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Thursday, July 1, 2010

60 days with no sugar: what I learned


Going sugar free for the past couple of months was really eye-opening for me. My main motivation was to speed up my weight loss-- and I think it did-- but I learned some other things in the process.

Baked goods can be enjoyed without sugar. For the first month, I stopped making muffins for my family for breakfast. (I probably make muffins about once a week or so.) I didn't think they would taste good with no sugar, and I didn't think any substitutes would work quite as well. When I finally did try my banana nut muffins with honey, all wheat flour and coconut oil, they were great! I used honey in El Torito's sweet corn cake recipe, and no one even noticed the difference.

I have learned to like things a little less sweet. I use less sweeteners now, because I taste them more. As a culture, we not only eat sugar too often, but we eat too much of it when we do. A little sugar goes a loooong way. When you slowly cut it out, you change your taste. I used to live in Taiwan where I was a missionary. The Taiwanese people don't like things very sweet. They eat slightly sweetened beans for or fruit for dessert. Even the Snickers bars they sell in 7-11 have less sugar, because they just don't like things overly sweet. You can train yourself to like things less sweet.

The less you eat sugar, the less you crave sugar. And the opposite is also true. I think that's a good thing to remember if you are trying to cut sugar out of your diet. It will be hard at first, but will totally get easier. When those sugar cravings DO happen, it's usually your body telling you that you need fat. Have a few nuts and wait a little while and your craving WILL go away.

Most sugary foods aren't worth it anyway. Think about it for a minute. Most of the time, when you talk about sugary food, it's things like store bought cookies or ice cream... some may be okay, but most are not amazing. And most don't make you feel great afterward. Except for a little piece of dark chocolate. That does feel good on my stomach.

Cutting out sugar helps you lose weight. Studies have been done on this, but I will just add my own experience: my baby weight came off faster and easier while I was not eating sugar. I certainly didn't cut my caloric intake; I ate what I was hungry for, plenty of fat and protein and yes- carbs too, but no sugar or white flour. And my weight loss sped up. I am now within 10 pounds of my goal!

Be sure to check out my giveaway ending this week.
This post is part of Fight Back Friday, wholesome whole foods, and Vegetarian foodie fridays.

13 comments:

  1. Hi Chanelle.

    It's funny how to learn to need less sugar the more you don't eat of it!

    I'd like to invite you to share this at the Wholesome Whole Foods blog carnival.
    http://bit.ly/clQARi

    Michelle.

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  2. I did that for 60 days too, last October. But then Halloween came and... I fell off the wagon. Been off ever since, and now I really need to get back on. Once my life calms down a bit I hope to do it again. I invite you to link this at my Vegetarian Foodie Fridays carnival. Hope too see you! http://www.breastfeedingmomsunite.com/2010/07/vegetarian-foodie-fridays-rice-fried-vegetables/

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  3. I completely agree that the less you eat the less you crave. I had a bad dark chocolate habit. I was able to break it and now I don't crave it. The only chocolate I can eat now is 85% which taste a lot like unsweetened!

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  4. Thanks for the invites! I will check out your carnivals. @ kelly- I love that dark, dark (85% or above) chocolate.

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  5. I was sugar free at the beginning of the year...and I need to do it again. Right now. I even went to the Cheesecake Factory today for lunch and I did NOT get any cheesecake! Yay for that. I found if I have a smoothie in the morning (with plain yogurt, orange juice and berries) that somehow I don't crave sugar. Don't know why that is. Mid-afternoon is my hardest time, because even after I eat a good lunch I just feel slumped and I want a snack and I want sugar. Today I resisted...and finished the lunch I hadn't earlier, then started drinking water. And I'm craving butter like crazy so I'm thinking that right now it's that I'm not eating enough fat/calories and sugar was just making up for that. Ah. Well, I can fix that as soon as I find something to put butter on. A LOT of butter.

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  6. Good for you! I had some major cravings when I decided to stop eating so much sugar and found that eating dates helped. I'm sure they're not the healthiest things, but it helped. Now I pretty much only splurge on sugar for homemade ice cream. That is totally worth it, and we've even found we like it less sweet than the recipe says.

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  7. YES! I've been on my diet for a few months now (not totally sugar-free, but close :), and I completely agree about the cravings thing. I rarely crave sugar or junk anymore because my body doesn't have a taste for it now. And fruit tastes SO MUCH better too! It was HARD at first (WAY hard!!), but it's been paying off for me and I'm feeling (and I think, looking) better now :)

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  8. If you're eating honey, you're still eating sugar right? Same amount of carbs/calories, still metabolized as sugar in the body.

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  9. @anonymous, sort of, yes, and no to answer your questions. Honey is a sugar, just like fructose is a naturally occuring sugar in fruit. While the calories may be the same, it is metabolized differently in the body.
    Check out this post for more on refined sugar:
    http://simplyrealfood.blogspot.com/2010/01/whats-so-bad-about-sugar-anyway.html

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  10. I agree....it's actually quite easy to go without sugar for me.

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  11. Being without highly refined sugar is the best way...at least for me. I've recently switched to soaking grains and cooking entirely from scratch, and the biggest thing that I've noticed is that the processed foods I used to love (Tastykake cupcakes and donuts) taste off to me. I don't even enjoy them anymore. I'm finally losing weight and seeing results. And I haven't even started exercising yet!

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  12. I can live without sugar really. . .but natures candy like fruits well they are the most important rather that anything else

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  13. @healy, thankfully, fruits have fiber and water and vitamins to slow down the blood sugar rush and make them healthy for us to eat!

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