The 'Towards a Sugar-Free Future' Challenge

Morning_walker

Thanks, Honey_Bear. I'm very pleased with that. Am having a wee bit of dark chocolate today and will then try to do another week sugar free until next Saturday. This will be a challenge as they didn't have the small dark choc bars I usually buy, so I will have a large bar in the cupboard which I will have made an agreement with myself not to eat...

Well done on being sugar-free yesterday, Honey_Bear. Hope everyone had a good week!

cookie02

Well done, Morning_walker 🏅. Four sugar-free days is a great result and, as Honey_Bear says, we have an agreement that Friday evenings are part of the weekend Challenge-wise, so your marmalade doesn't count!

Honey_Bear, congratulations on being sugar-free, especially given the extremely challenging time you're having with your ankle 🏅.  

Well, I've shared my 'accidental sugar' incidents before (those are the moments when I've forgotten that I'm on a sugar-free day and have eaten a cake or cookie without realising that I'm breaking away from the plan).  Yesterday, I was accidentally sugar-free and, yes, it was Friday yesterday.  I had my Friday night treat all planned out but I guess my sugar gremlins must have gone on holiday as I didn't even remember it until this morning.  Even now, I'm not in a sugary mood (yet) and it's the weekend.  I'm not sure how long this will last but I'm just glad that I got through yesterday sugar-free without having to overcome any cravings - the accidental sugar-free day was much nicer than my usual days battling away!

We are heading to town shortly and I know I'll be having sugar later as one of the places has some ice cream that we love.  It's nice to be able to enjoy it without spending the whole day dreaming about it beforehand (that's how I feel at the moment but the gremlins may reappear later and you might be hearing a different story from me tomorrow!). 

How is everyone?  I hope you are enjoying the weekend.  

Honey_Bear

Lots of chocolate and sugar yesterday, celebrating our 29th anniversary.  'Nuf said.

Pollybear

Happy Anniversary

cookie02

Honey_Bear said:

Lots of chocolate and sugar yesterday, celebrating our 29th anniversary.  'Nuf said.

Happy Anniversary, Honey_Bear!  A great cause for chocolate and sugar - congratulations! 🥳 

Morning_walker

Happy Anniversary, Honey_Bear!!  

Morning_walker

@cookie02, are you doing sugar-free for as many days as poss. during the week at the moment, and weekends and holidays 'off'?

Honey_Bear

Morning All and Welcome to a shiny new week!  Thank you for your kind anniversary wishes and comments.  It was a different way to spend the day, that's for sure. 

On Sunday a neighbour popped in with yet more chocolate in a couple of mugs she'd been meaning to give to us for some time.  It was very welcome and I ate my share for tea, on top of a slice of the anniversary carrot cake.  I rather hope it's finished because I do find it hard to resist if I know it's there, but it's not as if Belovéd would go out and buy it unless I specifically asked him to. 

So, with that in mind, I'm back on this Challenge this week with no excuse, as far as I know, to indulge in any sugar between now and Friday evening.  I may have to ask Belovéd to move a box of handmade chocolates I received through the post just in case my willpower fails me though.  I'm not super-human and chocolate within reach is always dangerous, like a crow with a gattling gun - not trustworthy at all.

How did everyone do over the weekend?  Are you back on track for this week, weighing up options for how to tackle temptation?

cookie02

Morning_walker said:

@cookie02, are you doing sugar-free for as many days as poss. during the week at the moment, and weekends and holidays 'off'?

@Morning_walker yes, that's right.  I aim to be sugar-free from Monday morning until Friday evening and then enjoy the weekends plus High Days (eg birthdays, other celebrations, family holidays etc) and 'official' holidays (eg Christmas, Easter etc).  The original challenge from Honey_Bear started out with one day a week, then two, then three etc.  Our original challenge was to achieve five full days per week but I had a permanent struggle with Friday nights as, psychologically, I feel like that's the start of my weekend.  Rather than throw in the towel, I just gave myself permission to go from Monday morning up to Friday evening sugar-free.  That is a big achievement for me given my sugar history!  

