The 'Towards a Sugar-Free Future' Challenge

Pollybear

I'm still plodding along.  I've had some sugar but not every day and I haven't binged which is the thing that makes me feel bad about myself.   So not my worst week by any means!

Honey_Bear

PollyBear, apart from Morning Walker's amazing eight day run we're all struggling to stay completely sugar-free at the moment so you're in excellent company!  I'm totally with you about the binging thing - if I can stop eating chocolate while there's still some left I reckon that's a win.  The key thing to remember is that we're all eating less than we would if we weren't doing this Challenge so yay for us!

cookie02

Honey_Bear said:

PollyBear, apart from Morning Walker's amazing eight day run we're all struggling to stay completely sugar-free at the moment so you're in excellent company!  I'm totally with you about the binging thing - if I can stop eating chocolate while there's still some left I reckon that's a win.  The key thing to remember is that we're all eating less than we would if we weren't doing this Challenge so yay for us!

I am with you all on this!  I ended up having sugar yesterday and today.  I had several chocolate biscuits on both days (not as much as before but more than I've had in one go for a long time).  I'm not sure what triggered it, other than a total lack of restraint, but I enjoyed them and I'm going to try and be sugar-free tomorrow.  Thinking about it, I have slept less over the last few days so that could have been part of it.  My manager is back next week and I think things will be a bit calmer then.  

Honey_Bear, I tend to simmer a batch of lentils with whole chillis, garlic, onions and a bunch of spices.  I love spice but some of my family prefer milder food, so I keep the chillis whole so they can be fished out later if anyone doesn't want to eat them.  This might sound strange but I have the lentils on top of a corn or rice cake with some fresh pepper.  I even do this with sourdough crackers sometimes or regular cream crackers (anything crispy!).  Sometimes, I mix a small cup of lentils with some chopped cheese and use it as a dip with pitta crackers.  The crackers are just a small wholemeal pitta that I split open, season (herbs, paprika, seasoning) and toast under the grill.  The cheese melts into the lentils and I love it as it makes it lovely and creamy.

Making, that is good to know re: the Samsung app.  I am going to check if I have a similar app.  I used to use one years ago but I don't think it tracked protein.  Thank you for the tip!

Morning_walker

Hi all, I had a hot chocolate on Tuesday when feeling particularly tired, but apart from that am still staying sugar-free. I aim to get to this Saturday. Good luck all. 

Honey_Bear

Thank you for your lentil recipe Cookie.  I've got the gist of it so I'll have a shot at making some for myself because any high protein snacks that I can add to the choices make life easier and more interesting.  At the moment I've got a big jar of Brazil nuts which I chomp when I've got a slight attack of the munchies.  That suits me because I'm quite lazy at heart. The smaller ones are destined to be covered in chocolate very soon as a Christmas treat.

Well done for keeping going Polly Bear.  This is a marathon, not a sprint.  We're not going to turn this juggernaut around easily after years of falling prey to very big businesses with a vested interest in encouraging us to eat things that in small quantities are not harmful, but in large quantities are. 

Morning Walker, hot chocolate is a great choice on cold days when you're out and about in the afternoon.  Belovéd had a 2.00pm meeting with someone last week and felt it was too early for tea but much too late for coffee so that's what he settled for and really enjoyed it.  Hot chocolate in the winter and milkshakes in the summer - fabulous.

I indulged my weekend freedom yesterday by eating six small Florentines, which I love and very, very rarely allow myself.  Other than that the week hasn't been too bad and for once hasn't been difficult which is a huge relief.

It seems I'm having a bit of a ranty day - if you want to skip the rest of this post feel free.  I think I just needed to get all of this off my chest.  I've probably said all of this before but all of this just sort of came out of my fingers on the keyboard this morning.  Sorry.  (But not sorry if you know what I mean.)

The sugar habit is insidious and has been foisted on us by an industry that has everything to gain by adding it to everything so that we become accustomed to everything tasting slightly sweeter than it does naturally, and it's spent billions and billions perfecting techniques to get us to the point where we crave more and more.  A couple of years ago I became very interested in the amount of abuse the British scientist who wrote Pure, White and Deadly received, and it was that that triggered my interest in wanting to adjust my releationship with sugar.  I can accept that we're also more than a bit addicted to fat which, in itself, is also dangerous but it was the ferocity of the attacks on John Yudkin that really interested me - it was straight out of the tobacco industry's playbook - demonise the scientist, misinform and misdirect the general population by funding research that cherry picks findings for publication and create a very determined campaign to undermine the person who is warning people about a very real danger.  Even though it's accepted that Yudkin was right, there's even more sugar in our processed foods now and that trend isn't going to change.   Sugar is a lot cheaper than real food and it's addictive stuff; it's that simple.  All of the mass produced breakfast cereals aimed at children are total and utter crap and if I ruled the world they'd be banned because that's where the rot starts.  We are not alone in your battle and every day we don't binge is a wonderful achievement.

