The 'Towards a Sugar-Free Future' Challenge

Honey_Bear

I'm sorry to hear but also immensely relieved you're struggling with this as much as I am Cookie.  Of the two danger times of day (mid-afternoon and after dinner) it's the after dinner one I'm struggling with now. 

The strategy for getting me past the mid-afternoon one has been working almost all of the time since 6 January but I'm really, really struggling with those m@gnum moments and if it weren't them I'd eat something else.  I'm carrying on with keeping the damage to the minimum by not letting go of the Challenge but it is hard! 

Good luck with the rest of the day. 

Morning_walker

Hello all, how is your week going? 

I'm getting on pretty well this week. I've been using cash to buy my food, and that is helping me to put the limitation on no more sugar/chocolate, as the budget is gone. 

Good luck with your aims all. 

cookie02

Honey_Bear said:

I'm carrying on with keeping the damage to the minimum by not letting go of the Challenge but it is hard!  

This is exactly how I feel right now but I know it will be worth it!  How did yesterday go for you, Honey_Bear?  

Yesterday, I broke and ended up eating a caramel egg and a cookie 😬. Today, I made sure that I had an extra-busy day to try and help me stay sugar-free.  It's not over yet but I've managed to be sugar-free so far.  I know that staying busy isn't a long-term replacement for making good decisions but if it works for now, I'll be happy with that.  I just want to get back on track.  If I can get through today, tomorrow and most of Friday, I'll feel much better.  

Hey Morning_walker, it is so good to hear that you've been doing well and that your 'one square a day' and the cash strategy is working - well done!  Thank you for sharing the good news and tips, it really helps to keep all of us motivated .  

I have been tracking my 'No Spend Days' in addition to my 'No Sugar Days' (just started this year).  I've noticed that all my unplanned spending since January took place on days when I gave in and had sugar (and the spending wasn't on sugar).  We're less than two months into 2022 so this could just be a coincidence but I'm curious about whether there is something more to this. 

Hope everyone is having a good week!

Honey_Bear

I'm so pleased for you Morning Walker!  Well done and good call on the cash idea because that's about setting limits.  You're doing waaaay better than me right now!

Aaaaahhh Cookie.  Late last night was a disaster and today was a High Day so I have nothing virtuous to report, but I have to admit it was all rather luscious.  There may very well be a relationship between spending and sugar consumption which has something to do with filling a gap somehow, or fixing a problem, finding a solution when things aren't quite tickety boo.  I'm not sure, but whatever it is your idea made me think about what I'm feeling on days when I cave, so thanks for that.

cookie02

Sounds like you had a proper High Day, Honey_Bear!  

I'm happy as I managed to get through yesterday sugar-free and I've also been sugar-free so far today.  It's interesting how much easier I find the 2nd sugar-free day, once I finally manage to get one done.  Tomorrow, I know I'll be having sugar again and I think that has kept me motivated.  To your point, Honey_Bear, I have wondered whether my sugar consumption is mood-related but I haven't managed to spot any pattern yet.  That's probably something else I should add to my tracker.  This spreadsheet just keeps growing but it is fascinating to see how my habits are changing over time.  

Hope everyone has been having a good week.  Friday's around the corner and the weekend is nearly here! 

Honey_Bear

Thank you Cookie for always being so honest and also supportive.  It helps me enormously, particularly on a week like this one where I've not done well at all.  You've achieved so much from the beginning onwards and with two sugar-free days in a row - well done for that. 

Another night with a m@gnum moment last night.  I was unbearably tired, we'd gone out only to discover we were early by a month!  On Tuesday night we'd gone to the cinema thinking the film started at 5.30 only to discover it was 6.00, which meant another drink for the chaps and much to my surprise it turns out that little arts cinema now sells small 100g Gre33n and Bl@cks bars of chocolate, and I was so not thinking clearly that I had two!  The chaps had a few squares but really, the second bar was just silly of me.  This week has been a bit of a write-off BUT ....

It's been six months since I had a whole 200g bar of chocolate in the afternoon on a weekday, and only very rarely do I do that at the weekends now, in fact I haven't since I finished the lasts minty chocolate bar and I'm not buying them any more.  In other words, that really, really bad habit has been broken once and for all, so that's an amazing WIN.

It's been months since I automatically reached for the biscuit tin at teatime, so that's another bad habit that's been broken once and for all.  When I do crave sugar in the afternoons it's a date bar and / or a couple of figs and I'm not concerned about the amount of sugar they contain because of the fibre and other nutrients.

My fruit consumption has gone up and we've always eaten good food but are both now eating a lot more fruit than we did and that's all to the good.  Grapes and tangerines are always around and don't last long enough to end up in the bin because they've gone mouldy.  Morribund's Wonky range has been a lifesaver on the MSE front, and L!dl's Too Good to Waste has taught me huge amounts by making me be creative with veg I wouldn't normally buy, so our veg consumption has gone up massively as a result as well.

