The 'Towards a Sugar-Free Future' Challenge

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jackieblack said:

The horrible taste and nausea continued to decrease with every passing day on the lower dose of meds and are now just about gone. I guess time will tell whether I’m able to come off them completely, depending on future blood test results. I’m still doing a finger !!!!!! test first thing every morning and if that reading increases on a regular basis I have to advise the diabetes nurse (that might mean a need to increase meds again), but I’m really hoping that isn’t necessary 🤞🏻.

 The good thing about fruit is that, although it contains sugar, whole fruit also contains fibre which slows the absorption rate.  Fruit juices, however, are a disaster as you don’t get the fibre and a glass of fruit juice can contain the juice (and therefore the sugar) from 4-6 fruit - way more than someone would eat if they were eating the whole fruit. 

🤞 that your tests continue to improve and you can come off the meds completely, JackieBlack.  So glad that you are gradually feeling better.  The last three months sound like they've been really tough but what an amazing achievement.  Stay 💪.  

Honey_Bear, I have a juice daily but it is a vegetable juice.  I use celery and my family think I'm mad as none of them like the taste!  I've had it daily (except at Christmas) for over a year.  It is low sugar and I think it stops me from eating as much as I used to. Of course, this could also just be due to be monitoring my food more carefully over the last year+ but I do think it has made a difference for me (even if it's just psychological!).  I'm not sure you'd be able to convince your OH to drink celery instead of a fruit juice though as it really doesn't have any sweetness to it and is very obviously celery.  I happen to like celery so it works for me.  

In case you want to try it yourself, this is what I juice: 2 heads of celery, half a cucumber, a piece of ginger (varying amounts but about an inch on most days), a small amount of parsley and, after juicing, I add a squeeze of lemon.  This normally makes about two 750ml bottles of juice.  I put them in the fridge and drink one later in the day and the other the next day.  You can freeze juice but remember not to fill the bottle to the top as it will expand!  

Honey_Bear said:

I caved last night and had a custard tart for dessert, but that'll be the last one of those I ever eat it was so disappointing.  It would have been a full six days if I hadn't done that, and pleasingly I didn't indulge in compensatory chocolate but just had a few grapes instead.  Today, however, I am going somewhere really special for lunch, so dessert will defo, 100%, be on the menu.  Back to it tomorrow.

You have done really well, Honey_Bear!  It's a shame you didn't enjoy the custard tart but at least that's one more thing that you can cross off the list.  I hope you enjoyed your special lunch yesterday.  

Yesterday, my parents came over with a lovely cake for us 😋.  Overall, I'm pleased with my sugar consumption over the weekend and I'm hoping that it will help me stay sugar-free today.  This week, I'm going to bite the bullet and aim for four days (plus part of Friday).  If I lapse and end with three days, I'll still be happy.  Let's see how it goes!  

Hope all of you are well and that you're having a great start to the week.

Honey_Bear

Thank you for the juice recipe, Cookie.  I love celery, and we and we had a juicer for a while but cleaning it was such a faff I let it go a long time ago.  I'm pretty sure that filling up with the celery etc juice is a great way of taking the edge off your appetite when it comes to food.  They do say if you drink even just a glass of water before a meal, or with it, you'll eat less so all that veggie goodness in your juice will be doing you a lot of good, certainly more than anything sugary.  Well done on finding a middle of the road way of dealing with parents arriving bearing cakes!  Good luck with your sugar-free days this week.

The restaurant we went to yesterday serves meat but doesn't make it the centrepiece of the meal so although we had beef for Sunday lunch as we'd already wolfed down two fabulous salad starters of butternut squash and courgette with bread, all of us could only manage one slice of beef.  The beetroot salad, the roast potatoes, the celeriac puree the pickled red cabbage and the kale vinaigrette with pistachios were also pretty fabulous.  A deeply dark chocolatey but light mousse meant that I couldn't eat anything for the rest of the day.  I much prefer that kind of food to heavy fried / roasted stuff so I'm trying to get hold of a copy of their winter veg cookbook which may help me scoff more veg through the winter, which ideally is what I'd like to be eating.  I rather suspect that making fabby dressings for veg won't use much extra oil when compared with frying or roasting, either.

I'd bought a reduced lemon cake in the co-Op on Saturday which I'd intended to cut into for Sunday afternoon tea, but in the end couldn't manage it.  I think I've found the way forward!

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Honey_Bear said:

Thank you for the juice recipe, Cookie.  I love celery, and we and we had a juicer for a while but cleaning it was such a faff I let it go a long time ago.  

I don't blame you, Honey_Bear!  I make myself clean the juicer as soon as I finish but the cleaning takes at least three times as long as the juicing!  

I don't think the oil in any dressing will undo the benefits of having more veg in your diet.  This book isn't specifically relating to winter veg but I like Rukmini Iyer's Green Roasting Tin.  We don't tend to follow recipes exactly but we've tried quite a few of the recipes (or used them as ideas, at any rate!).  I've heard that there are some good veg recipes in the original 'roasting tin' book but I've never read it.  I'm sure you'll find plenty of inspiration as there are so many veggie-focused books and sites at the moment.  It's great that you've found a new strategy!

