The 'Towards a Sugar-Free Future' Challenge

Honey_Bear

Not a straightforward day today, but that's life.  I was invited to lunch so that I could attend a meeting.   The person cooking the lunch was also attending the meeting and then working immediately afterwards so it was important to keep things simple.  I therefore had dessert, because I thought it would be rude to faff about saying no when everyone else was having it.  So, sugar on a No Sugar day, but for a good reason.

And then, when I got home I knew I had to make the ice cream that I'd bought the ingredients for on Monday because cream left in the fridge for too long is never a good idea.  For the past year or so we've been having dessert as part of our evening meal, and until I started this sugar free thing I have to admit they were mostly fairly sugary.  Now that I don't eat sugar most days of the week Belovéd doesn't either and I think he misses it sometimes, and particularly asked if I could make some ice cream so today was the day.  There was, quite frankly, rather a lot of tasting to get the balance right, but as my ice cream is 1/3 whipped cream, 1/3 Greek yoghurt and 1/3 jam I'm letting myself off the hook for the tastings.  It's all now safely in the freezer in 100 and 200ml boxes so he can help himself to one of them whenever he feels the need. 

cookie02

I've been in the office for meetings as I had two clients visiting the UK this week.  Both times, they invited me to join them for lunch as we haven't seen each other for so long.  On Tuesday, I didn't have dessert but the restaurant brought chocolates with coffee and I ate them.  Yesterday, I ate dessert (a piece of cheesecake).  I have another visitor next week.  I don't want to avoid or offend them, especially as it has been a long time, but I don't want this to become a regular thing.  If a lunch invite is offered, I think I'll just go with it for now.  So far, those are the only days where this might happen.  I work from home so the odd work lunch shouldn't have a huge impact as long as I limit myself and don't start giving myself excuses to eat sugar the rest of the time.  

Honey_Bear, your healthier ice cream sounds amazing!  Do you use an ice cream maker?  Good luck with your goals for today.  

Today, I hope to be sugar free.  I'll be home for most of the day so I hope to get back to good habits!  

Hope everyone is having a lovely day . 

Honey_Bear

No Cookie, no icecream maker, just whip the cream, fold in the Greek yoghurt and then when they're thoroughly combined, fold in the jam.  The bung it in the freezer - as there's no water it doesn't crystalize.  Really easy, cheap when cream has been yellow stickered and fantastically healthy when compared with the rubbish that people sell as ice cream.

I think you're absolutely right to go with the flow on work lunches, and that's exactly why I decided to go with the flow yesterday.  It's lovely to have something to look forward to, if you're being treated to lunch it would be churlish and bad mannered to be all prissy and say you don't eat sugar during the week, and if you're the host then if you say that it means guests can't have dessert either.  Far better to just enjoy it - it's not like it's an every day occurence and it's the habit we're trying to break. 

I've been shopping this week and can honestly say I no longer even think about walking down the aisles where everything is sugar, chocolate or just crisps etc.  I'm so pleased I'm not tempted to buy them any more, but I never stop thinking, 'Ooooh, wouldn't that be lovely' about chocolate.  That's probably something I'm stuck with, but it gets easier to resist the longer this goes on. 

cookie02

Honey_Bear said:

I'm so pleased I'm not tempted to buy them any more, but I never stop thinking, 'Ooooh, wouldn't that be lovely' about chocolate.  That's probably something I'm stuck with, but it gets easier to resist the longer this goes on.  

I'm sure that giving up chocolate for Lent is helping with this as well, Honey_Bear.  

Happy Friday!  Yesterday, I was sugar-free.  Today, I've made it this far sugar-free and, unlike most Fridays, I'm not dreaming of my Friday night dessert.  It could be because the Tuesday and Wednesday lunches put me off.  I'm not going to declare today sugar-free though, just in case I change my mind later...  

Wishing everyone a lovely evening and great weekend .  

Honey_Bear

Well done and good luck with this evening Cookie.  Enjoy the weekend!

Belovéd bought me a pain au chocolate this morning after an early meeting and I was very tempted, especially as I can't have it tomorrow either, but I resisted.  It's in the freezer and I will be having it on Sunday. 

I'm not finding it hard to resist sugar any more but I am really struggling with not having chocolate!  I watched a very good video on the Tube of You the other day about sugar and chocolate.  This one said it is possible to be addicted to sugar (others have said it's not an addiction) but impossible to become addicted to chocolate because it is impossible to eat enough of it.  I kind of beg to differ but the argument was that it's more likely we're addicted to the sugar in chocolate, which made sense.  Either way, the advice was to only buy the best possible quality chocolate, at least 70% cocoa solids, and the chance of eating a whole bar of it will be greatly reduced.  I found that quite a compelling argument but frankly I'd have absolutely no problem scoffing a whole bar in one sitting and how do I know this?  Because I've done it - regularly and frequently.  *sigh* 

Anyway, I am resisting temptation and trying to remember how long I went sugar-free in about 1994; I think it was about four or five years, no desserts, no fruit pastilles, no jelly babies, no biscuits, no cakes, nothing, but the chocolate thing was difficult back then, too and eventually I think I let myself have chocolate again - the thin end of the wedge. 

The current plan is to stick to this - sugar on high days and holidays, plus Saturdays, and chocolate only on Sundays.  Let's see how long that lasts after Lent!

