Anyone up for a sugar-free challenge?
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Thank you for sharing your experience - thought provoking! 💭1
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Thank you all for your varied insights and points of view. For anyone who would like to take on this challenge of giving up the added sugars, it would be great to have you join me. I say - LET’S DO THIS!!
40 days?3 -
“The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken!”1
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I did a brief sugar challenge - my husband was talking crap about how it can't be that hard to cut out sugar - so it was basically a dare. I'm stubborn and I do what I set out to do, so I knew I would succeed no matter how ugly it got. I told him he couldn't handle it, though. He couldn't, of course. But I ended up being OK.
I had read how people go into withdrawals like addicts, and how hard it is, etc. I expected it to be really terrible giving up sugar. Turns out, I think it's mostly a psychological thing. I didn't have any negative physical feelings when I cut back. I went from having candy every day, chocolate syrup in my coffee, lots of fruit, etc. to letting myself have a max of 25 grams of total sugar every day - from WHO guidelines - that's not just added or refined sugars - that's natural sugars, too. I was shocked at how much I had to cut back on broccoli just to stay within goals. (I love broccoli - can't have just one serving.) And I had to give up my daily apple (15 grams of sugar.) Poo to that.
Anyway, it was not difficult from a physical standpoint, but it was a lot of work to figure out combinations of meals that stayed within the bounds of all my goals. I had to eat a lot of fat and too much cheese and eggs. Those things are OK, but I'm not a glutton for them. I don't love them. Got a lot of fiber and protein from the lentils and chicken and whatnot I had to eat as filler. But it was hard to meet my calorie goals without the extra sugar. (I'm on maintenance and not trying to lose, and I have a lot of fitness activities, so I have a lot of calories to eat back.)
The primary benefit I noticed was that I didn't feel like I needed my daily naps anymore. I just wasn't as tired. I think I took one nap the whole time, when I usually sneak a nap in every day if I can. Other than that, I didn't notice huge changes. The biggest drawback is the hassle of worrying whether or not some piece of fruit is gonna put you over the edge. At least now I know that cutting back sugar is do-able, and not anywhere near as scary as people make it out to be.
25 total sugar grams was not maintainable long-term for me. At least, it's not when I'm healthy enough to NOT have to. So instead, ever since the challenge, I have modified my diet to stay within 25 grams of ADDED sugars and 45-50 TOTAL grams of sugar. (That's half the sugar I used to have every day.) That way, I can have all my broccoli, my daily apple and the occasional treat. My coffee has been permanently modified to include sugar-free syrup now (I don't have a problem using sugar free options. Doesn't bother me at all - I'm no purist) and I don't have daily candy anymore. I don't actually think I need it now that I've discovered walnuts as an alternative.
We'll see how this all plays out when the holidays roll around...yikes!5 -
First 24 hours successfully achieved 😃9
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What are your specific rules? Are you avoiding all added sugars, even a tiny bit in something savory, or simply sweets?
I might join just because I need motivation to start actually logging again and if I'm doing that it might push me back into logging. I'm weird in that I like stuff like this.4 -
I’d be happy to avoid sugars like can sugar and artificial sweeteners in things like you said - sweets, chocolates, pastries, cookies, desserts, baking. That would be a fantastic achievement, without being overly pedantic about the trace sugars in savouries. 💭2
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Yeah, I think that's a reasonable approach. When I did my one month experiment before I avoided it all, just because so many people claimed it would be so hard and I didn't think it would be (and it wasn't), but my own impression is trace sugar in savory things is pretty irrelevant to any kind of habitual or control issues with sugary items.2
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I’m on board! 😊0
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I'll join tomorrow. I didn't have any dessert type stuff today (I was going to disqualify myself since we had a BBQ lunch at work), but I want to include logging too, and lunch was impossible to log.1
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@just_Tomekjust_Tomek wrote: »
True, guilty as charged. I rip the tomatoes I grow on vines in my garden and eat them without stunning them first just so they suffer more. And those delicious sweet tomatoes even contain the seeds of their future children. Are there any boundaries to the cruelty I inflict on these defenceless but delicious creatures?
Surprised PETA haven't protested against the inhumanity of it all.6 -
SuperMotivated56 wrote: »I do mean added sugar - of the sweets, pastries, cookies, etc. kind. Not natural sugars like fruit. Apple 🍎
You do realise that the added sugar you mention has come from a plant?
It's natural sugar that has been refined from plant sources.
I sincerely hope you win your battle with your struggle with over-eating foods you struggle to control but have a serious think about what the problem really is and the battle may become easier. Remember the battle doesn't end at the end of a challenge duration or the end of losing weight - it also continues when you are trying to maintain at goal weight.
You might be someone who can exclude things you clearly enjoy for the rest of your life or you might have to come up with a strategy that lets you eat them in the appropriate quantities.