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I just about managed to make yesterday a sugar-free day!  It was a close call as I almost gave in during dessert but I'm very happy with the result .  

Today, I'm aiming for another sugar-free day.  Things are relatively quiet and this usually means that I'll end up eating more sugar.  I've got some dried fruit and nuts ready and I hope that will help me to avoid reaching for the cookies and chocolates.  

Hope everyone is having a great day and good luck with your goals for this week!

Honey_Bear

Well done on staying strong through dessert, Cookie.  It's really hard when other people are tucking in. Being busy, and being completely engaged in doing something means I don't think about food either, Cookie.  Boredom defo leads to snacking in my case and I don't think I'm too unusual in that regard. 

I got through yesterday without indulging myself as well and weighing myself this morning I'm so pleased I did!  If I can resist cheese for a few days here and there that will be helpful but I'm not going to stress about it.  I did eat one of those date bars and a handful of nuts I found in a box on my desk but as I'm allowed both of those I'm happy with that.  I finished some leftovers in the fridge for lunch which is why they were there.  The lunch we went out to was so inspirational about different ways of cooking veg that I've borrowed the cookbook from my friend next door and will be trying out some of their recipes over the next few days.  I'm thinking carrot fritters for lunch today.

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I managed to be sugar-free yesterday too .  Well done on your sugar-free Monday and your weightloss, Honey_Bear!  Carrot fritters sound very unusual, how were they?  

I'm trying to be sugar-free today but I've had a few unpleasant jobs to do today and I am very tempted to just give in and eat some chocolate.  We'll see how today works out...  

Honey_Bear

... er ... I don't know Cookie.  I caved, ate cheese and then followed it with two slices of lemon cake.  In my defense they were small but ....  Oops.  The scales showed it this morning, too. Today is another day so I knocked out the anti-cholesterol yoghurt that has sugar in it and tried my porridge made with semi-skimmed milk and a dollop of full fat yoghurt instead with a handful of blueberries, but importantly - no sugar.  I was fine with it but it gave me indigestion, so tomorrow I'll try it made with water, blueberries which we happen to have a lot of in the fridge right now because they were yellow-stickered the other night in the Co-0p at the bottom of the road, and a smaller dollop of Greek yoghurt.  The important thing for me was that I didn't need the sugar.  I won't say I didn't miss it but it was fine without, which is progress.  As long as I'm making progress I can live with the odd slip up.  Porridge with fruit but without sugar wasn't edible for me a year ago, so I'm getting there retraining my tastebuds which is what this is all about.

Good luck with today.   I hope the unpleasant tasks pass quickly and you manage to resist.  If not, could you just tweak something tomorrow that will, in the long term, be better for you? 

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Honey_Bear said:

... er ... I don't know Cookie.  I caved, ate cheese and then followed it with two slices of lemon cake.  In my defense they were small but ....  Oops.  

  I have a feeling this might be me later...
 
Progress is definitely what it's all about, Honey_Bear!  Are you still thinking of giving up the cholesterol-lowering yoghurt for Lent?  I have tried various Kefir yoghurts and yoghurt drinks but I haven't found any that I like yet.  

Honey_Bear said:

Good luck with today.   I hope the unpleasant tasks pass quickly and you manage to resist.  If not, could you just tweak something tomorrow that will, in the long term, be better for you? 

Thank you!  The tasks today are done and I've managed to stay sugar-free so far.  There is one more part tomorrow and I'm not looking forward to that but I'm planning in advance to try and stay on-track.  If I give in tomorrow, I will skip my sugary treat on Friday.  

Hope everyone is having a lovely evening

Honey_Bear

Hugely well done Cookie for staying sugar-free on a tedious day of unpleasant things.  They're the most difficult, so it's brilliant that you managed it.  Good luck with tomorrow's nastiness, and extra points for planning on how to work around it if you weaken.

Yes, I think Lent will be not having the cholesterol-busting yoghurts.  I'm now aware of how sweet they are, so it's kind of pointless allowing myself to have them to tackle one health issue while supposedly tackling a different one.  If I eat a lot less cheese than I used to the cholesterol level will come down, so a bit of normal live yoghurt will be fine instead.  I can't see myself giving up the date bars or figs, but those yoghurts really will have to stop. 

Today was sugar-free, and I resisted the rest of the lemon cake so I was pleased with that.

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Well done on resisting the cake, Honey_Bear!  Aside from cutting back cheese- and I feel your pain with that one- have you tried any of the cholesterol-lowering spreads?  They might be less sugary and still bring you the added health benefits.  Hope you are managing today!

Honey_Bear said:

Hugely well done Cookie for staying sugar-free on a tedious day of unpleasant things.  They're the most difficult, so it's brilliant that you managed it.  Good luck with tomorrow's nastiness, and extra points for planning on how to work around it if you weaken.

Thank you, Honey_Bear .  The unpleasant task went as well as could be expected so I can't ask for more than that.  I managed to stay busy and that's kept me sugar-free so far.  I'm hoping to stay sugar-free this evening and I'm really, really looking forward to some kind of sugary treat tomorrow.