Honey_Bear was more successful with the full five days but reported that, despite being retired, Friday night really is the start of the weekend so we've designated Friday nights as part of the weekend now . Personally, I try to enjoy Friday evening and Saturday and then limit myself to just one treat on Sunday, otherwise I find Mondays much harder.  After doing this challenge for over a year, I can honestly say that I naturally eat less sugar, even on those days when I'm allowed.  I don't ration myself.  If I want more, I will eat it but I've got into the habit of having smaller slices of cake, less chocolate etc.  Overall, I'm more aware of what I'm eating.  My main strategy is something that I started when I gave up the fizzy drinks - focus on one meal/snack 'moment' and aim to skip the sugar and 'string' those moments together so, eventually, I hit a sugar-free day.  I was messing around with Intermittent Fasting (16/8) before and I do this during the week as well.  Again, I'm not religious about it - on days when I am feeling really hungry earlier than my eating window, I will just eat instead of driving myself crazy.  I will drink water/tea first to see if it's dehydration vs hunger but I don't believe in driving yourself crazy with one thing, in order to try and achieve another .  The timings work for me as our main family meal is the evening one and, because of work, I'd become used to skipping breakfast during the week anyway so the main challenge was skipping snacks before lunch.  In general, if I'm busy, I find that the time before lunch goes quickly and I also tend to crave sugar in the afternoons.  Honey_Bear has read that fasting is less effective for women and I haven't seen any dramatic results but, aside from weightloss, it is supposed to be good for regulating your blood sugar so I keep going.  My friends were more like Honey_Bear and lost weight.  One has been doing 16/8 for a few years and the impact has been dramatic for them so I guess this really depends on the individual.  If you are curious, and you can find a time slot that will work for you, I'd recommend trying it as it could help hand-in-hand with your goals to quit chocolate.  I found it fit nicely with this challenge (for me, anyway!).  

Sorry for the very long response, Morning_walker.  This challenge is like a continuous experiment and we keep finding new ideas and things to test out on the way (hence my curiosity about your scent experiment!).  If you have any other questions, please ask.  We are all figuring our way out here and, between us, I think we are trying or researching most things.  Honey_Bear also has a lot of experience from quitting alcohol (which is supposed to be much harder than sugar!) and there was a very inspiring post from Jackie_black a while back - I read it periodically to remind myself why this matters and to just keep going!

Honey_Bear said:

I'm not super-human and chocolate within reach is always dangerous, like a crow with a gattling gun - not trustworthy at all.

How did everyone do over the weekend?  Are you back on track for this week, weighing up options for how to tackle temptation?

Your description made me laugh, Honey_Bear!  I'm glad I'm not the only one asking family to hide the treats to save me from temptation .  Well done on being so restrained over the weekend too 🏅.  

My weekend was less sugary than expected, not because I was especially restrained but because I was properly tired out on Saturday and only had one tiny square of chocolate.  On Sunday, I had one of those molasses chocolates that I mentioned but that was it!  All in all, a very weird outcome for me but I'm not complaining.  I think I was actually at that point of being so tired that I just wanted sleep vs sugar.  Either way, it set me up nicely for today and I'm going to go ahead and declare today sugar-free.  Tomorrow will probably be a different story, especially as I'm heading into town for a meeting.  I would like to hit my target for the week though so I'm going to try and avoid temptation.  

How is everyone?  I hope you are having a good start to the week.  

Honey_Bear

Excellent post Cookie, and I agree with every word.  Regarding the intermittent fasting thing, in all the excitement over the past three weeks I haven't been thinking about it, but I'm food-free for about 14 hours and that's about as good as it's going to get at the moment. I eat what I'm given when I'm given it, with not much in the way of snacks although I asked Belovéd to find my almonds for me this afternoon as I was in need of something to get me through, and I didn't want to go back to grinding my teeth as I did after surgery for my broken wrist. 

For some reason for several hours this afternoon I kept getting shooting pains in my ankle which was really unpleasant.  In the end I resorted to two paracetemol which means that for once I will have taken the maximum dose of paracetemol for 24 hours by midnight but needs must.  I was so surprised by it because I'm pretty good at maximum pain management with the minimum dose and it hurt!  In revenge on my body I ate a m@gnum and three handmade champagne truffles a lovely friend sent me.  That helped.