The 'Towards a Sugar-Free Future' Challenge

Honey_Bear

What a massive victory Cookie, resisting sugar on two days at work dealing with unpleasant things.  Well done.  Enjoy your treats tomorrow, whatever time you have them - you've earned them.

I have a lower cholesterol spread which is absolutely fine, a vegan one that's palm oil free, so clear conscience all round I think.  In reality I don't actually use that much butter anyway but it's a good alternative, and I can't tell the difference when I use it, either.  I must check to see if I can use it in cooking, that would help.

The lemon cake has lived to see another day so it's still down there tempting me.  I managed to get rid of half of it by sending it with Belovéd to take as a treat for the chaps after tennis earlier in the week, but the rest is still down there ready to be eaten.  The cat hoofed the box off the counter top this afternoon, along with a bowl of tomatoes - last night it was the butter dish, which broke.  I'm not sure we'll be able to keep food there for much longer but if the dog gets the cake that would solve the problem!

I went shopping today and bought a load of fruit to have as desserts to stop me craving sweet things in the evenings.  Tonight it was a bowl of cherries, one of my absolute favourite fruits.  No chocolate needed after them!

cookie02

Thank you, Honey_Bear and well done on another sugar-free day!  I think some of those lower cholesterol spreads can be used in cooking, including baking so it's definitely worth checking.  Did you manage to rescue the cake before your pets got to it?  

I managed to stay sugar-free yesterday so that's four days this week! .  We baked a cake earlier and are going to have some shortly so that'll be my sugary treat for today.  I will have sugar tomorrow and on Sunday but I'm going to try and be fairly restrained.  

Next week will be February and I just realised that the target will change to four days a week...  Based on the last two weeks, I think it will be hard but achievable (words that I didn't think I'd be typing at the start of the month!).  Thank you for all the motivation here, Honey_Bear, it really makes a difference  .  

Hope all is well and wishing everyone a lovely weekend! 

jackieblack

Oats are supposed to be good at lowering ‘bad’ cholesterol, how about homemade date/fig flapjacks? By making your own you can reduce any sugar in the recipe - win win! 🙂

Honey_Bear

Excellent suggestion JackieBlack.  Funnily enough I've been thinking about flapjacks over the past week.  I love them but that's probably because they have butter, sugar and golden syrup in them!  They're also dead easy to make but I'm going to resist for the moment because they'd be too tempting.

Ah, Cookie, the lemon cake.  Yes and No.  The cat hoofed it off the counter top again but as it was still in its box it didn't come to any real harm - icing broke off but as I don't like it anyway that didn't bother me.  It was, however, a reminder that it was there and haunted me for the rest of the day so inevitably around tea time I caved.  The cat decided to tuck into it after I cut it into two small slices.  He's not the first cat I've come across that is partial to a bit of sponge cake but to be honest this cat would eat absolutely anything he could find so I wasn't surprised.  It's why he was knocking it off the counter top - unfortunately he's worked out that if he knocks things on the floor they very often open up and allow him to hoover up the contents.  It's driving me mad.  He'll never stop, he's obsessed with food.  HIs sister is half his size, shy, gentle and sweet.  He's a complete thug, the total opposite.

So, this week my weakness has been half a lemon cake, which I bought in anticipation of enjoying last Sunday and didn't eat.  In the grand scheme of things it's not hugely significant, but I won't be buying another one because the same thing would probably happen again.  I also had a couple of chocolates late last night but it was Friday so I'm allowing myself them - a lot less damaging than a m@gnum!

Well done on four days this week, too.  If I look back on last year before August when I started this Challenge if anyone had told me I'd be able to go four days in a row without sugar each week I'd have said it was impossible.  Turns out it's not.  I know I've learned a lot about my sugar habit and I hope you have too, Cookie.  I didn't want to get back into it after Christmas, but I'm surprised how quickly I re-adapted even with the marmalade and lemon cake incidents.

Yes, February.  I think I'll commit to four days a week, and see how far I can get on Fridays as well.  That should be okay until Lent, which starts on 2nd March.  It ends after my birthday which is just not okay.

cookie02

Honey_Bear said:

Well done on four days this week, too.  If I look back on last year before August when I started this Challenge if anyone had told me I'd be able to go four days in a row without sugar each week I'd have said it was impossible.  Turns out it's not.  I know I've learned a lot about my sugar habit and I hope you have too, Cookie.  I didn't want to get back into it after Christmas, but I'm surprised how quickly I re-adapted even with the marmalade and lemon cake incidents.

Yes, February.  I think I'll commit to four days a week, and see how far I can get on Fridays as well.  That should be okay until Lent, which starts on 2nd March.  It ends after my birthday which is just not okay.

Thank you, Honey_Bear and well done to you too!  I also can't believe how much progress I've seen in a relatively short period of time (compared to the many years of bad habits!).  I think this challenge is changing how I think, not just how I eat.  I just looked at my food diary and, twenty days ago, I was hoping to make one sugar free day and would have been thrilled to get two in a row.  Now, I'm aiming to meet the challenge of four days in a row (I honestly didn't think I'd be up for that then!).  BTW, your cat sounds like my dad when it comes to food! 😂 

JackieBlack, thank you for the flapjack idea, I hadn't thought of that!  I have plenty of oats here as the rest of my family are porridge-lovers so there is definitely enough for me to experiment with .  Honey_Bear, there must be a way to omit or reduce some of the sugar, butter and syrup.  I've found that a lot of recipes have more sugar than needed so I'm going to experiment and see what happens.  It may be a mess or it may just work!  

Yesterday, I had some of the cake that my parents brought round last week and which we froze.  I'm debating whether to defrost another slice for later but I'm not in a sugary mood at the moment so I'm going to leave it for now - I can always zap it in the microwave, if I decide I want it later.  

