The 'Towards a Sugar-Free Future' Challenge

Honey_Bear

Bless me, Other Contributors, for I have sinned.

Last night I ate pudding and then a few chocolates, and today I have had half a hot cross bun with jam on it.  I rather suspect I may indule in more sinful stuff before the day is out, and as tomorrow is a High Day in my life I doubt it'll be sugar-free or even chocolate-free. Back on it after Easter Monday.  Until then all bets are off as far as I'm concerned.

cookie02

Honey_Bear said:

Bless me, Other Contributors, for I have sinned.

Last night I ate pudding and then a few chocolates, and today I have had half a hot cross bun with jam on it.  I rather suspect I may indule in more sinful stuff before the day is out, and as tomorrow is a High Day in my life I doubt it'll be sugar-free or even chocolate-free. Back on it after Easter Monday.  Until then all bets are off as far as I'm concerned.

Sometimes, it just has to be done, Honey_Bear!  I hope you enjoyed the sugary, chocolatey indulgence.  Speaking of confessions, I've had sugar already today.  We were out for a walk and we had ice cream.  It was delicious and I'm not sorry.  I'd love to say that I'm going to skip dessert later to counteract this but that's not happening.  My mum has brought us a homemade cake so I'll definitely be having some later .  

I hope you and your OH are both feeling better now and that you have a lovely birthday and Easter weekend 🎉.  

Since we have a long weekend, I'm going to enjoy sugar on Monday as well but I'll try not to go too crazy.  We'll see how it goes.  I hope everyone has been doing well with their goals this week and that you have a lovely weekend!

cookie02

Happy Easter!  I hope everyone is having a lovely weekend and enjoying the sunny weather ☀️.  Well, it's Easter, the Easter Bunny was generous and I'm not complaining.  I've just enjoyed a hot cross bun and we've been out walking and had ice cream.  Instead of aiming to be sugar-free tomorrow, I've decided to leave things open as it is a Bank Holiday and we have a lot of chocolate and other treats here.  I'm fairly certain that I'll end up eating something sugary and, if that happens, I'll aim to get back on track on Tuesday.  

Honey_Bear

And a very happy Easter to you too Cookie!  The Easter Bunny was equally generous here as well, and so was the birthday bunny, so there is absolutely no chance I'm going to be sugar and chocolate free until Tuesday at the absolute earliest.  Possibly not even then.  We'll see.  In the meantime I'm thoroughly enjoying the feasting!

Note to self:  Another thing not to bother with - mass produced profiteroles.  Only really lovely when homemade.

cookie02

I'm very glad to hear that the Easter and Birthday Bunnies were good to you, Honey_Bear - enjoy the feasting!  You are right about profiteroles, homemade are the best 😋.  They are one of the few things that I can bake and they always come out well (my baking / dessert skills are limited, so anything foolproof or near-foolproof is always a winner here.)

Today, I'm going to try to be sugar-free.  My resolve will be tested and there is a fairly high chance that I'm setting myself up for failure here as I'm fortunate to be surrounded by some lovely Easter leftovers, mainly of the chocolatey kind.  We'll see if I manage or not but I decided that I won't lose anything from trying to get back on track today.  I'm not going to give myself a hard time if I hit the sugar.  Ideally, I'd like to be sugar free from today until Friday evening.  I know this is going to be tough as there's probably enough sugar to get us all the way through next weekend too.  If I indulge, I will re-think my goals for this week as I might need a more realistic target (maybe similar to post-Christmas with my one sugary treat per day, until I finally managed to get a sugar-free day).  Fingers crossed!

I hope everyone had a lovely Easter weekend.  Good luck with your goals for this week! 🍀 

Honey_Bear

Thank you Cookie.  We too are surrounded by sugary things, not the least of which is chocolate.  I allowed myself free range over all of it over the four days and while I did over-indulge more than my ideal the reality is that a packet of my favourite biscuits lasted the full four days, when I've eaten a whole packet on my own in one inhale in the past, and I kind of naturally limited myself in unexpected ways over the entire period.

There was as bit of a facer Saturday, Sunday and Monday mornings when I weighed myself and I'd gone back up to 68.2kgs but it's back down to a more respectable 67.5 today.  I'm really unclear about why that would be the case but I'm not going to argue with the scales, although I did weigh myself twice to check. 

Ideally I'd like to do the same as you and go sugar-free until later in the week but I can't guarantee I will.  I'm going to stick more carefully to the complex carboyhydrates and try to avoid the simple ones as much as possible, although on reflection I think oats count as complex in homemade porridge and frankly they're not as helpful in my case as I'd like them to be for breakfast.  I've settled for blueberries and sugar-free yoghurt instead which seems to work, and have just scoffed a lovely bowl of mujadarra with yoghurt for lunch, and a couple of figs.  I'm really hoping that listening more attentively to my body's reactions to what I eat will help with a bit of weightloss because just cutting out sugar as much as I can for over six months isn't, on it's own, making that much of a difference.  We'll see.