From what I can recall of this time last year I really struggled throughout December to remain on track and had to reset my sugar-free journey in January after Belovéd's birthday - it's hopeless to think I can do it on 1 January so I'm not going to try this year either.  Anyway, December was a total write off last year if I'm strictly honest with myself I put that down to the fact that there was a lot of chocolate about.  There is again this year and some of it is in my stash because I have been able to get to the shops by myself, driving and everything at long last, but I'm finding it pretty easy not to scoff it which is a totally new experience and I'm still astonished by it.

I'm finding this year less of a struggle in that I appear to have accepted that I now have one chocolate biscuit with my mug of tea at around 4.00pm every day but the amazing thing is that I can and do stop at just the one.  That has never happened before - if I started on sweet things I didn't seem to have a Stop button.

The longer I'm on this higher protein push the easier it seems it becomes to limit my sugar intake because I just don't get the cravings at all.  I went out to lunch with a friend on Friday and we both had a venison burger which was amazing, but I couldn't eat anything for the rest of the day.  I didn't even want my usual Friday evening m@gnum indulgence.  I still wasn't hungry on Saturday morning and settled for avocado on toast for breakfast because we had a ripe one that we'd intended to eat on Thursday but didn't and I didn't want that to go over.  I could not face anything else at all.

I seem to have settled into a fairly simple routine with the protein - breakfast is usually half a tub of cottage cheese or boiled eggs, lunch is often eggs if breakfast isn't, or cheese or paté, and meat, fish or something cheesey in the evening.  The danger time of 4.00pm, and if Belovéd makes tea he also delivers that chocolate biscuit but if he doesn't then I fall back on the Brazil nuts or peanut butter on toast.  By the time I've eaten all of that there really isn't much space for anything other than fruit and veggies, and I honestly have real trouble eating three portions of protein and five fruit and veg every day.  Belovéd enjoys his carbohydrates but I couldn't eat as much bread, pasta and potatoes as he does.  The strange thing is that he's losing weight but mine's pretty stable so that doesn't really make sense yet, although I'm now aware that sometimes I carry on eating when, if I'm honest with myself, I've had enough.  This nonsense about finishing all the food on my plate needs to stop, because that's another lifetime habit that isn't doing me any good at all.

The other thing that I wanted to mention is that going back to a supermarket for the first time in nearly three months was ... interesting.  I can skip the whole aisle devoted to crisps no problem because crisps much as I like them give me indigestion, I can wander down the chocolate and biscuit aisle only looking for my favourite chocolate ginger biscuits because it's December, but when I find them and they've got palm oil in them which they never used to have, that's a real wake up call and moment for me.  I loved them to such an extreme extent that I've been known to scoff a whole packet (in my defence there were only ever nine in the packet) when no-one else was about.  But, costs are increasing and there's a price limit on what most of us will pay for anything so it was inevitable, I suppose, that crap was bound to turn up in more and more foods as time went on.  Palm oil was never in them before because it's the reason I read ingredient labels, and I don't buy anything with palm oil because of the destruction of the orangutan's habitat and loss of rain forests to produce it.  Belovéd is an environmentalsit, but not the type that chains himself ot anything - he uses a different way to change the way we do things, which I support.  He first mentioned the palm oil issue to me about a decade ago and we've avoided it ever since, so to find it in my favourite chocolate ginger biscuits and for me, even worse, in OATCAKES was a real shock.  That's happened in the last three months and I'm horrified by it.  I don't eat margarine because I loathe the taste of it but also because - it's not food.  There's nothing nutritious in margarine and I have no idea about whether palm oil, or palm fat as it's also increasingly labelled, is nutritous or not but its inclusion in food I used to rely on while I try to eat healthily without going completely bonkers, has really  upset me this week.

I've found a simple recipe for oatcakes which I'll be making from now on, and I also found a whole load of cheese biscuits that don't have palm oil in them but every single one of the popular brands had it listed as an ingredient.  Some of them claim it's from sustainable sources but I have no idea what that kind of virtue signalling means any more because producing it displaces other crops that I value more highly.  If anyone has read this far, here's the nutritional information on palm oil, here's the comparison for margarine (which does at least contain some vitamins) and for balance, butter.

I had absolutely no idea when I decided to deal with my sugar addiction 16 months ago that I'd become this interested in nutrition but I can't say it's doing me any harm and may be doing some good.  Mainly, I think, it's made me realise how difficult it is to eat healthily in a modern society where we're all time poor with a massive wealth of tempting choices. 

Pollybear

I had a bar of chocolate yesterday but just an orange Twirl, not a big bar.   I had to stay overnight at my daughter's Friday to look after my granddaughter, make sure we were up early and then we had to take her on a 10 mile trip so she could get the coach to Brownie camp.   Obviously I stressed about that for about 2 weeks (not looking after her, she's good as gold) - worrying about waking up in time and perhaps it might snow or it would be icy or foggy - you get the idea!   Obviously I was up at 3.15 am on Saturday when we didn't have to leave until 7.45.    I really needed that bar of chocolate but I still felt guilty.   It's done now.

