The 'Towards a Sugar-Free Future' Challenge

cookie02

Merry Christmas, Pollybear, Honey_Bear and everyone!  Hope you are all having a wonderful day  .  

Pollybear

I enjoyed my Christmas pudding and cream

Makingabobor2

Well, glad Christmas day is over...chocolate orange bomb for pudding & 1/3 of a box of Lindt dark chocolate truffles....blame DH for buying them for me. Tomorrow, definitely no choclate or biscuits. Hope everyone else survived.  

Honey_Bear

Making, you do whatever suits you today, but as far as I'm concerned it's definitely one of the Holidays that are a bit of a free for all, of conscience-free consumption.  These are feast days going back to Pagan times in the days of yore and there's a good reason for that - it's a long, cold, wet, bleak, dreary, deep wintery time of year and there are some of us that need to be able to indulge without feeling guilty for a few days. 

I heard an Archbishop of Canterbury talking about this issue some years ago and it made a huge impact on me, a real lightbulb moment.  I am not religous but I do take the rituals from Christianity that are woven into the fabric of our society seriously because I regard them as a kind of social punctuation.

What he was actually talking about was Lent and Easter.  We have those 40 days of some kind of denial that we chose to put ourselves through, but what he went on to say was somthing like Easter should be a time of rejoicing and without both those elements, of denial and celebration, neither captures the full meaning.  I don't want to be the joyless, faintly saintly, sanctimonious person who pours cold scorn on those that do want to indulge because I kind of feel I do that enough attempting to do this sugar-free thing already, and my contrast is that when I'm allowed to let it all hang loose, so to speak, on High Days and Holidays - I can, and really, really revel in doing so. 

However, having said that I certainly ate a lot less sugary stuff yesterday than I have in past years, and I honestly think it's down to this Challenge.  It's now always a matter of whether I want to eat the sugary thing enough, which is now automatic and was never even a passing thought.  The only sugary thing I ate, in the end, was a slice of homemade Christmas pudding and it really didn't have much in the way of sugar in it, but it had a huge amount of dried fruit and finallly, finally, finally I can honestly say that I now get quite a sugar hit from those dried fruits.  I always have from figs and dates but one small slice was absolutely enough yesterday.

I do most of the food shopping and haven't been in the slightest tempted to buy a tin of qua1!ty street for years (nasty plastic boxes now anyway) so after the meal I was aware that as hosts we should have passed some chocolates around because it's a bit of a tradition, isn't it?  Anyway, we'd given all three guests boxes of chocolates, because I'm pretty sure at least two of them didn't get given any presents by anyone else, and if they'd felt the need to finish the meal with chocolate, they could have opened their own and handed them round, which is what I would have done.  They didn't, so I'm assuming they didn't feel the need for chocolate either, so once again I'm being shown that my expectations are not shared by others, which I always assume are.

It didn't, however, mean that I didn't feel the lack of chocolate, and the only reason we didn't have any to hand around was that I ran out of time and energry in the run up to Christmas to cover some Brazil nuts I have in 70% chocolate in my stash.  I may do that today, or tomorrow because I really do want to know if it'll work.

For anyone who thinks they overdid it yesterday, don't worry about it, don't beat yourself up.  I used to feel sick  about the amount of food my mother bought for Christmas so it's never been a day when I put 7000 calories on my plate but Christmas is a Feast Day, and there are now things that need to be finished up so do whatever  feels right for you - and thoroughly enjoy it.

cookie02

Merry Christmas, Making!  Chocolate orange pudding and Lindt choccies sounds lovely as part of your Christmas celebrations.  I agree with Honey_Bear - do whatever works best for you.  If you stick to No Sugar Days over Christmas and New Year 1) I am in awe of you and 2) I know I would never be able to do this unless I had clear health reasons to opt out of all sugar (similar to what a couple of people expressed earlier in the thread).  

We probably shouldn't correlate cakes and puddings and chocolate with fun but we do and it is Christmas!  This is one of the reasons why I aimed for Low(for Christmas) Sugar Days last week vs No Sugar Days like we have for most of the year.  I wanted to try and stick to the spirit of the challenge, without depriving myself during our time off and celebrations.  I also hope to try and avoid a repeat of last year where I had no rules for a few weeks over Christmas and New Year and struggled for a couple of months to get back on track.  I understand why you might want to stick to sugar-free days to avoid my kind of 2022 meltdown.  The beauty of this challenge is that you can make it as strict or as flexible as you want it to be so do whatever works for you but if you eat chocolate or other treats, I hope you enjoy them and don't feel guilty.  There are 52 weeks in the year so we have plenty of time to hit our goals, outside of any Christmas and New Year celebrations 🍀 (this is what I keep telling myself!).  

