Goal Met: No Sugar for 30 Days
Well OK this one was hard, not because I’m a sugar junkie (although I do enjoy a treat now and then) I have two small kids who always want a little sweet dessert and a wife who helpfully bring home leftover treats from events and just leaves them on the counter in plain view. So, I knew I couldn’t do the tried and true ‘get all the sugar out of the house’ methodology.
I did however remove the one treat that my brain craves more than all others: Reese’s peanut butter cups. I collected up all the Reese’s in the candy jar and put them deep in the pantry where I couldn’t see them (oddly enough next to the jar of Nutella I was hid from myself a few months back) hoping that one day a curious hobbit would find them and after a battle of wits with a dragon…
My preeeeecious stored away where I couldn’t be tempted, I set about finding what everyday items secretly had sugar in them and sadly – it’s almost all of them. Sucrose, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Sugar, Dextrose.. all fancy names but all meaning you have processed sugar in your food. I knew this would be an uphill battle, but my cooking skills helped me by allowing me to make more wholesome varieties of food without the added sugar that I could eat. The overwhelming consensus of my kids after eating my ‘real’ macaroni and cheese was; “Daaaaaad we want the boxed version with the pooooowder” so I knew that I couldn’t drag them along on this journey. [Author note: We generally feed our kids whole foods and really limit sugar but there’s just some things that are a key part of childhood and Kraft mac and cheese is one of them]
Armed with the secret knowledge of the sugar in foods I started the journey. The first few days were fine but then I developed a headache and general malaise that lasted for almost a week. I didn’t have a cold or other illness and had no other explanation other than sugar withdrawal. I did some research, and it backed up my initial hypothesis (Scientific Method Yo!). It was… alarming that I was eating enough sugar to cause physiological reactions when I stopped. It took almost two full weeks before I started to feel normal again and the cravings which were highest that first week finally dipped off into almost nothing.
There were a few temptation points that required a force of will – mostly around making banana bread for my kids and kids birthday parties where there were cookies, cakes, cupcakes, and other treats being handed out and I had to verbally say no requiring a stronger exercise of will. One work event had a tray of brownies that were still warm from the kitchen and were right in front of me for almost a full hour as I tried to focus on what the speaker was saying but the smell of brownies was making my brain misfire.
Other than those few inflection points I was able to control the sugar intake and make it well past the 30 days – it was around 7 weeks total that I broke down and had a slab of fresh baked banana bread because dammit – I just spent a half hour making this thing I’m going to enjoy it! Enjoy it I did… almost ¾ of the loaf scarfed down like a sugar goblin. About an hour later I was having stomach pains and really needed a nap. I guess coming off of a sugar fast and eating a bunch of sugar is bound to make your body go haywire
I’ve watched enough documentaries and read enough articles to understand fully how damaging excess sugar intake can be. I had real world experience by experimenting on myself to show that yes – it does have a physiological effect. However – there is a simple joy (and a nice hit of dopamine) in an Italian pastry or slice of pie and that joy is valuable to quality of life. I’m lucky in that I’m not prediabetic and not at risk so I can have sugar without immediate harm but I want to stay that way so I’ve really cut back on my intake. I rarely have sugar during the week easily turning away when offered and, on the weekend, if I want something sweet I don’t turn to prepackaged candy or chemical laden treats I make it myself. I get the joy of cooking/baking, I can ensure quality whole ingredients are used and I get to spend time with my kids teaching them how to bake which is the tiny dollop of awesome on the top of this whole experiment.