The 'Towards a Sugar-Free Future' Challenge

cookie02

Well done @Morning_walker, that sounds like you're getting some real momentum with the dark chocolate and cutting back.  Thanks for keeping us updated.  Good luck with getting back on track 🍀.  

This week, I was hoping to be sugar-free Monday through Friday evening.  I'd forgotten that I had a client lunch yesterday.  I thought I'd be able to resist until they mentioned a chilli chocolate special for dessert.  I love chilli and chocolate so I gave in and just enjoyed the most delicious chilli chocolate cheesecake.  I have no regrets 😋.  

Today, I've been sugar-free so far and hope to stay that way!

I hope everyone is well and having a good week.  Good luck with your goals ☀️

cookie02

Yesterday, I was sugar-free 🎉.  Today, I'm aiming to be sugar-free again.  My snacks for this week are dates, gingerbread pumpkin seeds and I've also experimented with some spicy roasted chickpeas.  I have lunch planned (a wrap with some leftover homemade falafel) and we're having one of my favourite stir fries for dinner so today is currently going to plan food-wise.  Now, I just need to stick with my pre-made snacks and try to stay away from the kitchen cupboards and drawers for the rest of the day! 😉 

cookie02

It wasn't to be...  I broke and ate a slice of cake.  It wasn't even a small slice of cake but it was delicious!  As the saying goes, 'tomorrow is another day...' 🍀 

Honey_Bear

I just broke too, Cookie, and ate a rather dry nutella-filled crepe which I bought at Lid1 this morning while shopping for padron peppers.  However, I stopped at one and had my curiousity satisfied so I'm not going to beat myself up about it.  (I bought them for a very specific purpose and they will be extremely useful for that, so the fact that they're dry isn't bothering me.) I'm not surprised you gave in with the cheesecake and the cake, either.  In those circumstances I'd have done the same - it was there, it tempted me, I needed to scratch that itch. 

Well done Morning Walker.  Cutting down is absolutely brilliant if you've been indulging yourself for a long time - it takes a lot of self-discipline to consciously stop doing something that you know you enjoy.  Any progress is worthwhile.

Sorry I haven't been posting; I was sticking to my guns and being good but not posting.  I have, however, been thinking about chocolate - sugar itself isn't the issue any more at all, it's just chocolate.  I don't understand quite why resisting the stuff is so hard.  I spent thee months at sea 30 years ago in two lots of six weeks and I didn't even consider stocking up on chocolate before I went sailing off into the wide blue yonder and that wasn't the first time I'd done that - weeks at sea, not even thinking I was chocolate deprived. I didn't give it a second thought and I while I do recall eating some occasionally when it was provided by someone else and thoroughly enjoying it, it wasn't a big thing.  Booze was, but chocolate wasn't.  Those were the days when I both smoked and drank so that may have something to do with it.

The reason I've been thinking about this is that on Sunday I ate another 100g bar of chocolate simply because I knew I wouldn't be able to on Monday.  No other reason, I ate it in case I wanted some on Monday.  It's not the first time I've done that but I'm hoping it is the last.

Morning_walker

Thank you Honey_Bear. Finding it challenging this past week, but I guess 'challenge' is the operative word! Off to buy some maple syrup now - I remember that you suggested that a while back, Cookie... I'm going to give it a go with some fresh orange and yogurt for desert later. 

Honey_Bear

Well done for sticking with the idea of this Morning Walker.  It's hard but the longer it goes on in a way the easier it gets.  I can say that because I absolutely no longer think about eating sugary things all day every day and only feel pangs occasionally after dinner.  If I have a real weakness now after nine months, it's then and it's only ever about chocolate.  Sometimes we just have to accept progress is very slow but it is progress and that needs to be celebrated.

I caved on both Thursday and Friday evening and had a salted caramel m@gnum both evenings because I'm still struggling with chocolatey stuff.  I also had a biscough (sic) biscuit with my coffee when I was out with an extremely trying person who wanted us to have lunch to catch up after not seeing each other for over two years.  Frankly I'm surprised I didn't just buy the whole 12" cake on the counter and have done with it so I regard having one biscuit far more self-disciplined than I wanted to be.  I won't be unhappy if I don't see her again for another two years, but if I have to I will allow myself beaucoup de chocolat next time.

Your comments Cookie and my lack of posting this week have made me reflect on this Challenge and as usual we all tend to focus on the negatives and forget the incredible positives we've achieved over the past nine months.  I do indulge sometimes, whoops a daisy, but my sugar consumption has dropped to about 5% of what it used to be and that is much, much more important than having the occasional biscuit on a Friday and a cheeky ice cream on a couple of weeknights sometimes.  It's far to easy to forget the massive change that is from this time last year.