On Wednesday I had a hot chocolate to drink instead of coffee and we shared a small bowl of churros after lunch which I don't regard as sinful as it was a High Day and it's Belovéd's 'thing' to have them if they're on the menu.  We very rarely eat out, and when we do we only have things that we wouldn't make at home so that's exactly what we did and it was a really lovely treat.  The operative word there is TREAT.  I've become much more self-disciplined than I was six months ago and that's amazing because when sugar was just something else I ate every day without being able to resist it, getting this far was so far out of reach that I didn't see how to get where I wanted and needed to be and that situation had been in place for at least 16 years, since I gave up smoking. 

Progress is slow, and I'm not strong-willed enough to be able to be the person I'd like to be in an ideal world.  However, there is still progress and I'm happy with that fact more than anything else, even on a week like this week where I don't manage even a single sugar-free day.  (Today could be but I'm not setting myself up for failure by saying it will be, and that's okay.)

Having a truly self-indulgent week where my sugar-consumption is considerably less than half of what it used to be is a massive win so I'm sorry it's happened but it's not that big a deal when I see it in that perspective.

Next week we're in London for a few days so there may be a few treats but at least I won't be packing bars of chocolate in case I get the late night munchies and don't want to go trawling round the streets loking for chocolate, and yes, I've done that before!

Morning_walker

Hi All, 

Really appreciate the support and encouragement - thank you so much! 

Honey_Bear, wow, so much to respond to in your post. You have clearly made great progress already with changing so many habits. And you must have strong willpower, I reckon, if you were able to stop smoking. 

Have got a dark chocolate bar from Aldi for this coming week. I've rewarded myself with four squares today actually... Will get back to the one square approach from tomorrow and go from there. 

Have a lovely Friday all. Best of luck with your targets Cookie02, Honey_Bear and everyone. 

Honey_Bear

Thanks Morning Walker, and well done on sticking to your one bar of chocolate a week.  That takes a HUGE amount of willpower!

cookie02

Good morning!  How is everyone?  Morning_walker, well done for planning ahead for this week and for sticking with your plan last week.  If you ever want to mix up your chocolate snacks, I can recommend the dark chocolate rice cakes that you can get in supermarkets (I tried the K@ll0 on offer and M0rr!s0ns' own-brand ones and I think the own-brand are just as good).  If you're anything like me, you're probably thinking that rice cakes are horrible.  These rice cakes were delicious, not like cardboard at all.  When I got them, they were £1.50.  The pack would have lasted me a week if my family hadn't got their hands on them!  Each rice cake is quite big so it feels like a proper treat.  

Honey_Bear said:

My fruit consumption has gone up and we've always eaten good food but are both now eating a lot more fruit than we did and that's all to the good.  Grapes and tangerines are always around and don't last long enough to end up in the bin because they've gone mouldy.  Morribund's Wonky range has been a lifesaver on the MSE front, and L!dl's Too Good to Waste has taught me huge amounts by making me be creative with veg I wouldn't normally buy, so our veg consumption has gone up massively as a result as well.

Honey_Bear, well done on such huge progress and thank you for keeping all of us motivated with this challenge!  You are right that we need to celebrate that any lapses now are nowhere near as bad as what 'normal' looked like before.  I also love the Wonky range 😋.  I tend to get them for our extended family as well and then drop off additional fruit and veg.  My parents really love the grapes.  Thinking about it, I might add baked grapes to my snacks list for the week.  

Honey_Bear said:

I've still got a pile of squares I keep forgetting to join up which were the first squares I ever made; they're coloured cotton and needed to be joined with black to look their best but the tension is all over the place so some are tight and others are very baggy.  Black is an absolute nightmare for a beginner so they've been waiting for me to get up to speed and the memory clearly isn't what it was!  Since those squares I've been faithfully joining the new ones since into blankets. I keep the ones I like and donate the rest.  I finished a variagated green chunky (never, ever again) wool one joined and edged with black last week that the cats seem to like, so I'm now on the Chelsea blue squares - Belvoéd is a fan so he'll be a blanket up at some stage in the future.  Even moss stitch looks lovely - I'm still stuck on treble crochet but I can do it without thinking and that feels very relaxing at the moment.

I forgot to say, if you want to try some other crochet stitches, there is a great channel online if you search for Bell@ C0c0.  I taught myself to crochet years ago from a library book but I couldn't get to grips with reading patterns or doing more complicated stitches.  Then I found this channel and the video tutorials make these stitches really easy.  The lady that runs this is a really good teacher and she does the tutorials for both left and right-handers.  That is how I got to grips with Even Moss Stitch (it is much easier than it looks).  You are very disciplined with joining the squares as you go.  That is definitely the trick so you avoid being left with lots of ends to weave in and joining to do later which is what usually happens to me!  I'm still not 'advanced' the videos help with trying new stitches and patterns and I also use them to get a refresher of of the basic stitches (especially as I always get confused between UK and US terminology).  