We both know where the chocolate is in our houses, we both know that other people can and will be having some of it, so I hope we can both tough it out and get back into the swing of things as early as possible this week.  If the Easter hangover causes a slip up, like you, I'm not going to beat myself up.  I don't want to lose sight of the goal - to cut back on the sugar habit as much as I can without being miserable.  Whatever we both achieve is a dent in the habit. 

Honey_Bear

The post-Easter choco fest continues.  I was fine until Belovéd offered me half of the last hot cross bun, then of course I had to have sugar on my strawberries, and I've still got most of my birthday Easter egg to finish. 

Tomorrow's another day but I rather doubt I'll manage that, either. 

How did you get on Cookie?

cookie02

Honey_Bear said:

We both know where the chocolate is in our houses, we both know that other people can and will be having some of it, so I hope we can both tough it out and get back into the swing of things as early as possible this week.  If the Easter hangover causes a slip up, like you, I'm not going to beat myself up.  I don't want to lose sight of the goal - to cut back on the sugar habit as much as I can without being miserable.  Whatever we both achieve is a dent in the habit. 

Honey_Bear, thank you for all your support!  I'm really focused on exactly what you outlined above: the long-term changes away from sugar, vs beating myself up for short-term lapses.  So far, I've had sugar/chocolate every day.  The amounts were relatively small (by my previous standards, at least!) but the lapses still happened.  This week also disproved my theory that I don't want/consume sugar when I'm busy.  In fact, I've had meetings starting from early in the morning (7/7.30am) until late so far this week but I've still managed to find and consume various leftover treats!  

Sharing the last hot cross bun has to be a sign of true love, Honey_Bear - it would have been wrong to turn that down .  I think we'd have a full-scale fight on our hands if we only had one left here!

Good luck with today.  My thinking now is to enjoy the sugar as I don't think I'm going to be sugar-free, especially as I have a client lunch out later.  It still feels very odd going out but it is another visitor from overseas and someone that is also a personal friend. To try and re-balance sugar-wise, I'm think I'm going to give myself one sugar 'pass' on Saturday and Sunday, instead of just leaving them open to eat whatever/whenever I like.  I hope your day goes well.  Let's enjoy whatever sugar/chocolate we have and work to get ourselves back on track once the temptation has disappeared!

Honey_Bear

It sounds as though your work life getting back to normal is playing havoc with the idea of a sugar-free life Cookie.  Ideally we'd all like to think we have autonomy over our lives but the need to appear to be endlessly accommodating to smooth the path of commerce is exactly the same pressure of going along with majority of people when we're out in a group - if the majority want to eat sugary things it's all very well saying no to dessert but it does carry the whiff of being 'faintly saintly' and frankly that's a bit off-putting for other people sometimes.  As I don't drink at all I'm already a bit of a kill joy when it comes to champagne breakfasts etc which I no longer even think about but I know friends find it a bit awkward on my behalf when we go out to celebrate birthdays etc.  Who knew that social norms around sugar and alcohol were so loaded, eh?  I hope that you thoroughly enjoy your sugar on those occasions when it's just easier to go with the flow, and that you secure the desired business outcomes.  

As for me, I'm not managing sugar-free days at the moment although I am eating much, much less than I used to and that's really important to me.  The temptation is those two Easter eggs, and knowing that there's a packet of chocolate ginger biscuits in the cupboard.  There were two packets, I finished one over Easter and yesterday the other one was opened and I had two while I was finishing potting up a number of plants that had been hanging around for far too long, in a rush, because we were going out in the evening and I just needed that final push of energy to finish the job.  As soon as I've finished my birthday Easter eggs I'll be back on track, but there is a second one lurking on the mantlepiece - both were gifts so while I asked Belovéd to buy the chocolate gingers, the eggs weren't my idea.  (I'm not complaining!)

Overall, in the olden days last year I'd have spirited the second egg up to my office and scoffed it while no-one was around, and the big one would have been eked out over a week at most.  The reason they're going to be a blight on this sugar-free Challenge is that I'm not eating anywhere near as much as I used to every day because I'm satisfied by less now, and if that's not a win I don't know what is.  

Morning_walker

Hello all, Good to catch up with how the challenge has been going for you. All in all I think I'm doing pretty well. I'm being very inconsistent with what my aims are - I think last time I logged on or the time before I was going to cut all sugar out. This past week I've gone for reducing my chocolate intake. It's definitely much less than before I started doing the challenge, so I'm pleased with that. Like you say, it's about the long-term overall aims - imperfect progress is my aim. I also don't feel such strong cravings for chocolate now, so I'm enjoying that feeling that I'm a bit less reliant on it to change my mood. 

Have a lovely weekend all.