And I didn't slap Sally, which is what I really wanted to do!

cookie02

Good morning!  My weekend was ok from a sugar perspective.  Honey_Bear, your comments about eating the 100g bar of chocolate on Sunday definitely sounds familiar!  On Sundays, I've started to remind myself that the sugar (in my case, often biscuits or cake) will still be there during the week, if I really want it.  That has helped me a bit.  Quite often, by the time Monday comes around, I'm distracted with other things. Well done for sticking with your challenge and not letting a couple of lapses keep you from your long-term goals! 🏅 

Morning_walker, I hope you enjoy the maple syrup.  I have tried different brands, including L1dl (I think it is their 'Deluxe' but I don't think they have any other).  For me, it has made a big difference.  The flavour is so lovely that I find I don't need very much  and it is healthier so, if I want sugar, I feel like that's a better choice.  Recently, I've also been trying date syrup (thank you, M0rr1s0ns).  I find the date syrup sweeter but I prefer flavour of the maple so I'll be sticking with that once I've used up the date.  Good luck with your experimenting, maple, orange and yoghurt sounds like a good combination - I hope you enjoy it!

This week, there is no reprieve from sugar temptation for me.  We have big birthday celebrations coming up and the feasting has already started so yesterday was a washout.  I still had a breakthrough though as I had a piece of cake yesterday.  It was a thin slice of pre-birthday cake (yes, that's a tradition for a certain family member!).  I ate the part with the icing and I had to force myself to keep eating and smiling, it was so horribly sweet.  This is a shop-bought cake that my family has had for a few years now.  They don't appear to have changed the recipe so I can only assume that it's my tastebuds that have changed.  Even my dad commented on how sweet it was so I think that my parents' healthier eating might also be having an effect.  

This week, my aim is to be sugar-free today, tomorrow and Thursday.  I'm on holiday and, between that, the family birthday and the long weekend, I've given myself a 'back-up' goal.  If I eat sugar, I want to make sure that I don't have more than one sugary meal per day.  I'm hoping it won't come to that but I feel like having a back-up goal might be a good option this week.  That way, if I lapse, I hope I'll remember that instead of spiralling into sugar madness!

How is everyone?  I hope you are having a good week and looking forward to the long weekend 🎉.  Good luck meeting your goals today . 

prowla

The problem I have is that I don't like the taste of artificial sweeteners, so removing sugar just means I can't have soft drinks, many "juice" drinks, and other things which use alternatives; there's no point in having something for the taste if it tastes horrible.

That said, I've never had sugar in tea or coffee and I am not a fan of sweetened savoury items (why add sugar to tomatoes, pickled onions, chutneys, and so-on?).

If I go out for a meal, I'll typically drink tap water these days.

Honey_Bear

It really helps that you're so reflective Cookie and think about strategies and sugar-management as much as I do!  I hope you thoroughly enjoy all the up-coming celebrations this week.  Fortunately for me there are no weekday intrusions into my sugar-abstention but that doesn't mean I'm not going to be as tempted as I usually am.  The fact that Thursday and Friday are public holidays doesn't change our weekday routines other than we tend not to go out because everyone else does!  I hope the weather stays fine for everyone over the long weekend regardless of their plans.  I'm not planning on binging on chocolate because it's technically a holiday but I can see that the temptation to indulge in a m@gnum or three will always be there.  I've also finished all the milk chocolate bars, so that temptation is removed - a Good Thing.

Pre-birthday cakes? It's a lovely idea and a great excuse to eat more cake too.  It's more than possible the recipe has been changed to include more sugar because sugar is a lot cheaper than most other ingredients.  The more sugar people eat, the more they want, so making it sweeter is technically making it more attractive to a whole lot of people.  I've never been able to eat icing because it's just pure sweetness without any flavour so it grated, quite literally, on my teeth.  Still does.  I'm glad your father found it too sweet too - just goes to show it wasn't your imagination and that's really important. 

I don't know if I've mentioned this before (probably have) but about 10 or 12 years ago when I was working in America for a couple of weeks for my cousin, unpaid, so legal, I was paying for my own food quite a lot of the time which was fine, but found it hard to access fresh fruit and veg for the crunch factor.  We went to a Target which was across the parking lot from the convention centre we were in and I aimed for the dried fruit section to see me through a couple of days on the road and found to my absolute horror that even dried fruit has sugar added to it over there!  Totally crazy, but that's what adding sugar to everything does - not even dried fruit is sweet enough for some people.  Yetch.  (I didn't buy any.)

I added a teaspoon of sugar to my strawberries last night before I remembered that I shouldn't, and that I don't need to.  They were, however, particularly gorgeous with the sugar and cream so *meh*.  Just goes to show how automatic it is though, even after nine months!  Other than that I've been good the past couple of days.

