of that over-indulgence.  I don't want to offend them by refusing food, but I don't need to eat a huge amount any more either.

* Sharing bars - what an absolute nonsense that phrase is.  Sugar sellers know perfectly well they're saying that so that greedy piglets like me can comfort themselves they're going to share the big bars with other people when they buy one, but I personally never do, and even if I offered some to Belovéd he would turn his nose up at it because he doesn't have the yen for sugar that I do because he's always been more self-disciplined than me.