Honey_Bear said:

Progress is slow, and I'm not strong-willed enough to be able to be the person I'd like to be in an ideal world.  However, there is still progress and I'm happy with that fact more than anything else, even on a week like this week where I don't manage even a single sugar-free day.  (Today could be but I'm not setting myself up for failure by saying it will be, and that's okay.)

Having a truly self-indulgent week where my sugar-consumption is considerably less than half of what it used to be is a massive win so I'm sorry it's happened but it's not that big a deal when I see it in that perspective.

Next week we're in London for a few days so there may be a few treats but at least I won't be packing bars of chocolate in case I get the late night munchies and don't want to go trawling round the streets loking for chocolate, and yes, I've done that before!

You are right, progress is the most important part - that and just continuing to pick up and start again the next day or at the next meal.  Like Morning_walker says, you have done amazingly with giving up smoking and I'm sure you said you'd given up alcohol too 🤩.  

This weekend was fine sugar-wise.  I had slightly more sugar than I'd hoped for yesterday but I think (hope) that it will be ok.  It definitely wasn't comparable to the amount of sugar that I had a few weekends ago so I feel like I should be ok to get back to being sugar-free today.  I have dates, soon-to-be-baked grapes and peanut butter for my snacks.  I'm also going to make a batch of oat and raisin cookies (this is a continuation of my flapjack experiment).  

My target for this week is four sugar-free days plus most of Friday.  I know it will be a stretch, especially after the last couple of weeks, but I'm going to try and see how it goes.  

Honey_Bear, safe travels for this week.  

I hope everyone is safe and staying warm in this horrible weather.  Good luck meeting your goals this week!

Honey_Bear

Thank you so much for the Bell@ C0c0 suggestion Cookie - I've subscribed to her channel.  I avoid any and all of the US crochet sites, books and patterns because I'm so easily confused and have a nasty habit of putting projects down for a few weeks ... months ... years and then picking up where I think I left off.  The problem with that is that if there are any variables, such as needing to remember to swap US to UK stitches I'd forget.  I have enough trouble remembering what hook size I'm using!  I don't sew the ends in as I go but I don't mind an evening or two of just doing them occasionally, but once I started on the joining up I love it!  I'm always aiming for the border when I can just go round and round and round which has to be the easiest part of it all.  I once made a whole blanket like that, which lives on my bed - excellent colours but the tension is all wonky, so the four corners all stick out and make it an odd shape.  I'm very fond of that blanket, like all things wonky.

There's a lovely recipe I think I've mentioned before for baked stuffed sweet potato that originally specified goat's cheese with roasted grapes that I really like, but I think any soft or creamy cheese would work well with it.  The grapes are an essential part of it.   They're also rather fabulous frozen and eaten frozen but they'd work better in the summer than in this weather.  I think they'd also be rather marvellous in a Pimms, if you're that way inclined - which I'm not, because as you mention I gave up booze about seven years ago.  It was hard, but well worth it and I never want to go back to it.  It's fine for other people but not for me, although I can wax lyrical about the evils of booze given the opportunity.  Most of the time I just don't think about it any more.

My problem now isn't so much sugar itself, it's chocolate.  I can resist sugar now without much bother but chocolate is my Achilles Heel.  However, having had a week of not sticking to this Challenge, what I noticed was that every time I indulged it was chocolate, so not being able to allow myself those minty bars and not allowing myself to wander down the chocolate aisle in L!dl (they do a big hazelnut milk chocolate bar I adore but can eat a whole one at one sitting so Just No) means that I don't allow myself those indulgences because I haven't got them.  Whereas, m@gnums were on offer in Morribunds so I stocked up and have been stocking down, so to speak, ever since.

We're off to London tomorrow, so the plan is to be sugar-free on Monday and Friday and treat the three days travelling and while up there as High Days.  I was so conscious of my over-indulgence last week that I didn't go mad over the weekend and I'm really chuffed about that.  If I can get the cravings down to that point by not going completely mad and scoffing a whole bar of chocolate than I will be well one the way to having this under control.  I'd never thought of it that way until this weekend so I'm happier than I should be this morning after last week's abject failure!

Keep going with your baking, Cookie.  I tried a sugar-free biscuit type thing recipe from the Tube of You which was technically sugar-free, just banana, flour and oats I think but they didn't work for me at all.  I mean I got them baked okay but the flavour didn't improve my day so I didn't bother a second time.  I've got another jar of 0pt!ons Hot Chocolate but I looked at the ingredients and decided that I don't need all those chemicals in my body, found a rather old jar of cocoa powder and mixed up three teaspoons of that, one teaspoon of sugar and water/milk and tried it instead.  It was okay but the secret to all of these things for me is the sweetness and I don't want to go down the aritificial sweetner road so I'm slightly stuck between a rock and a hard place.  There is no doubt I'm just used to eating too much of it, so I'm sticking with this Challenge in the full knowledge now, after six months, that retraining my tastebuds is self-discipline.  Thank goodness you're sticking with it Cookie and Morning Walker because it really is tough!