What I doubt will help you is thinking sucrose or fructose that comes in a packet is different to the sucrose or fructose that is in fruits and vegetables. The receptors in your gut really don't care.
PS - before someone goes off at a tangent I'm not saying all foods are the same.6 -
I thought that we could motivate each other, particularly on the tough days, with some reasons why. Here’s my first one (and it would be great if you’d like to add yours):
BELLY FAT! There is a statistically significant link between sugar and belly fat.
From the analogues of evidence, here is a snapshot:
Sugar (of the added kind) is half glucose and half fructose and fructose can only be metabolized by the liver in significant amounts. When you eat a lot of added sugar, the liver gets overloaded with fructose and is forced to turn it into fat.
There is a direct correlation between excess sugar and increased accumulation of fat in the belly and liver.
For the few nay-sayers, the evidence is clear that this does not apply to whole fruit, which has plenty of fiber that mitigates the negative effects of fructose.
The amount of fructose you get from fruit is negligible compared to what you get from a diet high in refined sugar.
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SuperMotivated56 wrote: »I thought that we could motivate each other, particularly on the tough days, with some reasons why. Here’s my first one (and it would be great if you’d like to add yours):
BELLY FAT! There is a statistically significant link between sugar and belly fat.
From the analogues of evidence, here is a snapshot:
Sugar (of the added kind) is half glucose and half fructose and fructose can only be metabolized by the liver in significant amounts. When you eat a lot of added sugar, the liver gets overloaded with fructose and is forced to turn it into fat.
There is a direct correlation between excess sugar and increased accumulation of fat in the belly and liver.
For the few nay-sayers, the evidence is clear that this does not apply to whole fruit, which has plenty of fiber that mitigates the negative effects of fructose.
The amount of fructose you get from fruit is negligible compared to what you get from a diet high in refined sugar.
Sorry but this is full is of misinformation.
That fructose has different receptors to glucose and follows a different digestive pathway simply isn't a problem - it's just the normal way your body works.
Endurance athletes (like me) use it to their advantage so that they can exceed the absorption rate of glucose alone, a 2:1 ratio is sometimes used. For me that's 60g of glucose and 30g of fructose an hour on a long and hard ride.
No your liver doesn't get "overloaded", it's just doing one of its many jobs its supposed to do.
No it's not "forced to convert it to fat" - in fact carb to fat conversion is very inefficient and exceedingly rare in humans. It would take extreme and prolonged carb and calorie overloading to induce it. And for people dieting that clearly isn't an issue. In a calorie surplus it's your dietary fat that get stored as body fat.
Crucially in a calorie deficit (whatever macro split is chosen) there is no net increase in body fat.
By the way I don't have a diet high in refined sugar but do have a strong belief that to diet successfully accurate knowledge really is a positive factor in a successful outcome.
Wherever you are getting your misinformation from isn't helping you.18 -
So you did this for 8 weeks then failed? Why? Do you plan to yo-yo diet your entire life? That is very unhealthy (unlike the belly fat nonsense you have been reading).
Good luck. I hope you figure this out.5 -
SuperMotivated56 wrote: »Sugar (of the added kind) is half glucose and half fructose and fructose can only be metabolized by the liver in significant amounts. When you eat a lot of added sugar, the liver gets overloaded with fructose and is forced to turn it into fat.
Just to be clear, that still does not mean one can gain net fat (on any part of the body) in a deficit. Also, fruit sugar of course has fructose too -- some fruits have a higher percentage of fructose than table sugar, some have less. I think the issue is if you have such a high sugar diet, especially in foods that are processed very quickly (like sugary soda) there can be some unnecessary strain on the liver and it can lead to such things as non alcoholic fatty liver disease, especially if one is also obese. But just eating some sweets in moderation does not have that effect.
I certainly agree that a diet HIGH in added sugar (in large part because it also tends to come with added fat and either leads to excess cals or crowds out nutrients) is a bad idea, and I think pretty much everyone would agree with that, but that's a different question from whether it is beneficial to eat NO added sugar vs. a moderate amount. I think of those two, it's just what makes it easier for you to eat a calorie-appropriate, nutrient-dense, and sustainable over the long term diet.
For me, quitting added sugar for a while (back in the day) was beneficial since it went along with working on my emotional eating and not snacking/eating food because it was there, and much of the food that just happened to be there in my office that I was likely to be tempted by had added sugar. It also helped me understand what was going on when I felt out of control at times with eating behaviors. Later I found added sugar in moderation wasn't an issue (and I've lost my sweet tooth other than for fruit most of the time anyway). But I think cutting it out for a while and really focusing on why or under what circumstances one is wanting it CAN be a way to help bring some control, although for other people other things (including consciously including it regularly so when you eat it you don't have an all or nothing reaction) can be a better approach.