The sun is out here and we've meeting friends at the park so I hope it stays for long enough as the weather is very hit-and-miss this weekend!  Hope everyone is enjoying the weekend ☀️.   

Morning_walker

Hello, this is my first ever post to the MSE forum. I would like to join in this challenge. My motivation is to be healthier and also to save money, as I have got into the habit over the last two years of regularly buying chocolate bars, and it would be best to cut down now. Going to try to go Tuesday to Friday without any chocolate or sugar... Let's see. I expect it to be difficult! Good luck everyone doing the challenge!

cookie02

Welcome @Morning_walker!  Those chocolates and snacks can really add up both health and money-wise.  Personally, I've found Honey_Bear's challenge tough but very worthwhile and I hope you do too .  If you find four days a stretch right now,  dropping to fewer days (or even just to certain mealtimes) to start with will still bring you benefits over time - whatever is best for you.  Good luck and looking forward to hearing about your progress and cheering you on! 

Yesterday, I was sugar-free!  I'm very happy with that start to the week and hope to make four days this week.  I'm also researching flapjack recipes as I plan to make some on Friday.  I'm thinking of replacing the sugar and butter with some maple syrup.  I know that's still sugar but I think it might make it slightly better.  If I blend dates, nuts and maple, I think I might be able to bind the oats without the butter.  I'm not sure if this will work or not and I'm checking other recipes to see what people have managed and whether I'm thinking along the right lines.  So far today, I haven't been tempted to eat anything sugary but it's still pretty early in the day.  

I hope all of you are well and are having a good start to the week! 

Honey_Bear

Morning_walker said:

Hello, this is my first ever post to the MSE forum. I would like to join in this challenge. My motivation is to be healthier and also to save money, as I have got into the habit over the last two years of regularly buying chocolate bars, and it would be best to cut down now. Going to try to go Tuesday to Friday without any chocolate or sugar... Let's see. I expect it to be difficult! Good luck everyone doing the challenge!

Hello and welcome Morning Walker!  I feel very honoured that your first post is this Challenge, so I really hope you find it helpful.  It's always good to be ambitious, but I wouldn't have been able to do more than one day when I first started, so if you don't quite manage it on your first attempt please don't feel it's not worth sticking around.  Frankly there are days when if I make it to 3.30 pm without having any sugar I think I'm doing well!  As Cookie says, if you struggle with it initially, aiming for a single day or using individual meals as goal times like lunch, or tea, or dinner, is another way of easing yourself in.  Resisting the urge to eat sugar is tougher than it should be if you're like me and you've been snacking on it for years without even thinking about it - a dessert here or there, a fruit yoghurt (or even more deceptively a low fat yoghurt), or marmalade on your breakfast toast.  Once I've had sugar in the day I want it more afterwards, which is why cutting it out until later works so well. 

That habit of buying chocolate and biscuits because I like them is so ingrained in my that I have to make a real effort not to go down that - or even those - aisles supermarkets now.  If I've got it in the house I'll cave and eat it, so I keep things to a minimum these days, which is defo a money-saving thing for me.  I used to stock up on my favourites when they were on offer, and guess what - I ate more as a result!  What a surprise - not. 

So, it's still Tuesday - how are you doing?

I love flapjacks, Cookie, but I absolutely know I can't resist them so I'm not going to whip up a batch because I'll just want to scoff them.  Porridge is so good for me because it doesn't make me need sugar in it any more; this morning it was porridge, a dollop of (full fat) yoghurt and some blueberrires for breakfast.  Just the ticket. 

Today's my second sugar-free day this week and I've got past 3.30pm without too many cravings, which I'm pleased about and so far so good.  I'm still having two figs a day and those on top of the date bar so that's not brilliant, but as long as I don't cave later I'll be happy with that.

Morning_walker

Thanks so much for the warm welcome Cookie and Honey_Bear! Well done on your sugar-free days this week.

Progress so far - in the morning I had crisps for a mid-morning treat instead of my usual dark chocolate... I realised that I will find that a challenge - not replacing the chocolate with fatty savoury snacks like crisps and mini-pizzas. I got until 4pm this afternoon then cracked and nipped out for a mini chocolate bar. It sounds like a good plan to aim for a single day, or to restrict things to mealtimes, or later in the day. Back to the drawing board.

In case you haven't seen them, Cookie, there is a Nigella recipe for 'Breakfast bars' that sounds similar to what you are looking at. I'm too new on here to post the link yet. When I made them I left out the more expensive ingredients such as goji berries, and used cheaper dates from Holland and Barrett rather than Medjool dates. Binding it all together with the dates worked a treat. Good luck with the cooking. 

Hope you're having a good week all. 

Honey_Bear

I'd suggest giving it another go tomorrow Morning Walker but work out before you embark on the day how you're going to deal with the mid-morning and mid-afternoon cravings.  We all get them, we all need a workaround so that we can get through those time zones without caving.  It's hard.  If it were easy, or if willpower alone worked, none of us would have a weight problem or a sugar/chocolate habit.  Replacing sugary things or chocolate with something savory is the only way to start this Challenge, and even if crisps aren't ideal they're an improvement on sugar. 

The way that seems to work for me is a big enough breakfast, keeping busy in the morning by not sitting at my desk, a big enough lunch to make sure there are no hunger pangs so that means protein for lunch, having a planned non-sugary treat mid-afternoon, and then some fruit for dessert after dinner which is the other danger time of day when I used to each chocolate.  Without the workarounds I'd be caving left right and centre.

I forgot to say earlier, I ate the last of my minty chocolate bars over the weekend and because it has palm oil in it I won't be buying any more of them.  I loved them but I honestly didn't realise they had plam oil in or I wouldn't have bought them in the first place.  *sigh*