No more sugar for me!
In my last post I introduced my new feature The ‘I Quit’ Blog Fiesta where I plan to roundup your stories about quitting things that are doing you, the environment and your wallet no good. In that article I mentioned that I have quit sugar and I promised to write more about it, well here we go!
I quit sugar immediately after reading the following:
- an article in the New York Times detailing The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food.
- various articles explaining that sugar can make you look older.
- The preview section of David Gillespie’s book Sweet Poison: Why Sugar Makes Us Fat
(He has also published a book The Sweet Poison Quit Plan (UK Edition)
to help people get off the sweet stuff.)
If you do all the reading you will see why I was so put off sugar, but why after eating sugary foods all my life did I suddenly decide that was it – I wasn’t going to have any more?
- I had never before associated sugar with the words addiction and poison
- I realised that I have been addicted to sugar and was shocked to know that sugar could make you look older amongst a variety of other horrible side effects.
- I thought back to when I gave up smoking (I smoked for a few years), I couldn’t just have had one cigarette occasionally, I needed to break my addiction by cutting them out completely. If I have been addicted to refined sugars then to break that addiction I needed to cut it out completely! By the way if you are trying to quit smoking I highly recommend Allen Carr’s Easy Way to Stop Smoking book!
- I want to be a healthy weight and have struggled with that all my life. I don’t want to go on fad diets, watch every calorie I eat or exercise 5 times a day. I have long believed that there should be an easy way to be the right weight. Eliminating sugar could well be the answer for me!
You can’t give up all sugar!
I am not planning on giving up the sugar which occurs naturally in foods, it is the refined added sugars that I plan to give up. I am also going to continue to eat honey (in small quantities) for the time being. I do not plan to use any sugar substitutes (other than honey). I know that many savory products contain sugar and I will try to avoid them where possible, I plan to learn how to make my own sugar free alternatives of things like tomato ketchup for example.
Success so far!
Aside from eating some savory foods containing sugar e.g. bread I have been totally sugar free for 9 days! I have lost 2lbs and I am not missing it at all. I have not found it at all difficult to give up and I have been tested. Two days after I gave up I went to my father-in-laws birthday lunch/ tea and there were lots of cakes and sweet foods on offer – it really didn’t bother me.
What has helped:
- I finally believed that I wanted to give up sugar as I started to see it for what it really is – an enemy not a friend!
- Before deciding to give up sugar I went for a hypnotherapy session prior to which I did mention I would like to lose weight and that I had a weakness for certain sweet foods. I found the session did help me to feel less tempted to eat those foods, but I did eat them again after the session.
- I try to get the correct balance of food on my plate and to get portion sizes right.
- I mainly drink water. I also drink herbal teas, the occasional diluted fruit juice and wine very occasionally but am considering giving it up altogether.
- I make most of our meals and snacks from raw ingredients.
- The article in the New York Times indicated that fat and salt can also be addictive – I don’t feel I am addicted to those foods though as I find them easy to resist. I recognise that they could pose a problem though and plan to avoid them as far as possible as well.
Do you think you could give up all refined and added sugars? Would you want to? I’d love to hear your thoughts!