For me, the cutting it out approach was useful because of all the media hype about how hard or impossible it is, and I was able to prove to myself it wasn't. And if I wanted to eat something I wasn't (or when I wasn't -- outside of meals), I did some reflection about what was really going on, and usually it wasn't "that food looks really exceptionally delicious and worth sacrificing the cals I'd otherwise use on my planned meals." After I did it, I found myself being more picky in general again about what I would use my calories on.
For me, the risk is always falling back into mindless eating, so even though I'm not finding sweets tempting, doing a challenge where I am forced to log everything again (which I hadn't been doing) is going to be useful, and I often find it easier to do that if I am trying something specific (like when we did the DASH thread).
OP, challenges generally are easier to do and find more people interested in participating and sharing experiences in the challenge section, so you might want to start a thread there.5 -
Thanks for sharing Lemurcat2 - very inspirational and I can really relate to your rationale. Perfectly stated!2
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4 days and feeling stronger 😊🏃🏼♀️3
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I did a brief sugar challenge - my husband was talking crap about how it can't be that hard to cut out sugar - so it was basically a dare. I'm stubborn and I do what I set out to do, so I knew I would succeed no matter how ugly it got. I told him he couldn't handle it, though. He couldn't, of course. But I ended up being OK.
I had read how people go into withdrawals like addicts, and how hard it is, etc. I expected it to be really terrible giving up sugar. Turns out, I think it's mostly a psychological thing. I didn't have any negative physical feelings when I cut back. I went from having candy every day, chocolate syrup in my coffee, lots of fruit, etc. to letting myself have a max of 25 grams of total sugar every day - from WHO guidelines - that's not just added or refined sugars - that's natural sugars, too. I was shocked at how much I had to cut back on broccoli just to stay within goals. (I love broccoli - can't have just one serving.) And I had to give up my daily apple (15 grams of sugar.) Poo to that.
Anyway, it was not difficult from a physical standpoint, but it was a lot of work to figure out combinations of meals that stayed within the bounds of all my goals. I had to eat a lot of fat and too much cheese and eggs. Those things are OK, but I'm not a glutton for them. I don't love them. Got a lot of fiber and protein from the lentils and chicken and whatnot I had to eat as filler. But it was hard to meet my calorie goals without the extra sugar. (I'm on maintenance and not trying to lose, and I have a lot of fitness activities, so I have a lot of calories to eat back.)
The primary benefit I noticed was that I didn't feel like I needed my daily naps anymore. I just wasn't as tired. I think I took one nap the whole time, when I usually sneak a nap in every day if I can. Other than that, I didn't notice huge changes. The biggest drawback is the hassle of worrying whether or not some piece of fruit is gonna put you over the edge. At least now I know that cutting back sugar is do-able, and not anywhere near as scary as people make it out to be.
25 total sugar grams was not maintainable long-term for me. At least, it's not when I'm healthy enough to NOT have to. So instead, ever since the challenge, I have modified my diet to stay within 25 grams of ADDED sugars and 45-50 TOTAL grams of sugar. (That's half the sugar I used to have every day.) That way, I can have all my broccoli, my daily apple and the occasional treat. My coffee has been permanently modified to include sugar-free syrup now (I don't have a problem using sugar free options. Doesn't bother me at all - I'm no purist) and I don't have daily candy anymore. I don't actually think I need it now that I've discovered walnuts as an alternative.
We'll see how this all plays out when the holidays roll around...yikes!
@jenilla1 the WHO guidelines are for ADDED sugar, which they call "free sugars", so you deprived yourself of broccoli unnecessarily
:
https://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2015/sugar-guideline/en/
4 MARCH 2015 ¦ GENEVA - A new WHO guideline recommends adults and children reduce their daily intake of free sugars to less than 10% of their total energy intake. A further reduction to below 5% or roughly 25 grams (6 teaspoons) per day would provide additional health benefits.
Guideline on sugars intake for adult and children
Free sugars refer to monosaccharides (such as glucose, fructose) and disaccharides (such as sucrose or table sugar) added to foods and drinks by the manufacturer, cook or consumer, and sugars naturally present in honey, syrups, fruit juices and fruit juice concentrates.5 -
Nope. I eat relatively little added sugar, but every since I discovered how usefully much iron and potassium is in blackstrap molasses, I put a tablespoon of it in my oatmeal every day. Tasty and nutritious, but sadly it's added sugar.
In general, I don't find most added-sugar-y foods very tempting at all, let alone addictive, so I don't feel much need to control them. On the rare occasion I want a cookie, I eat a cookie.
If it helps others to give up added sugar, that seems fine.missysippy930 wrote: »Fruits, vegetables, whole grains, processed meats all have sugar.
So does plain dairy food like skim milk, plain unsweetened unflavored yogurt, etc.
I would consider a challenge of not exceeding the WHO recommendation for added sugar, but I would exclude my 1 T of blackstrap molasses, as I am anemic and that helps keep me in Low Normal.4
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