Morning_walker

Hi All. Hi Honey_bear and cookie02.

Reducing chocolate and sugar intake is not really working for me at the moment, so my aim for next week is to cut sugar out altogether and replace it with other snack such as rice cakes, avocado on toast, boiled egg, peanut butter and banana on toast.

 Hope to catch up with you again next weekend. Have a good one. I hope it's sunny where you are!

Honey_Bear

Sorry to hear reducing your sugar intake isn't working for you Morning Walker.  I feel your pain. 

I've found that cutting out sugar five days a week and chocolate six days a week is actually easier than the stop start of allowing myself to have either of them a few days a week, but I don't think I could do it if it had gone from where I was in July / August last year to where I am now in one step.  I had to go through the one day a week, then two days a week etc to build up to this.  I was, however, struggling to get back into it after December / Christmas / Belovéd's birthday until Lent started and I hadn't gone mad over the festivities, I really hadn't. 

I am, however, looking forward to tomorrow, and have been since Friday.  I could eat sugar today but I it's not the focus of my longing - chocolate is.  I can do without the sugar now, but chocolate is a very different matter.

That is a huge victory for me and not one I thought would happen.  Yesterday I knew I could have sugar today but when I got hungry at about 1.30 I reheated a bowl of lentils and rice and gussied it up with coriander, lemon juice and yoghurt and forgot completely I could have had a biscuit! 

Something, somewhere, is falling into place at long last.

I hope you find a way of making this Challenge work for you.  It's very tough, though, isn't it.

Morning_walker

Hi Honey_Bear, thanks for your support. I think next week will be challenging, but I'm going to give it a go!

cookie02

Morning_walker said:

Hi All. Hi Honey_bear and cookie02.

Reducing chocolate and sugar intake is not really working for me at the moment, so my aim for next week is to cut sugar out altogether and replace it with other snack such as rice cakes, avocado on toast, boiled egg, peanut butter and banana on toast.

 Hope to catch up with you again next weekend. Have a good one. I hope it's sunny where you are!

It is tough, Morning_walker, but it will be worth it.  Well done for continuing to make the effort 🍀  - you will thank yourself later.  From personal experience, I'd guess that you'll start to see results in a few months and that will also help you to stay motivated.  I noticed a difference in my skin and I also sleep better (these could be coincidence but I've read a lot more about sugar since starting with this challenge and I think the skin part is something that improves for most people who cut down on refined sugar).  If you can swap out all your snacks to non-sugary ones, so much the better (for health and MSE ).  One thing that I think helps is to make sure that your new snacks are things that you really enjoy.  I find that I get through the day much more easily if I have dates, gingerbread pumpkin seeds, peanut butter, pate and lentils.  It would never have occurred to me to have a cup of lentils as a snack as I always used to associate snacks with sweet things.  I LOVE lentils and, since Honey_Bear mentioned lentils the other week, I've frozen cup-sized amounts which I can zap in the microwave when I'm hungry.  I also have my mini cheeses but I try not to have them too often!

Honey_Bear said:

Something, somewhere, is falling into place at long last.

Well done, Honey_Bear and thank you for keeping us inspired with this challenge .  

My weekend was ok food-wise.  I had more sugar than I'd hoped but it wasn't a huge amount.  I also know where I went wrong: normally, I update my food spreadsheet after each meal or snack so I keep control of what I eat (not just in terms of sugar but also my bro.  During the weekend, I became lazy and just updated at the end of the day.  This is NOT a good idea (for me) as I really don't fully realise how much I'm eating until I see it written up.  It was a bit busier than usual, which is why I did this but I am going to just do an update from my phone in the future, even if I don't have time to complete the spreadsheet properly.  It's amazing how much difference tracking (or not tracking!) makes for me.  

I've been sugar-free so far today and I'm aiming to be sugar free for four days and then have sugar on Friday evening.  

How is everyone?  Good luck with your goals for this week ☀️.  

Honey_Bear

Interesting, isn't it Cookie, how updating your spreadsheet at different times has such an impact on what you eat because we have a tendency to graze, I think.  You wouldn't think it would matter, but I've also found that in the past when I used to log what I ate and couldn't understand why I wasn't losing any.  Then I looked at my booze consumption - oops.  (The trouble with that was I can't say I was particularly good at counting the number of glasses of red wine I had in the evening.) 

My weekend was fine.  I had a couple of small and rather thin shortbread biscuits on Saturday afternoon but that was it for Saturday.  I love shortbread but the longer this Challenge goes on, and having read Tim Spector's The Diet Myth the more conscious I am of how processed food doesn't actually taste like proper food at all.  It's all well and good in it's place but I don't want to live on it any more if I don't have to and because I'm retired, I have the time to cook.  So, if I am going to eat biscuits I'm going to bake them myself.

As for Sunday, I didn't go mad and I'm pleased about that.  I had the pain au chocolate that Belovéd bought me, it was lovely and it replaced my normal second slice of toast for breakfast so that was okay.  I had some handmade chocolates in the afternoon, definitely dark and not milk chocolate and very gorgeous, and then a m@gnum after dinner, and just possibily a few more of those chocolates just because I could.  I'll admit I ate more than I should have and felt a little bit as though I'd over-indulged afterwards so I probably had.  It was a lot less than I used to eat every day, seven days a week so I'm not kicking myself.

Back to it today, sugar-free for the full five days.