I'm eating too much.  Not the wrong foods, just too much, so I'm not losing weight and that's really, really annoying me.  It's cheese that does the real damage but too much of everything isn't helping.  I thought I'd be through this phase by now but I'm not. 

Prowla, I never liked the taste of artificial sweetners at all, so while I tried them all at one stage or another I never bothered with any of them.  When I went completely sugar-free about 25 years ago after a day or three fruit tea and black coffee tasted absolutely fine so I've never really thought about it.  I don't drink fizzy drinks because while I loved them as a child, particularly 7Up, I really really dislike the taste of them now and I realised that it was just artificially-flavoured fizzy sugar-water which helped.  I cut out fruit juice because while it counts as one of the five a day most dieticians and nutritionists don't have anything positive to say about it.  I will admit to buying a carton of guava juice recently, which I drank with one part guava juice, two parts water (fizzy when I've got it) in the evenings when I was thirsty over a couple of weeks and I enjoyed that but not enough to want to make it a regular occurrence.  I share your belief that there's little point in drinking (or eating) anything you don't like but cutting out things that aren't doing me any good seemed like a good idea.  Sugar wasn't doing me any good hence this Challenge, and it's added sugar I have a problem with, not naturally occurring sugar, and I will admit to having mayonnaise, even though it's got sugar in it because what would tuna be without mayo?  Dry and rather disgusting, I think.

Sugar in/added to tomatoes - I'm with you on that, but I noticed that the Italians we had staying here always added a pinch of sugar when cooking with them because they said it brought out the sweetness in the tomatoes.  It really was only a pinch but I still forget to add it myself because I never learned to cook that way.  As for pickles and chutneys, I make a fair amount of them and sugar is the preservative that means they keep for years.  There's also a bit of the sweet and sour thing going on there with the sugar and vinegar, which is why they're so popular although personally, while I make them, I don't actually eat that much of them.  Belovéd likes them so I make them for him and because we always have an over-abundance of pears. 

As for going out for a meal, I drink alcohol-free beer in the evenings when I'm out and decaff coffee if it's an early enough lunch; if I drink it after 1.00pm even decaff means I can't get to sleep for hours.  Tap water isn't enough of a treat when I'm out for me! 

Onwards and upwards!

cookie02

Good morning!  I'm not sure how it happened but I ended up being sugar-free yesterday, despite all the birthday celebrations going on.  The thought of having that cake again was just too much and I politely declined.  I've not been entirely virtuous since my last post though as I ate small pieces of the cake almost every day (and I had the same reaction each time, so they really must have changed the recipe).  All in all, I failed in terms of being sugar-free on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday but I did meet my 'back-up' goal of having just one sugary meal on each of those days.  Overall, I'm happy with it (especially since I stayed sugar-free yesterday, which was an unexpected bonus).  

Prowla, I also don't like the taste of artificial sweeteners.  I used to be very addicted to the full-fat variety of a well-known fizzy drink (starts with C) but I never liked the 'diet' or 'zero' versions of them.  I do still have the odd juice though.  

Honey_Bear, you are right that juices aren't looked on favourably.  From what I've read, this is to do with juices lacking fibre which means that we absorb the sugar immediately (vs how eating the 'whole' fruit includes fibre so that is good for us and encouraged).   A few years ago, I was buying bottled smoothies from a well-known brand and we were having those on a near-daily basis as I thought it was good for our health.  In fairness, they were probably better than the junk we were eating before but, like a lot of things, we probably shouldn't have been having those so regularly!  I've read that smoothies aren't as bad as juices as they include the fibre and some include vegetables.  If we want smoothies now, we tend to make them at home but I include some kind of fibre in them and my main juice is my celery juice.  The other benefit of making them at home is that everyone enjoys the 'magic' of whizzing up the fruit and veg!  

Honey_Bear said:

I'm eating too much.  Not the wrong foods, just too much, so I'm not losing weight and that's really, really annoying me.  It's cheese that does the real damage but too much of everything isn't helping.  I thought I'd be through this phase by now but I'm not.  

This is exactly what's been happening with me for the last month.  I'm not sure why we've been eating so much but we definitely need to go back to eating less as we've all put on weight in the last month (and we were doing pretty well prior to that).  In my case, the birthdays might have just triggered a bit less structure with our meals but we've still been eating healthily so it really is the quantity that's the issue.  I can't even blame the cheese as we've continued with mini portions and I checked my food spreadsheet and I haven't had a huge amount lately.  

Since it's the weekend, we don't have any sugar rules.  I'm going to try and stick to one sugary meal today and see how things go.  

Good luck with your goals and enjoy the long weekend! ☀️