Hope everyone has been enjoying the long weekend!

cookie02

A quick sugar update: my goal for this week was to have low-sugar days Weds-Fri (until Fri night).  I'm still enjoying all the Christmas treats but I'm trying to only have sugar around one meal vs all day (which I did over the main Christmas weekend!).  Yesterday was fine and, so far, I haven't been tempted by anything today.  We've been having a lot of protein for breakfast and I think that really makes a big difference for me.  Amidst all of this, I'm continually aware of how fortunate we are and I'm really grateful that we are in a position where cutting out anything is a choice vs something forced on us through circumstances outside of our control.  

We will be meeting friends later so I hope I can stick to my low-sugar plan for the day but I'm being flexible about this since we are still on holiday and it is a Christmas/New Year celebration.  I hope all of you are doing well with meeting your goals (or enjoying your lack of them 😉 ) this week!

Honey_Bear

I have to admit to having a 200g bar of my favourite chocolate for breakfast / brunch / lunch the other day.  I thoroughly enjoyed it and didn't eat another thing until the evening.  One binge over Christmas isn't the end of the world and it did taste beyond wonderful so I don't even feel guilty about it! 

Other than that I've been having small slices of Christmas cake and the occasional chocolate biscuits (now finished) and a m@gnum after supper, but mainly sticking to protein at every meal.  All things considered this year hasn't been the over-indulgence of previous years and I'm as pleased as punch about that.

I couldn't agree with you more, Cookie.  I know I'm in an incredibly privileged position being able to make the choices I do.  Being retired I can also choose what I want to do with my time as well.  I don't feel guilty about either, but I do feel very, very lucky all the time.  I have a huge amount to be grateful for, and I truly am.

RandomOne

Morning All I am starting today. 

I've had a think about what makes sense for me, and I think that instead of focusing on 1 day a week, I'm going to change the small habits. So my main habits are drinking alcohol and eating chocolate. 

I'm starting with Dry January, which takes care of that problem. Secretly I hope that DJ will be the start of many alcohol-free months, but I'm just focusing on January right now. 

Chocolate is something that I cannot imagine never being able to eat again. So cutting it out altogether would be a silly goal for me as I know I'd never stick to it. So with that being said, I'm going to allow myself 1 day a week when I have some chocolate and/or sweets. It'll probably be a Saturday, but I'll play it by ear week to week. 

Makingabobor2

Well I have had a bad couple of days, but also they coincided with days when I felt very tired and had back ache and generally not feeling my best. So imagine my turning to chocolate and biscuits was caused by that. I am feeling a lot better today and have had a good breakfast of egg and toast and will decide what to have for lunch in a bit and then dinner is minced pork spag/bol. I have still got some chicken livers in the freezer so will get them defrosted tomorrow as I really enjoyed them and know they are full of protein. I've put several packs on my Mr S order for next week as well. We have chicken filletts for the weekend as well, so lots of protein to curb the sugar craving. 
TBH, I think I have had so many Christmas biscuits and chocolate the last few days, I can honestly say I have had enough of them. I think my digestive system has definitely had enough and my IBS has started to rebel, so maybe that has given me the kick that I needed to try harder.  

Honey_Bear

Good luck with your plan Random One.  When I stopped drinking altogether I posted every day on the Giving Up / Cutting Down Alcohol Thread and without doing so I'm not sure I would have made it.  If you aren't on it I thoroughly recommend it. As for chocolate, if you restricting yourself to one day's indulgence a week works that'll be a good job well done.  Let us know how it goes, because we'll be cheering you on from the sidelines.

We cross-posted Making.  I think the freedoms to over-ingulge may be affecting us in the same way even though we had different motives.  You were feeling grim so had some comfort food, and I was feeling like it was the end of term!

I woke up feeling a bit *bleurgh* this morning, and it's probably connected to not feeling great last night either.  I've been pretty happy for quite a long time, months if not years, so it's come as a bit of a shock.  The only thing I can put it down to, which is the only thing that's changed over the past few days - is sugar and chocolate.  So, from today, back on the protein three times a day which will mean less sugar. 

Someone commented on a YouTube video I was watching the other day that they had a real sugar high after eating something.  It was after I had that bar of chocolate for brunch and I have to say I was aware at the time that I absolutely did not have a sugar high and made me realise I'm not aware of ever having one.  Does anyone know what a 'sugar high' actually feels like?