Snowed here this morning.   I'm really scared of ice and snow so I feel a bit sick now even though I don't have to go out.  I'm pathetic

Makingabobor2

@Pollybear, I know exactly how you feel about the snow and ice. We don't have snow here yet, but the roads have been very icy and frosty. Last year I broke my shoulder (not on ice), but it has made me very wary now of walking in the winter incase I  fall again. DH thinks I am stupid and can't understand, but I won't go out now when it is like this.  
Didn't know you could get orange Twirl....I better not go looking for one or I might just buy one...lol. Don't feel bad for eating it. You obviously needed it and we can't change the past, so no point worrying now. x

Sat here with 2 squares of dark 85% chocolate. Hopefully that will be all the sweet stuff I have today, and it is only about 13% sugar, so not as bad as it could be if I was to have a biscuit.  
Hope everybody is doing ok 

Honey_Bear

Polly Bear and Making, I think as we get older we are more aware of the risks in every day life, and falling over is more serious as we get older because we're heavier and we land harder.  Until it's happened to someone they really can't understand how much it saps your confidence.  I'm pretty cautious in this weather right now because the last thing I want to do is break anything else.

As for that thing about lying in bed fretting about an up and coming event, I've only realised recently that's exactly what I do sometimes about things that really aren't that big, but for some reason I get into a knickertwist about.  I've got a vegan coming on Christmas day and I've been winding myself up about making something special for him for what seems like weeks.  Today one of the vegetarians who will be here for the day arrived and while we were catching up on the past two years' news she said she'd got a lovely special vegan recipe that everyone loves apparently, so that's sorted.  No doubt I'll find something else to fret about now but for the time being that one's sorted.  Hurrah!

Went out for lunch today and had a brownie and ice cream for dessert.  Lovely. 

Pollybear

I always say that if I don't have anything to worry about I'll just make something up!    My husband doesn't seem to get it but over the last couple of weeks I think he was worried about what we had to do as much as I was but wouldn't say it.  I even stayed on my own at my granddaughter's and he went home so he could put the car in the garage so he wouldn't have to scrape it on Saturday morning and then he came back for me and took me to the Brownie rendezvous.  That was his own idea, so it was obviously playing on his mind.

He did go over for the newspaper for me this morning so I wouldn't try going out in the snow

cookie02

Pollybear, you're not pathetic at all - it is a worry for a lot of us!  Glad you had a safe trip.  The snow is very pretty but causes so many accidents and injuries - stay safe!  No need to feel guilty about the Twirl - I hope you eat and enjoy and remember how much less sugar you're having now 😊.  My mind is very sugar-focused - when you mentioned the Brownie camp, I was thinking of the chocolate variety before I remembered

Honey_Bear, I agree with you re: palm oil and also with your observations re: the sugar industry and the parallels with tobacco.  It's no coincidence that the biggest sugar company in the UK is also a significant donor to political parties / sponsor of certain political conferences etc (you can guess whose).  Thank you for the oatcake recipe, I will be looking into this.  I didn't think we had any food with palm-oil anymore but we will be re-checking as it sounds like ingredients may have changed recently and we wouldn't want to be accidentally buying things that are supporting deforestation.  Out of interest, do you purchase items that have responsibly sourced palm oil or do you omit those too?  We have some that are responsibly sourced but have been discussing this.  My theory is that it's better to buy the responsibly sourced palm oil, where available, so producers see the market for this and shift to more ethical practices (possibly a naive belief/hope).  I know Iceland has done a lot to raise awareness of this issue but I think it's still fairly low on the radar compared to other campaigns and most supermarkets haven't addressed this properly (yet).  

Honey_Bear, I also struggled last year, not just in December but for most of January and February.  I'm hoping that I will be able to implement what I've learnt and enjoy Christmas without going sugar-crazy and then get back on track by the end of January. If anyone has any tips or strategies that they're trying out, I would love to know!  

Morning_walker, I really admire how you've just managed to cut chocolate altogether for this period and hope it gives your health the kick-start you're aiming for.  One hot chocolate sounds like a well-deserved treat and perfect in this weather!  Well done 🏅 🏅 

Making, it sounds like the dark chocolate squares are working for you (and they're supposed to be good for you too!).  

Last week wasn't as bad as I feared since I managed to be sugar-free on Thursday AND Friday.  I'm not sure how that happened as we went out to meet friends on both days.  I have been having breakfast (no more IF for now) and have been eating more protein so that probably helped.  Yesterday, I had a mince pie and a slice of cake. Today, I had another mince pie but I"m not craving sugar so I think that will be it - this is a definite improvement over the beginning of last week.  This week, I'm hoping to be sugar-free until Friday evening.  Being realistic, if I make 3 days, I will be happy.  

Hope everyone is doing well and staying safe in this weather.